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6.2.05
Pond Scum: Our Survey Said - Part 2
By Steve Finbow
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This is the second part of Our Survey Said – so to make sense of it you may have to scroll down or hit the archive button to read the first instalment. This week, we will look at what my friends think of famous American people – not Michael Jackson, not Martha Stewart, not whoever is the current serial killer or government scapegoat, but your presidents, musicians, artists, and writers
Art By Nicholas Allanach
Let's start with famous presidents. I thought this was going to be a landslide victory for John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the US of A. But, no, he won by only one vote. Oh, that's good, I've just looked on the White House website’s history of presidents and below ‘Presidents’ is ‘First Ladies.’ Well, JFK certainly had a few ladies under him but that didn't seem to bump up the corset-wearing, Benzedrine addict in the peck(er)ing order. JFK received seven votes. Tied second came Lincoln, Clinton, GW Bush, Nixon, and Washington, all with six votes each. Well, I'll be hogtied and left to rot in a barrel of crackers. I can see why GW gets in – short memories. Clinton was trailing behind the others but joined them with a last-minute spurt. Lincoln and Washington got in for historical reasons. But Nixon? Actually, I'd vote for Nixon. It's that face. He looks like Droopy on bad acid, suffering a bad case of dysentery. Roosevelt also had six votes but none of my friends said which Roosevelt they meant, so I took it as a split decision. Four votes went to Ronald Reagan, I think the votes came from friends who share a similar disability – they are actors. A single vote went to Martin van Buren. On the White House website, for a minute, while researching, I thought I'd backpaged to JFK as I misread the opening lines of the Van Buren biography as ‘only 6 inches tall, but trim and erect’ – the vote came from a friend of mine who is a Seinfeld addict. Warren Harding, Zachary Taylor, and William Harrison also garnered a vote each. Us Brits know quite a bit about your presidents, but to win it you either had to have been sexed up, worn silly hats, had wooden teeth, or lied and cheated a lot – a sort of cross between Warren Beatty and Pinocchio.
On to music. No surprise here – Bob Dylan was the easy winner with three times more votes than his nearest rivals. I checked the demographic of my friends – the ages range from twenty to late fifties, with a cluster in their thirties. Dylan got an equal spread throughout the age groups, so a worthy winner. Tied second came the strange bedfellows of Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen, and Aaron Copland (well, variant spellings of that name and I hope they didn't mean Stewart Copeland). David Byrne, Britney Spears, Eminem, Lou Reed, Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, and Leonard Bernstein all received two votes. So, pop was in the ascendancy, with a little jazz, and a smattering of classical. But no Elvis or Little Richard. No Smokey Robinson or Al Green. And, more shockingly, no Patti Smith, Billie Holliday, Janis Joplin, or Aretha Franklin – and I'd say over 50% of those surveyed were women. And no boy bands or people from boy bands – Justin has to get his act together, I hear his next album’s called Bland On Bland.
Last time I was in LA, I bought a T-shirt from the Museum of Contemporary Art emblazoned with the logo ‘a lot of art is boring.’ I agree with this to some extent, but I still have favourite artists, and many of them are American. We are obviously big fans of the two most important art movements to come out of the USA – Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. It was a close run thing between Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. Andy scraping home by the static of his wig by two votes. A long way behind these two were Mark Rothko and Ray Lichtenstein with five votes each. Tying with O'Keefe, De Kooning, and Jeff Koons were Walt Disney and Matt Groening – this either shows my friends could not think of a third American artist or, as I believe, the cartoon (as seen in Pop Art) is a truly American art form.
And, finally, writers. Ooh, tricky. But in first place, by the seat of his Levi’s, is another Benzedrine addict – Jack Kerouac. JD Salinger was second, followed by Arthur Miller (bloody luvvies again), Hunter S. Thompson, James Ellroy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and – hurrah – Henry James. A good balance of pre- and post-1945 writers. There was, thank god, only one vote for Dan Brown (you know who you are), and a good selection of women writers – Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Annie Proulx, Donna Tartt, Edith Wharton, Harper Lee, and Truman Capote. I think Kerouac and Salinger came out on top because they are the first American authors we read as impressionable teenagers. I consider Bellow, Roth, and Updike the most influential trio of contemporary American writers, yet they received only one vote each. No votes for Mailer or Algren. None for Pynchon or Gaddis. None for Carver or Ford. None for Ginsberg or Frost. None for Twain or Poe.
My list – Presidents: JFK, Nixon, and Jefferson (long story). Musicians: Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and Captain Beefheart. Artists: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Man Ray. Writers: William Burroughs, Robert Creeley, and Donald Barthelme.
So, how do the Brits see America? Well, JFK is president; Bob Dylan is strumming his guitar; Andy Warhol is in the Factory; and Jack Kerouac is on the road somewhere between New York and California. It’s strange that we think of America as locked in this era – roughly 1957-1963 – the era of tailfins, the beginnings of the space race, and the start of the Vietnam war.
And here is the sentence I promised you last week. Our survey said America is a big, big, big, big, big, big, enormous, wide, selfish, juvenile, aggressive, diverse, indescribable, brash, colourful, manic, crazy, overbearing, self-centred, dangerous, mythic country. I think I'd go along with that.
Click here to read previous Pond Scum columns.-------------------------------------
Steve Finbow writes out of London, England. He has worked for the poet Allen Ginsberg, the writer Victor Bockris, and the artist Richard Long. His fiction, essays, and short plays appear, or will appear, in Eyeshot, 3am Magazine, Yankee Pot Roast, uber, Locus Novus, InkPot, Dicey Brown, The Guardian Online, and Pindeldyboz. He is currently working on a novel (Yeah, right). He can be contacted here.
© 2005 Me Three
