A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

Books in Reviewof critical authority. . . .which can force usinto situations of permanent debt—a freedomto read that entails submission to endlessfree play where the playground is analready-written page re-constituted by professionalinterpretation." Perelman consequentlyprivileges the non-specialistreader's response to these masterworks asan integral part of their appeal "Although itcould easily be argued that this naive readingwould be worthless, it would be moreaccurate to consider it a constitutive featureof these works. The blankness that theyproffer the neophyte needs to be consideredas an integral part of their meaning,and not simply blamed on inadequatereaders, schools, or societies." Here, as insubsequent chapters, Perelman is at painsto demonstrate how "the referential, formaland syntactic singularities of this [genius]writing can also be read as the conflictedvehicles of polemics, appeals and pronouncementsaimed at, if not exactlyaddressed to, the writers' contemporaries."For instance, Perelman elides the distinctionmany critics have drawn between EzraPound's lyric poems and "the rhetoricalviolence and moral blindness of [Pound's]later politics," in order to show how "thesupreme social importance of a highly specializedconception of literature is the spurthat drives [Pound] out into public space."Pound's poetry and politics proceed fromthe same impulse. Lyric images, like thewell-known light images near the Cantos'end, are continuous with the "Fascist light"of the radio speeches. While lyricism maytemporarily mark out a "transcendentdimension" in the poetry, this lyricism is"never free from literary and politicalengagements."Perelman's chapters on Joyce and Steinare similarly engaging. Discussing Ulysses,with particular reference to "WanderingRocks" and "Nausica," he convincinglyshows how Joyce's stylistic experimentseventually overwhelm and subvert the narrativeimpulse of Ulysses' early chapters.And Perelman's chapter on Stein enabledthis non-specialist to see the effects of hernotoriously difficult phrasing on contemporaryCanadian poets like Betsy Warlandand b.p. nichol.Perelman draws upon a number of surprisinganalogies to support his arguments.Early on, he compares the "transcendentimpetuosity" of the Romantic conceptionof genius to the old ads for Tabu, the"Forbidden Fragrance." Later on, heinvokes a Bugs Bunny / Wile E. Coyote cartoon("The plot revolves around the title ofgenius. Coyote keeps naming himself one,pronouncing the title with obsequious selfcongratulation, Wile E. Coyote, Genius,and informing Bugs that it's no use runningbecause he is doomed to be eaten byhis superior.") Perelman's ideas crackle likeCoyote's famous flying dynamite; weemerge from The Trouble With Genii» witha sharpened sensitivity to the social relevanceof Pound, Joyce, Stein and Zukofsky'swritings, and the uncomfortable awarenessthat unscrupulous (Wile-y?) academics canemploy dead writers in the animation oftheir own pet theories.A different kind of masquerade isexposed by Gerald Nicosia's Memory Babe,the most exhaustively researched JackKerouac biography published to date. Oneof the most valuable aspects of this encyclopedicstudy is the care Nicosia has taken topreserve the complex, often totally contradictoryelements of Kerouac's personality.In an early chapter, Nicosia describes youngJack dividing himself into myriad fantasyselves. "Wearing a gunny sack for a cape,and his father's old slouch hat, Jack wouldburst out of the dark or from behind treeswith a sinister Mweel heel heel ha! ha!Starting with the Shadow character, heimprovised a range of personalities—though it is hard to say just when he gavethem definite names: 'Count Cordu' for thevampire, 'Dr. Sax' for the rather clownish,168