C.B. Murphy  .:. Essays

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What show did I see of Philip Guston’s work? It’s the prerogative of the amateur to neither care nor remember, however, I do remember not being particularly excited about his work. I saw it in Chicago and for some reason I thought he was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (where some of my friends still teach). Even if I got all my facts wrong (and who knows, he could have been a visiting artist there) he was solidly IN MY MIND in the school of Chicago Imagism which I still revere. This school includes Roger Brown, Jim Nutt and H. C. Westermann. Given that kind of company, artists unabashedly “pro-image”, Guston’s work seemed uninteresting. Sure I could see there were social critical themes underneath (why else all the Klansmen?) but they weren’t painted in a way that shouted at you (like Diego Rivera shouts “Marxism Good!”) nor were they interesting to me as images. I didn’t even like his signature “flesh rose” or whatever it was. So, I dismissed him. Wrong!

I’m surprised Googling “apocalyptic ennui” didn’t deliver much, just a few quirky blogs and song lyrics. Maybe that means it’s a really meaningful connection of the two words. I realized when writing my review of “Boys Adrift” that apocalyptic ennui is a significant part of my psychology and inevitably my politics at the moment. Growing up in the 60’s (fear or nuclear war) then switching to “hippie” fears (global cooling, nuclear war, the draft, American culture generally, unhealthy food and religion) was exhausting enough. I wasn’t ready to get on the next bandwagon: global warming, global capitalism, American culture–especially overseas, antibiotics in food leading to new killer bacteria, killer viruses like Ebola, terrorism at home and abroad, destruction of species, inequality of wealth–leading to revolutions, crash of the dollar, depletion of oil, ethanol destroying the food supplies, and the inevitable Islamic takeover of Europe–perhaps leading to an imminent crash of the West. Read More »

THE DEW BREAKER by Edwidge Danticat

It’s not that the writing is so bad, it’s not. It’s OK. But if a white male (without proper credentials via biography) wrote this, it would never have been published. Though ostensibly fiction, what seems inherent in the attraction of the book is the authenticity of the story. This is a person who’s “been there” not unlike the book A LONG WAY GONE by Ishmael Beah (which my son is reading now). Here’s the thing: one can’t suppress the sense that it is the STORY these people (or people close to them) have lived that makes us read on. These are tragic and dramatic stories. That does not mean, however, that this is necessarily “good writing” (in the same way Graham Greene is good writing, or Patricia Highsmith, both favorites of the moment).
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So finally I find this incredible writer. How did I find her, I’m not even sure now. Oh, I remember, I was looking into “literary thriller” lists on the net and her name came up. Since Hitchcock did her “Strangers on a Train” I thought it would be fun to read it, then see the movie. Read More »

Letter to the Editor, published in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 07-18-07

As a recovering hippie who reads The Wall Street Journal (apparently there are a few of us out here), I felt one perspective was missing from the Ted Nugent discussion (Letters, July 14).


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Betty White and the Alligator Girl

People who don’t know me well wonder why my art is dark. If they meet me socially they wonder why a “nice” fellow would paint such material. Once an African American woman, fresh from working with what they used to call “witch doctors” in Africa, walked through my studio and said, “I get this, this like African art, life and death shown all together.” Read More »

My experience with Robert Bly was decidedly mixed. On the one hand, I enjoyed (for a while) the whole classic “men’s movement” thing that became the butt of so many jokes on late night TV. What I experienced had all the classic components: the men in the forest, the drumming, the inevitable stories about bad relationships with dad and how that affected one’s masculinity. Read More »

Sometimes trying to be a friend of the earth feels like one of those one-sided relationships where you keep getting rejected but find one more reason to try again. Still, there’s probably a good reason that phrase—“conquering nature”—has fallen out of favor. Read More »

Question: If you try to locate and clarify your relationship to everyone in the known world with your name, and you link to them, might you be creating the equivalent of a wormhole from which there is no escape? And where is Philip Dick when you need him?

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Vonnegut, Borges, and Kafka…

THEY FIND YOU! (The Secret Committee of Writers: Vonnegut, Borges, and Kafka)

Don’t you just wish someday it would get easier?
It might go like this:
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