Bruce Benderson - Toward the New Degeneracy: C/D

Anyone read this? It's pretty hard to find, out of print I believe, (i got it thru interlibrary loan in january and the copy came from duke, so nc people are sorted i guess). i meant to start a thread a while ago but i was mulling it over and then forgot; the david banner thread reminded me of it.

i don't know what i think of it really. taking a shot at the 'suburbanization' of the '60's radical blah blah' is well and good i guess, but he reps for the beats, and camille paglia (ick).

Anyway there's a cut down version here:

http://www.altx.com/manifestos/degenerate.html

a few choice quotes from the above:

"The middle classes of the Left and the Right have conspired to strangle libido, aestheticism, and lower class expression. Because political correctness neglects the embarrassing subject of class, it has been able to become the voice of one ruling class -- the homogenized suburban bourgeoisie.

Lack of class consciousness is now America's glaring, unspoken sin. There has been no voice to discuss class since the thirties, when the working class was at stake and before America became a service economy. Whether a particular voice of today's "multiculturism" has a black face, a woman's face, a gay face, or a working class background is now besides the point. All speak the language of the well-fed."

...

"Street people speak of appetites and aggressions, rather than of identity. In light of this, consider the absurdity of the entire American liberal literary discourse being about identity -- about "finding oneself." In underclass life, sexual identity and ethnic identity cannot be conveniently sifted out and defined. Hunger, homelessness, or drug addiction always take precedence. On the street, everybody is a "nigger." There is a certain depth of need or disorganization at which a person will stick it in anybody or let anyone at all stick it in."

a couple interviews:

http://www.prism-escape.com/article_us.php3?id_article=85

http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/nov2001/benderson_interview.html