Clive:
Hmm, why is camp always seen as a prejorative? I think camp can be wonderfully delightful, particularly in its purest manisfestations (to paraphrase Susan Sontag's landmark essay, "Notes on Camp," something is most purely camp when the intentions are to produce a serious work of High Art and the results are closer to Low Trash). Some things are so bad they are just wonderful, like Mariah Carey in "Glitter," where you would swear she had to have pissed off the cinematographer in some particularly nasty way to have been lit and shot from the most unflattering angles possible and her line readings are so flat as to be positively concave.
My sister took me to see Radio City Music Hall's Christmas Show, which was just an absolute masterpiece of kitsch. Why, she asked me after, did I love this when I was critical of several other Broadway shows which weren't "any better really" than the Christmas show. I told her: Because the Christmas Show doesn't pretend to be anything any more than kitschy entertainment and 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' is pretending to be a Great Musical."
I don't find Betjeman to fall squarely into either category: camp or kitsch. But then again, I have not read much of him. I tried. I took out his Collected Poems from the library on and off all last summer. And I sat myself down and dutifully read. And mostly (and please try not to hate me for saying this) I was bored.
I suppose the assumption is as an American I am supposed to be fascinated with High British Culture--from the foibles of the monarchy to tea and crumpets and the like. Well, alas, I am not. I think that is the problem with Betjeman for most American readers. He is so squarely Briddish that it almost feels like he is writing in another language. I was talking to someone else earlier tonight about Sara Teasdale, and in a way I think he and Teasdale suffer from the same phenomenon: the craft overwhelms the subject. There is a reticence to their work that, while exquisitely crafted, can be too precious or "pretty" to have real staying power--at least for me.
Interesting that I don't feel this way about Larkin--though I suppose in the case of Larkin, he was almost obsessively seeking out taboo subject matters or points of view. But there is always, with Larkin, layers of meaning and feeling. Look at "Church Going" where I think you get two conflicting attitudes (at least!): this is all nonsense, silly nonsense, but why don't I believe in it, am I missing out on something? Or "This Be the Verse" which is caustic and bitter and, well, compassionate in a way you wouldn't ordinarily expect Larkin to be. With the Bejetman poems posted here, I feel like he is bordering on sentimentality, that a very British reticence is keeping him from showing the complexity of the subjects he has chosen. Or, as in the case of the first poem, he isn't kitschy enough. I would rather read Stevie Smith, who can be wicked as well as wickedly funny.
Then again, it took about a year for Larkin to click with me. So, I will take out the Bejetman Collected again in a bit and see if it clicks.
Hope all is well with you.
Tom
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