The American Dissident tells me off
| April 23rd, 2009
But in a good way. A few months back, I featured a great drawing from The American Dissident. G. Tod Slone aka P. Maudit, the creator, found that I had blogged about it and sent the following note along to me:
Bravo to you for being so open, so truly what Beatnik should be, in lieu of the titulary canonic inanity pumping up the myth. Thanks for publishing the toon!
G. Tod Slone, Founding Editor, 1998
To say thanks for his words of unabashed encouragement, I’m posting another one of his cartoons. Thanks for reading, G. Tod Slone.
Slone is great! You haven’t really lived until you’ve had a discussion with this man.
Jenny,
Well, here I was out of the blue hunting for P. Maudit on google. Couldn’t find him until I came across you. So, thanks very much again! Actually, I’m not “great” (and I know you didn’t mean it in that sense). I’m always railing against the term “great” because it’s become part of the backslapping and self-vaunting institutional madness that has gripped academe and literature. I’m just a lone man standing up where so many prefer to sit down. In fact, I did another toon on the Beats all sitting down (Kerouac excluded). My gripe against Snyder is that he is indifferent to censorship. My gripe against Ferlinghetti is that he does a Banned Books Week thing at City Lights each year, yet bans The American Dissident from City Lights because it has been critical of the Beats. Yes, I did a toon on that one also. If ever you’d like to post it, let me know (todslone@yahoo.com). Thanks so much for publishing the toon. Not one academic-based literary journal will do as much! Thanks also to other person who published the other toon. Again, your openness to criticism regarding the Beats is exemplary. They were not, as we both know, gods.
Best,
G. Tod