Ever
since reading THE GREAT NAROPA
POETRY WARS this summer, I have been thinking about narcissism in
letters, alcoholism, Allen Ginsberg's substance abuse—and
how that book clearly shows that, though he would never fess up to
it, Ginsberg was interested in the purposeful manufacture of
Outrage, the politics of scandal and what might be called an Economy
of Attention. I think too of other scandalists involved in a kind of
ritual bondage of the Self—whether the fewer famous ones, such as
Pound, Eliot, Berryman—or the many less famous ones, ephemera,
bound up in Self but bound for the dustbin. Seems to be mainly a
male phenomenon.
With the advent of listserves and then blogging, have we seen a
spate of scandalmongering in the poetry world? Seems to be happening
a lot recently.
1. A Literary Narcissist's behavior will not only tolerate but
encourage attacks on himself so long as it can translate his own
self-fascination into more news of himself.
2. Just as the Narcissist will use argument, catastrophe,
disputation to attract attention, certain people will be willing to
dispute the Narcissist in order to participate in the economy of
attention. Others will dispute the Narcissist because they are so
profoundly appalled by his/her behavior. Either way, the economy of
attention is fueled.
3. The Narcissist needs Catastrophe. The more internal crises of
shame the Narcissist endures and fails to heed, the more s/he will
need to create external Catastrophes. A chief and signal way a
Narcissist might attract attention is to start fights: Narcissists
will gravitate toward satire and caricature as a means of creating
argument. The Narcissist will attempt to construe strife with
health: "These arguments need to happen," etc.
4. The Narcissist IS fascinating—but not for the reasons the
Narcissist thinks. S/he is fascinating because the energy s/he will
expend in micromanaging the self image is so profoundly exceptional.
People just sort of stand there slack-jawed wondering if this person
has a life. The Narcissist however will mistranslate the fascination
of others as admiration.
5. Poetry communities will tolerate narcissism so long as it is
translated into a Social Energy which others can use to strengthen
and promote their projects.
6. Narcissism and alcoholism. Alcoholism is a systematic way to push
down socially regulating emotions like shame, guilt, and
embarrassment at one's own self-aggrandizing behavior. The
suppression of these emotions is never successful, even in the most
energetic of self-aggrandizers, and they will periodically burst
upward into brief displays of remorse and convictions to change.
These brief spouts of regulatory behavior are sometimes shared
publicly and sometimes privately among confidants. These displays
however can often easily be "re-used" by the Narcissist as a way of
showing his/her authenticity and emotional fealty to the community.
7. The Narcissist is aware of the economy of disgust surrounding
his/her behavior. S/he becomes more and more sensitive to this and
consequently begins to demand private declarations of loyalty from
those people whom s/he knows consider themselves friends—even
if they have said nothing publicly against the Narcissist.
8. The Narcissist, aware of this disgust, will create a personal
mythos in which s/he will be justified and exonerated by the rewards
of literary "history." The stronger the disgust of others, the
greater the energy used to maintain the mythos of exoneration by
"history."
9. Narcissists are only interested in community so long as it pays
dividends to their energy: they will support it if it feeds them.
10. The narcissist may outright demand in private that you "pay him"
publicly with praise. Then he or she will publicly repay you with a
communal mention.
11. In their attempt to cause others to adopt their
self-fascination, Narcissists will become increasingly paranoiac,
constantly searching the environment and community for news of
themselves, for fealty or disloyalty.
12. The Literary Narcissist begins purposefully to conflate
criticism of his social behavior into an indication of his/her
literary worth. That is to say, the Narcissist will try to show that
the reason others despise or are disgusted by him is in fact because
he or she is a "Rebel," a true Literary "Revolutionist"—and
that the statements of disgust others publicly make at his behavior
is merely an indication of (a) their necessary denial of the work
because they are threatened by it, or (b) their jealousy of the
work.
13. There comes a point—and the point may come early—where the
community thinks to itself "teapot" and the Narcissist still hears
"tempest." The truly insular narcissist (aka "the boor") will be met
more and more with shunning, ignoring and silence. This will wrest
the narcissist from his insularity—such that he will begin
another project designed to create Genuine Interest instead of mere
scandalous attention. This project, like a new comet's head, will be
followed by a long tail of manufactured scandal so as to call
attention to its presence in the literary sky.
Gabriel Gudding is the author of two books, A Defense of Poetry (Pitt Poetry Series, 2002) and Rhode Island Notebook (Dalkey Archive Press, 2006), the latter being a book of poems, essays, and creative non-fiction written in his car during 25 roundtrips on the highways between Providence, RI and Normal, IL. He works at Illinois State University, where he was hired to teach "experimental" poetry. He is a trained mediator for the university and practices Vipassana meditation in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin. His work appears in journals such as New American Writing, LIT, Fence, American Poetry Review, Sentence, Jacket, and in such anthologies as Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003), Poetry 30: Thirty-Something Thirty-Something American Poets (Mammoth Books, 2005) and others. He has begun two creative writing programs in prisons, maintains a blog, Conchology. PHOTO BY JASPER BERNES
