Saturday, March 14, 2009

"steady drip of intellectual menses"

A truly eye-popping phrase which cracked me up!

A short extract from "The Savage Detectives", this is one of the narrators talking about a poet's manifesto for "Mexican Actualist Avant-garde"(!) More when I am done with the book...

"I exert all the young poets, painters, and sculptors of Mexico, those who have yet to be tainted by the coffered gold of government sinecures, those who have yet to be corrupted by the crooked praise of official criticism and the applause of a crass and concupiscent public , those who have yet to lick the plates of the culinary celebrations of Enrique Gonzalez martinez , I exert all of them to make art with the steady drip of their intellectual menses. All those of good faith, all those who haven't crumbled in the sad, mephitic efflorescence of our nationalist media with its stink of pulquerias and the dying embers of fried food, all are exerted in the name of Mexican actualist avant-garde to come and fight alongside us in the resplendent ranks of the decouvert..."

the narrator says that "exert" might be a printer's error and wonders if he really meant exhort!