Must Read! -- The Taming of the Stooge

I've always found Iggy Pop to be a fascinating rock star--he's the "Godfather of Punk," with a voice that's part Jim Morrison, part David Bowie, part something else entirely: that pure Iggy energy that has kept his music relevant for over forty years. He's a charismatic performer, a deep thinker (in 1995, his essay "Caesar Lives" was published in the journal Classics Ireland; the essay looks at Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and its applicability to the modern world), a wildman, and a half-decent actor, too, and yet he's always managed to fly just a bit below the radar for a rocker of his stature. (Pop was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 with his band The Stooges.)

In Andrew Goldman's "The Taming of the Stooge" from The New York Time's Magazine, we get a little peek into what makes Iggy tick, and of course Pop doesn't disappoint. (Note: a special thanks to reader Susan for pointing me to this interview!) In this piece, Pop is funny, candid, and even self-deprecating (well . . . at least, as self-deprecating as you can be when you are comparing your penis to a political interest group. Hey, it's still rock 'n' roll, right?) But, for me, the most interesting part of this interview is when Pop is asked about the punk movement of the 70s--for those who don't know, Iggy and The Stooges is often cited as a proto-punk influence, without which we wouldn't have had bands like The Clash or The Sex Pistols.

Punk is often cited as the last "pure" rock and roll movement--that one shining example of rock and roll telling the corporate establishment to stuff it. Iggy complicates that for us. . . .

---

"I couldn’t stand the sincere punks. I never believed them. Still don’t. . . . Like the Clash were going to make the world politically correct for everybody’s benefit—but only if you kept buying Clash records. I never really went for the righteousness. I went more for the profligate, sneering groups."

In some ways, Iggy Pop's response is actually apropos of writing craft, as well (which what we are all about here at "Stacking Stones.") The key word I want to focus in on is "sincere." I've spent a lot of time over the years trying to convince writing students that sincerity is not necessarily a good thing, and that to call a piece "sincere" is not always to laud it with high praise. To make my point, I read to them from Harold Bloom who said that "all bad poetry is sincere," Kim Addonizio who says that the tendency of most young writers is to be "too earnest," and Oscar Wilde who (in typical Oscar Wilde fashion) declared that bad poetry "springs from genuine feeling." I share with them this quote from the poet Matthew Rohrer:

Let’s face it--earnestness is almost always bad art. Good art makes us think; it has more questions than answers. . . . But earnestness almost never does this—that’s not it’s job. Earnestness is comforting. It wants to hug us. And we want to be hugged sometimes. But sometimes we want to laugh while poking holes in self-righteousness and oppression, whether it be literal political oppression or oppression of a quieter sort—cultural and aesthetic oppression.

 But I'm not sure that I am really convincing anyone.

"No, no, no, sincerity is a good thing," my students tell me, as though I've fallen head first off the back of the turnip truck. "So is genuine feeling, emotion." If I protest, they look at me like I've just field dressed the last unicorn on earth and offered to make them some really tasty jerky.

I'm not sure Iggy Pop is going to help change anyone's mind, but--in a world of "Call Me Maybe's" and "You Complete Me's"--it is encouraging to see that artists in other fields recognize that often the most convicted sentiments, the most self-righteous sentiments, the most obvious sentiments, and (yes) even those sentiments that come most directly from the heart, aren't the most artful sentiments.

---

For those unfamiliar with Iggy Pop's work, check out the videos below. Odds are, you've heard his music before without realizing it.

Literary Geek side note: The lyrics for "Lust for Life" contain a number of references to the William S. Burroughs novel The Ticket That Exploded.

---