BECK 1998 Prolapsed Modernity

8/9/2019 BECK 1998 Prolapsed Modernity

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PITOLAPSED ETROPOLIS:HE ENTROPIC EWJERSEY F WILLIAMCARLOSWILLIAMSAND

ROBERT MITHSON

John Beck

The Smithsonian Institute's Robert Smithson archive runs to ,or. i6.2linear eet of material. Smithson would no doubt have been pleased o learn \

precisely he amount of room his accumulated ile of papers, books andother remains

of a lifetime'swork

occupied n the Archives of AmericanArt, a lifetime reduced o a single measurement f spatial expansion. hearchive is, in effect, to use Smithson's own dialectical erminology, heultinrate non-site, eferriug as it does o the various sites of his works andcontaining races of those works but never reducible o them. And, againfollowing Smithson's wn preoccupations, he archive s also a monument, atestament o and a measure f an artistic practice rased y death.

For Smithson, the entire material world consisted of one vast archivewhich contained he history of its entropic degeneration o dust. Perversely,the earth preserves evidence of its own slow destruction, sedimentinginlormation layer upon layer as it continues o grind itself down intonothing. Smithson was more a gatherer han a builder, ascinated y thefiornrs his universal ollapse ook, a recorder of process, n archaeologist fbreakdown. He followed the logic of material as it spilled, ell, caved n,eroded, burst ts banks. This observation f the downward spiral of historyexposed by geology was not reserved solely for natural phenomena,horvever; Srnithson identified the same forces at work in society, necononrics nd in politics, orces nowhere more visible han in the mutatingspaces f the built environment, s pecially n the prolapsed peripheries fgreat cities.

The suburbs feed the seat of power, encircle t, protect it and enable t toprosper. Suburban space s essential et by definition secondary o thenretropolis t serves, ubsidiary, anked below, under. The industrial sitesarrd service reas on the periphery of the city pump their resources nto thecentre and receive he waste produced y the functioning of the centre. his,ol 'course, s also rue of the people who dwell on the periphery. nhabitantsol ' suburban space mainta in a d ivided sense f locat ion. The spheres frlorncstic rrd prol 'essional ife are zoned off frorn each other in the case of


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Prolup.sc,cl etropolis 241

the commutingmiddle lasses. nd or the suburban orking lass ccess othe centre s often vicarious r non-existent. roxirnityo cintres of urbanpowermay wellbe more emblematic f subservience r abandonment han

availability nd opportunity. The suburban space s transitional ndprovisional,ts uses nvariably efined y the metropolitan entre t serves.To dredge p the materials f the suburban ite s, hen, n many ways oexpose he stuff which uns he city, he opaque matterwhich he city,with /its mirrored, olished urfaces.eflects afely ackoutside ts precincts. i

To deal with the suburban s not, then, o escape rom ssues f urban 1power nto a parochial pace f merely ocal dimensions. he ocal, n its \specificity,s the stuff which he city, with its self-mytlrotogisedniversal- \ising discourse, xpels. he artist or writer who hails rom the suburbs \

occupies precarious ositionwith regard o the city. The city attracts \because t offers an escape rom the mundane xistence f bourgeoisprovincialife nto the globalvicinityo[ art. Yet he city, n its anonymityand tendency owards he abstraction f the ndividual. orecloses n thesubjectmatter whichgrounds rt in the particularities f a place.WilliamCarlos Williams nd Robert Smithson eed NervYork City as he site orthe reception f their work. as the place vhere rtistic ife takes place.Northern New Jersey s on the one hand evidence f the banali ty ofsuburban nd ndustrial ife, vi th ts unremarkabte, nonymous arkinglots,cheap ousing

nd industrial ites.On the other, he very activityofindustry, i th ts constant verturning f theearth, ts str ipmines, uarries,craters nd so on, reveals much onger istorywhichdwarfs he measureof human activity. his s the geological istoryof the earth, n elementalduration exposed y constant igging nd explosions. history apped yboth Williams n his long poem Pater.ron 1946-51) nd by Smitlrson nvarious art works and articles, but particularly n 'A Tour of theMonuments f Passaic, ew Jersey", irstpublishedn Artforum, ecember1967.1

Williams ived n Rutherford,ew Jersey. iswlrole i[e.moving etweenhis professional esponsibilitiess a doctor at home anclhis artiJtic ife n

New York City. Rutherfiord as he irst commuter own o serve New YorkCity and was nevitabty ependent pon the city for its population ndidentity.Randolph Bourne, lso rom New Jersey. aw ts inhabitants s"nomadic",so ied o the demands f the metropolis hat herewas no timefor "the cultivation f that ripening oveof surroundings hat gives ualityto a place, nd quality oo, o the ndividual ife".2

As the modernist-as-commuter, illiamsmaintained mbivatent ndoften contradictory ttitudes owards he small own and the city. While


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242 .hthnBtck

cleaving o the virtues of the Jeffersonian deal of small, self-governingcomnrunities. e could simultaneouslyail against he small-mindednessand claustrophobia hichoftenaccompanied mall own ite.And while hecityembodied he pluralistic, isceral odyof modernAmerica, t was alsothi site of terrible suffering rought about by the power of the samecorporate apitalismwhich made he modern urban spectacle ossible.Wiliiamsnever completely ame down on one side or the other and hisambivalenceis typicalof theconfl ic t ing |oya[ iesof theprogress ive | iberadisclainful f the small own; earful and)n'awe f what might come alongto replace t. '/

Williams'suburban nxiety n t!r/ face of New York is clear n his


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Prolapsed Menopolis 243

Smithson earned rom modernist iterature, rom Eliot, Pound andWilliams, ow historical onsciousnesss realised n form. What he earnedfrom Williams n particular was he power he local environment ad inshaping hat consciousness. he contours of the land itself, he materialforces f a place, re for Williams n no way separable rom the activitiesand thoughts of everyday ife. Smithson's ork is clearly marked by thisfundamental materialism, ight down to his insistence hat language s aform of matter, a substance. e saw his writing "more as material o puttogether han as a kind of analytical earchliglPt, laiming hat he wouldconstruct his articles n the same way he y>uftfconstruct his work:

The names f minerals nd he mineralshemselveso not difler romeachother, ecause t the bottom of both he,material nd he print s the beginningof an abysmal umber of fissures.Words and rocks contain a language hatfollows syntax f splitsand ruptures. ook at any word ong enough nd youwill see t open up into a series f faults, nto a terrain of particles achcontaining ts own void. This discomforting anguage f fragmentation ffersno easy estalt olution; he certainties f didactic iscourse rehurled nto theerosion f the poetic rinciple.s \

ln Paterson, Williams follows a letter from Pound, giving Williams anotherof his endless ists of essential eading, with a list of his own, drawn from the

files of Alexander Hamilton's Society for Useful Manufactures: a drillingrecord detailing the geological composition of Paterson down to 2,100 eet,at which point the search or good water was abandoned.6 hi s passage soflered as a geological esponse o Pound's nsistence n a grounding n theclassics, n excavated oetry of place which Srnithson knew and admired.T

What Williams and Smithson see n the towns of New Jersey s a museumof collapsing empire, or the remnants of a projected ndustrial Utopian polisthat was abandoned before t really got going. Williams points oui, and notwithout pathoq that Alexander

-Hamitton]on seeing the Passaic alls,

imagined Patersons the power source or American ndustrialcapitalism.

Washington at his first inauguralwore

a coat of Crow-black homespun wovenin Paterson

Paterson s seen y Williamsas evidence f anis ignored n the pursuit of wealth. n an

original [all, where he localessay concerned with the


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244 Jolm Bcck

beginnings f Anrericnn utture 1934),Williams rgues hat, as wealth"rJpr.r.,itativeol' a sort of squatter pirit" increascdn the new natiott, tsought eluge rom barbarous ndigenous ife in the cities,which became

havens f European alues nd forms.As a consequence, esources ere

tlrailed fronr tire surrounding ommunities, ending hem into declinebefore hey were trong nough o resist:

., Bv its centralization of money me n flocked nt o [the cities], eaving he already

, harclpressed nd often failing culture of immediate references till farther

behind. The srnall cities ancl esser ommunities . . began o waste more and

nrore . . The cities ha d at least population and a quickened pulse, bu t ingerting this . . . the cost wa s severe. t involved th e actual decay of the small

iommunity [which] was r primary cultural decay. t would seem as if the city

ha s as its very being the raising of the cultural level, as if it were in the verystream of th e great florv.Quite the opposite s true, unless he place of the city,

, os 1 sort of tuintable an d that only. be clearly realized . . Wealth meant, as t

, nleans odav. the control of movement, mobility, th e power to come and go at

\ will . . . l t was the reality of the small community which settled he territory in'.$efirst place, but from behind came the wave which blotted that out. And it

wtrs rh e iulture of immediacy, he active strain, which has left every relic of

value which survives odaY.e

In a clialogue etween mithson ndAlan Kaprow, ho himself aught nNew Jersey nd wasa leading igure n non-gallery rtof the 1960s, aprowwonders f the margin might be utilisedas a space or resistance,

an

alternative n the ringes f lifeand art . . . at the edges f cities, long asthighways ith their outcroppings f supermarkets nd shopping enters,entlless-lurnberyards,iscouirt ouses".l0 mithson'sesponse learly ffersa differept erspectiverom Williams'determinationo stay grounded:

l'nrso enrote rorn hatworld hat t seems ncannyo mewhen goout here;so not being irectlynvolvedn the ife here,t fascinates e, ecause'm sureof a clistalce iom it, and 'm all for fabricating smuch distance spossible. tseems ha t like o think and ook at those uburbs nd hose ringes, ut at thesame ime, 'm not interestedn living here. t's more of an aspect f time. t isthe uture the Martian andscape.ll

Williams sought the material for an American writing in the form of a

particular place and its particular history. Here he hoped to construct awriting which responded to and embodied actual forms of life. All

Ameriian artists. he wrote,"have to come from under and through a dead


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Prolupsul lt[etropoli.r 245

layer", hat s, he dead ayer of European ultural mports hat have eendumped nto American oil.Orrly hcn ctn he or slre get "the leet of hisunderstanding n the ground, isground, lc ground. he onlyground hat

he knows, hat which s under his eet . . lt is imperative hat we sirr& . .[into hel . . sullen, olcanicnevitabilityf rhe lat'e".12o this end, publicrecords, ocuments, ocal histories, eological eports. ersonal etters ndso on become a large part of the poem. The poem draws on archivalresources nd becomes tself the archivalmatrix which binds poem andplace as a material ite.The material sed o construct he poem s notbra\keted as "context" but is "discovered"as poetry by virtue of itsincl\ion in the poem. Fragments rom different historicat eriods, romdiffer\sources and on different opics replaced ideby side. he result sa form of'ar.chaeology,n unearthing f the materials hat make p a place.

Smithson s charaiteristiC-of-nranyrtistsworking n the 1960s nd 1970sin that he does not recognise strictseparation f labourbetween wo andthreedimensional ork, between isual nd written exts, etween reatedand ound elements, r between he "primary"artistic ractice nd criticaldiscourse. urthermore, he authority f the gallery s primary ite or thereception f the artwork s put seriouslynto question. mithson vas iondof talkingand writing about dialectical elationships, ut he nevcr oughtthe kind of synthesis hichwould bring o rest he contending spects fthe work. nstead, e are asked o read across isciplines nd across paces,both iteral, nstitutional nd conceptual. hile Smithson an n no waybedescribed s a marginal igure n the art world, his practicewas deliberatelyconceived s an assault n the hegemony f New York City as he EternalCity of Greenbergian odernism. ike Donald Judd and Dan Graham,Smithson hallengedhe ormalist rthodoxies f painterly bstraction otjust hrough isart practice ut from within he domain f the critical lite,the art journals. What artists ike Smithson rought o writing aboutcontemporary rt was a determinedly northodox eading [ art history,fiormsof writing unconcerned ith the conventions f acadenric rjournalistic rose and a proximity o the actual process f art makingclearly t odds with the mandarin ose f objectivity o often n evidence nwritingby professional ritics: Criticalboundaries end o isolate he artobject nto a metaphysical oid, independent rom external elationshipssuch s and, abor, nd class".l3

Williamsand Smithson hare many aspects n common with regard otheir responses o the New Jersey andscape, et their ambitions arenonetheless ery different. They are both concerrred ith the spatialdimension f time as t is revealed n the physical ualities f the terrain:


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246 Jolm Beck

they both adhere o a nraterialist esthetic hich esponds o texts nd sitesas stuffwitlra physical eft, giving t a velocity, weightwhichpulls t downto earth, which eaves ts mark as t impacts. he uses o which his materialis put, however, ight serve o mark a shift n the ambitions f avant-gardeprictice and the responsibility f the artist from modern o postmoderneras. For Williams, here s still an overarching omantic esire o achieveunity of form from the fragments f the poem hrough he figure of thesovereign go of an individual self,characterised y the primary rope ofman as city,- Paterson s the name of the man as wellas of the city, he ifeof the city s his ife, he orrent of the iverhis houghts.Williams omehowholds on |o the possibility f redeeming he environment hrough art, ofcleaning ff the filth of corruption by means of the purifyingsolvent ofpoetry. f only, he complains, he and were ertile. nstead, here s only

"a

sort of muck. of detritus", o workwith,

a pustular cum, decaY,choking

lifelessness':.that eaves he soil clogged after t,that glues he'Sandy ottom and blackens tones so thatthey have o be scoured hree imes when, because fatt itttractive brokenness, e take them up fo r garden uses.An acrid, revolt ing tench omes out of them, almost onernight say a granular stench fouls he mind.

l lorv to begin o find a shape to begin o begin again,turning the nside out: to f ind one phrase hat will

I.,#li:,;3;:,1:.lil-H,Tlergh' ?

For Smithson, on the other hand, there s no identification with the land-scape. no clesire o redeem it through art. He is suspicious of theantirroponrorplrism which holds Williams' work together. Instead, the

lapdscipe s usually presented s an alien place, isturbingly unfamiliar andunwelcoming, et flascinating n its strangeness. he smashed p terrain o[New Jersey, with its abandoned pits and slag heaps, provides evidence fslow universal collapse which no notion o[ transcendent elfhood canrecover. From this physical evidence Smithson sees analogies everywhere,between he earth and towns, architecture, rt, language: verything ollowsthe same entropic spiral o oblivion. Where Williams trawls ocal history asa form of constructive etrieval which resists he domination of nationalabstractiolrs vlrichhave overlaid hemselves pon the identities f the local


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Prolup.sed etropolis 247

people, mithson's xcavations nd ravelogues re ike he exptorations f astranger isiting he siteof some nknown atastrophe. iiliamsnsists nfindingbeauty n a degraded lace nd a degraded opulation ecause e sprepared

o identifywith that placeand hose people;Smithson ovesNewJersey ecause e s fascinated y the process f degradation tself.One sprogressive,ecuperative, umanistic; he other, ambivalent, ost-humanist,apocalyptic.

In 1939, he FederalWriters'Project f the Works Progress dministra-tion published, s part of the AmericanGuide Series, New ersey; Guicleto its Present nd Past. he book was co-sponsored y the Newark PublicLibrary and the New Jersey Guild Associates, f which Witliams was amember. n the oreword, he sponsors romise hat his willbe a "new kindof guide"which

leads o strange nd emote lades.t undertakes xcursionsnto history ndeconomics nd he arts.Afield, t'\detoursrom he main ravelledoads orunexpectedorays o spots hat scarcely ne ourist n a thousand ould indunaided placeshatareunknown ven o the motor-mindedesidentsf NewJersey. n a very real sense he book lifts up familiar, sun-baked stones o revealthe quiet ife beneath. ls

,,

Thismightserve san ntrodugtion o Patersotr,which tso ncludes istory,

economics nd the arts, a9,..6ell s geography, olklore,details of demo-graphic omposition, elp(ous fliliations,abour disputes nd buildings farchitectural nterest.../he atter part of the wpA guide might also beconsidered sa model or Smithson's Tour of the Monuments f Passaic",another uidewhich eads to strange nd.remote laces". he obsessivedocumentation f the WPA guide s best llustratecl y an example lromTour 7, from Morsemere o the Pennsylvania ine, passing hroughPaterson, hich s worthquoting t ength:

Ll-S 6overpasses tate (sec our 6) at 4.1 nt., ndclinrbshe vesterrrlopeof Hackensack Valley. l'he slightly rolling open country is sparsely ultivatett.Passaic River is bridged at 8.1 rn. , and US 46 turns sharply R.. continuingalong he west bank.At 9. nt., at a traffic circle, he route beconres emporary US 46.Right at the traffic circle is EAST PATERSON. 0.3 rn. (6 0 zrlt..4779 pop.). atown that has ts own borough government. ut is l i t t le more than an adjunctlo Paterson. A high wire fence separates he road front the trenrenclous lant ofthe NATIONAL PIECE DYE WORKS (L). On the bridge over Passaic iver.from which green cARRET MT. (R) is seen ising sharply above he snroky


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248 John Bcck

industrial alley. flyingsqua{ron of 5ffi dyers rossed rom Paterson n a

drenching lin rJuriug he great extile trikeof October, 933. hey weremet

by East Faterson poli.., sheriff's eputies, nd private guards. wo strikerswerewoun6e4 y gunfire. fter a 40-minute attle he dyers outed he police

and oined he Naiional PieceDye workers f East Paterson n a mass icketline.Anricable etations etween he cornpany nd ts employees ave btainedsince 934, hen union ontract as igned'Left along Market St . o 2lst Ave,; n 2lst Ave. o Jackson t.;R. on JacksonSt. o Grand St.: L. on Grand St.PATERSON, L5 nr. 84alt. , 138,513 op') ee PATERSOIO'poirtrs f irtreresr: arret Mountain Reservation, aterson rluseum, Passaic

Falls,Wright Aeronauticat orp. Ptant, FamilyShops textile actories), ndo t h e r s . l 6

The attention o pr..ir)*n of measurement nd encyclopaedic nventorycoupled vith historical nai,rative nd idiosyncratic bservation akes he ,WPA guide a curious nd fascinating ocument..-lts also notable or its

enrpha"sisn abour history nd ndustrial ites.Williams' aterson ertainly

seeks o emutate his compendious tyleof modulating ata and narrative.Smithson's our guides, ikewise, ffer similar shifts of tone and subjectmatter. vorking i Uotha parody f the guidebook tyle and an explorationof the rvay nformatio'n nd ^p.tience espond o and construct ocality'

The triiyelogue tyle hat Smithson dopts n"Monumentsof Passaic"

was irst use


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Prolapsed lvletopolis 249

the errain s flat and oaded with 'middle-income'housingdevelopments ithnames ike Royal Garden Estates, ollingKnolls Farm, ValleyView Acres,Splirlevel Manor, Babbling Brook Ranch-Estates. olony Vista Homes onand on they go, forming iny boxlikearrangements. ost of the houses repainted white,bu t many are painted etalpink, rostedmint, buttercup, udge,rose beige, ntique green, ape cod brown, ilac, and so on. The highwayscrisscross hrough he towns and become man-made eological etworks fconcrete. n fact, he entire andscape as a mineral resence.le

The names given to housing developments and paint colours are thefamiliar constructions of advertising companies, giving a kitsch lacquer ofpastoralism o what, in Smithson's view, are not so much organic forms asthey are mineral accretions. The names of things - rocks, colours, housingestates alien, unconnected rom their objects, onstituting a weird,esoteric i ic alternative niverse.Williams s always t pains o stressthe unity of and things as a way of grounding anguage. mithson'slanguage, also seen s material, s a material hich s more unhomely- unheimlich. quotidian s estranged rom us. Williamswants o pullthingsa more

. Smithson eems o suggest hat driving hem urther part sresponse, eflecting, s t does, he brokenness f the

ea$.'-smithson saw Tourof the Monuments"as a kind of appendixo. . .'Paterson.' lt comes out of that kind of New Jersey mbience whereeverything s chewed p. New Jersey ike a kind of destroyed alifornia,derelictCalifiornin".2omithson's rticle akes on the ronised ose of thecritic-tourist urveying he achievements f a ruined culture.Passaic sevidence f the acceleration f time in an industrialised conomywherebuilt structures re in the process f collapse ven while they are beingconstructed. is tone s flat, mimicking he documentary escription fancientmonuments. he pose f the anthropologist-historians maintainedby the stress n the writer's ntering nto alien erritory, ispassage rom heculture f New York nto he estranged ew Jersey interland. he ropeofthe embarking oyager s parodied y Smithson's limbaboard he number30 bus rom the Port Authority erminal.His guidebook o this unknownplace s not Baedeker ut the science iction novel Earthworks y BrianAldiss, dystopian ale of environmental isaster.

lf a culture eveals ts imageof itself hrough he monuments t erects ocommemorate ts achievements, wentieth-century merica has celebratedits ability to defile and nrutilate he environment nd to de-differentiatespace o an extraordinary egree. here s nothing n Smithson's ccountwhich ouldnot be seen n the outskirts f any argemodern ity. The artist


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250 John Bcck

is not appalled y the broken nvironment efore im,however;ndeed' t is

the abandonment nd sense f vacancy hichgtury him to it as evidencef

the universal emporal process. h; suburbs, Smithson writes'"exist

without a rationai;;uid *ithout the 'big events' f history"' There s

..no past just ;"[ put1.1 or a.future. Utopia minusa bottom, a placewhere he machin.t ut . idle,and the sun has urned o glass,-"ld a

place

where he Passaic oncrete Ptant 253 Riveroriry) does a gooq businessn

STONE, BITUMINOUS,SAND;and CEMENT". As he wandershrough

a parking ot, Smithson xperiences kind of banal everie s he structural

pattern f lot and own emerge:

That monumental parking lot divided the city in half, turningit into a. mirror

and a reflection - [ut ttre-mlrror kept changing places withthe reflection ' '

There wa s nothin g irtteresrilg r.u.n tttun[t about that flat monument'yet

itechoed p kind oi iti.trr idea of infinity; p.tliaps the'secrets

of the universe'are

il;,-.t i.Jestrian not o say reary''

In this ..sunnynebulosity" e ponders whether Passaic as eplacedome

as The Eternal City, eierting, as it does, he same attraction el twhen

visiting other "obsoiete civiltations": that is , the gratification negets

"frorn the collapse-of hese hings. he same xperience an be felt n sub-

urban architecturen what hey all he'slurbs"'' ' 'Smithson's cstatic ision oI industrial destruction may not share

williams' progressive iberal belief in the ernancipatory ower. fthe

in.,oginution, lr t that is not to say hat Smithson s politically.ndifferent'

His refusal o conhne aesthetic olu. within the pristine recinctsf the

gutt.ry and the cordon sanitaire of the picture frame suggests very

deliberate ng,,g.t.nt *i,tt the ideologicil structures whichgovern he

function of art within contemporary ulture. Critique beginswith the

materials nd sites f what s designated sart'

lvtost of the better artists prefer processes hat have not been idealized' or


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Prclapsecl etropolis ZSI

Architectshate steamshovels ecause he machines epresent he dirtyphysicalmess hat must be made n order to produce orm firom heirpristine esigns. heir deal orms are eally no ror. than heaps f earth. ts the "unfinished"aspect

hat fascinates mithson, rocess, ot the object;processes f "heavy construction" which "have ^ devastating ind oiprimordial grandeur, nd are in many ways more astonishinf han theinishedproduct be it a road or a building".The "city gives he illusionhat earth does not exist".23 he city provides clean urfu.. - polishedteel, hrome, glass, mooth oads, escarators, metropolis f reilectionsnd minimumabrasion. he desire here, s Smithson ayr, s to eliminatehe-earth, he primal material, ecause t is earth hat revials he beginningnd, most worryingly f all, he end.

NotesRobert Smithson, Robert Smithson:Collected Writings,ed., Jack Ftam (Berkeley:University f California ress, 996),68-24.

' Randolph Boutne, Th e SocialOrder n an American trwn", l9li), quorert y CaseyNefsonBlake,BelovedContntunity: he Cultural Criticisnr .[ Ranrlolph iurne. ,on lVyckBrooks, Waldo Frank and Leu'isMutnfurd Chapel lill: Universityof North CarolinaPress ,1990) ,15 .

Wifliam Carlos Williams, Wanted o Write a Poem, etl., Edith lleal (New york: NewDirccrions,9Z8). 9,

.Smithson,

Robert rnilfison, 00.Ibid. ,107.williamcarlos williams,Paterson Ne wyork: Ne w Direcrions, 963), 66.Smithson cturned o Rutherford o see Williams ometime uring 95g-9: .1guess hePaterson rea s where had a lot of my contacl virhquarries ntl ihink thot s sirmcwharembedded n my psyche. s a kid I used o go and prowlaround llthose uarries. nd ofcourse hey figure strongly n Paterson.When read he pocms was nicrested n that,cspeciallyhe one part n Paterson here t showed llthe sirata evels nderpatersrn.Sortof a proto-conceptual rt, you might say. Later on I wrote an article fttrArtforum onPassaic". ntcrview ith PaulCumminls, 972. ee mithson,Robert ntithson,ig4-S.Williams,Paterson, 1.Wilfiam

Carlos Williams,Th e

AmericanBackground". n Selecter!,ssa1,s New york:Ncw Directions, 969), 4?-8.Smithson, obert ntithson, 5.lbid.WilliamCarlos Williams"n the American rain l925J(NewYork:Ne w Directions, 956).213 nd225.

3 . Smithson,Robert nilfrson.70 .4. Wiffiams, aterson. 67 .5. Th e FederalWrilers'Project l'the Works Progress dminisrrationirr rh e State l'New

Jersey, ew ersey; Guide o its Present nd Past NervYork: Viking,1939).,.Sponsors.Forewords", ot paginated.

0..

2 .


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252 John Beck

1 6 l b i d 4 ? 5 6 .| ?. Snrithson. o0crlSnlilfison' '

1 8 . b i d ? .1 9 . b i d . , 8 .

20. lbid , 298.2 1 lb i d . , 2 1 .2 2 . b i d . , 0 l .2 3 . t b i d . , 0 l - 2 .

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BECK 1998 Prolapsed Modernity