Did he “jump literature ahead a few years”? Certainly, this phase of his work constitutes one of the fiercest attacks ever launched against both the “psychological” and “irrationalist” modes of expression. There is a new freedom here which invites, at the very least, a new scheme of determinism. There is also a willing sense of responsibility and manliness such as we do not find among the current and endless repetitions of stale dada-ist re-discovery. There are guidelines here that will take us well into the two-thousands. He has indicated a process, perhaps even sketched out the handbook, by which we may go to “the end of love.” I love this boy, not yet out of his middle-age. He taught me how to breathe and he gave me a dungeon to roast my heart in and a view of the noble cartoon. But listen to him now, in the Notebooks, as he approaches his own doubt in the matter:
So it ends, my conversation with the song. Not so sweetly as it began, but still pleasantly unimportant. I almost tried to make a living with it. Deep down the genius plots his crooked revenge. Change all taste around and make this page an anthem of the change. I’d rather listen to something else…Consign this all to eccentricity. Affirm the mainstream, everyone.