Black Mountain Days

Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Memoir
Review: Michael Rumaker had the good fortune to attend legendary Black Mountain College, where he studied writing (among other things) with Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, among others, and grew as man and artist in the secluded Appalachian cove which the College called home. And here he recalls those years in wondrous and telling detail. The portraits he crafts of Olson and Creeley are surely among the best we are ever likely to have of these men at this crucial moment in their lives, and his account of the adventurous life which began to open for him at the College and beyond it, as he came to understand his own calling as writer and man, is suffused with warmth and the elegance of honest speech.

Rating:
Summary: Important witness, terrible stylist
Review: Rumaker's memoir of Black Mountain College's final years under Charles Olson is a valuable witness to the atmosphere there and the personality of Olson and several other notables who taught and attended this near legendary institution.

Nevertheless I was extremely disappointed by the author's writing style. For someone who studied under Olson, master stylist whose use of language in poetry was in many ways revolutionary, I expected something more polished. Instead, the prose meanders, the author repeats himself so frequently he has to start apologizing (by interjecting "as previously noted" or "as noted before"), and one comes away with the impression that the book was written very hastily. Even though I found the subject matter very interesting, I was simply astounded that such poor prose style could emerge from someone who worked with Olson or Creeley.

On a positive note, I should add that Rumaker, as a gay man, provides excellent insight into questions of gender relations and sexual attitudes prevalent at the time and among the participants at Black Mountain. Rumaker's portrait of Olson, although mostly adulatory, sometimes shows Olson as an impossible and unsympathetic character, intellectually coercive and authoritarian. So I enjoyed the honesty with which Rumaker seemed to present his experience, but on several occasions Rumaker remarks that the successful writer exaggerates -- even lies -- to make his art. I finished wondering what in the story was true and what artful or wishful thinking.