“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(“Do you want to say something about the Voice?” In a rather funny confrontation, Seth and I stared at each other for a few moments. My question of course grew out of the first installment of the story about us and Seth that was published earlier this week in the Village Voice. Our feelings about it ranged all the way from ridicule to a grudging understanding that Jim Poett had worked hard on the piece. We think the pictures are especially bad, yet could see why the Voice had chosen the ones they did.

(I suppose the two-part article marks the end of our involvement with the media, though this opinion may change. Not likely, though. We’re left feeling that it’s largely a waste of time, and fraught with a lack of understanding. It’s practically impossible, for example, to get free of the connotations of the worst elements of the whole field: the moment the subject comes up, we’re associated with all the history of mediumship in the most banal of terms. This fact is indicative of both Poett’s own inexperience, and the way association works generally. To have Jane’s work studied and respected for what it is, on its own, is evidently asking the impossible of most people. It appears that intuitively at least Jane has made the right decision, to concentrate upon the books; at least they offer something the way she wants it to be. Unfortunately, I suppose, this also means that we set ourselves outside the mainstream of activity in the field, and that our readership is likely to be pretty much confined to the “average” individual. The “authorities” aren’t going to pay any attention.)

This means of course that deeply felt hope must be sardonically examined, that deeply buried faith must be stated with parried thrusts, and to that extent the paper speaks for a concentrated portion of your population so that our Jim Poett, who is a poet at heart, must appear in the slightly worn cloak of the skeptic. He must show that for all of his youth he is world-weary, not easily taken in, that he is objective—and only then can he allow his creative abilities to flow.

Poett and the photographer, however, believe the same; only they regard “spookiness” and strangeness as highly commendable qualities that contrast with what they think of as the blandness of the common man.

Poett was quite taken with me (amused)—but the story is not earth-shaking, and for a time others have entered in ahead. The affair involved an education for Poett, as he struggled with many concepts, and as he struggled against portions of himself, for he wants to be a journalist even while he has no use for it at the same time.

(“This afternoon I was wondering how Jim Poett was making out—not when the article will be published [in the Village Voice], but what he thinks of what he’s doing.”)

[...] Instead, on Monday and Tuesday nights Jane and I were interviewed—on tape—by Jim Poett of the New York City Village Voice. [...]

[...] Jim Poett told us that the Voice will send a photographer up for pictures, so I’d figured we’d spend time worrying about that, too.

(Today we were visited —unannounced—by a young man named Jim Poett, who has been assigned to interview Jane for The Village Voice. [...]

(Jim Poett said that we would see the article before it’s printed, at our insistence; I’d find it strange indeed to cooperate with a venture that would end up taking us apart in ways we didn’t approve of. [...]

(After finishing the library material, Jane called The Village Voice on impulse, but ended up feeling she didn’t do well: She didn’t get to speak to Jim Poett, who was not there, or to his editor. [...]

[...] You both did wonder about the Silence Gallery affair, and decided not to mention it [to Jim Poett]. [...]

[...] And Tam was interviewed today by Jim Poett who is still tracking down witnesses relative to the article he’s doing on Seth and us for the Village Voice. [...]

(Jane’s poem is excellent, and concerns Jim Poett’s interview for the Village Voice.)