NEW PURITANS
Were hardly short of names with new on the front. Theyre intended to suggest that an old idea has been revitalised, often alas only to the extent of putting new wine in old bottles. In recent decades weve had the New Age, the New Romantics, New Men, the New World Order, and the British New Lads and New Labour. And in only one sense is New Puritans a new tag, since there have been new puritans for decades, with or without capitalisation, for example as the name for a sexual backlash to AIDS in the USA in the eighties. But these British New Puritans are newer than any other new puritans. Its the name for an artistic movement founded by Nicholas Blincoe and Matt Thorne, whose founding philosophy appeared in an anthology last autumn, called with what you may feel is a touch of hubris All Hail the New Puritans. The rules were made explicit in a ten-point manifesto: writers must be dedicated to narrative, eschew poetic licence, aim at clarity, and have a moral purpose. In other words or at least the words of Nicholas Blincoe New Puritan fiction is fiction in its purest and most immediate form. The movement has come in for a fair amount of derision; in the nature of artistic movements that suddenly burst on the scene, its hard to be sure how long it will survive.
Like the Dogme film-makers, the New Puritans seem to be guided by the idea that because something is simpler in expression it is also purer in content.
[Independent on Sunday, Sept. 2000]
But instant movements tend to be unreliable, and the New Puritans were accused of being anti-literary and opportunistic.
[Guardian, May 2000]
http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-new1.htm
― bb, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 19:10 (nineteen years ago)
NEW PURITAN
The grotesque peasants stalk the land
And deep down inside you know everybody wants to like big companies
Bands send tapes to famous apes
Male slags, male slates, famous apes
[?] water cater now grim thoughts
The whole country is post-gramme
Echoes of the past
All hail the new puritan
Righteous maelstrom, cook one
And all hard-core fiends
Will die by me
And all decadent sins
Will reap discipline
New puritan
This is the grim reefer
The snap at the end of the straw
With a high grim quota
Your star karma, Jim
New puritan
New puritan
The conventional is now experimental
The experimental is now conventional
It's a dinosaur cackle
A pteradactyl cackle
In LA a drunk is sick on Gene Vincent's star on Hollywood Boulevard
Ha-ha ha-ha
Stripping takes off in Britain's black spots
The Kensington white rastas run for cabs
This I have seen
New puritan
In Britain the scream of electric pumps in a renovated pub
Your stomach swells up before you get drunk
The bars are full of male slags
At 10:35 they play "Send in the Clowns" once
Why don't you ask your local record dealer how many bribes he took today?
What do you mean "What's it mean? What's it mean?"?
"What's it mean? What's it mean?"
New puritan
New puritan
Hail the new puritan
Out of hovel, cum-coven, cum-oven
And all hard-core fiends
Will die by me
And all decadent sins
Will reap discipline
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan
New pur...it... an
New puritan...[?]
I curse the self-copulation
Of your lousy record collection
New puritan says "Coffee table LPs never breathe"
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan says...
[?]
New puritan
Discordian
New puritan
New puritan
New puritan
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 19:17 (nineteen years ago)