Praising Robert DeValle

The real prize when it comes to DeValle. It's what you can do for him.

Dear Connie, Richard and Robert and, Bad Boy of Literture, Eric Novak;

Greetings from sunny LA, where I sit in West Hollywood across from the Voodoo Room, in a Starbuck's, of course. Robert and I have enjoyed quite a few great conversations at the Starbucks at Fourth and Main in downtown Royal Oak; I try not to pester him too much as he digests his daily serving of New York Times and his weekly dollop of the Metro Times.

I believe it is Ezra Pound in his book, the ABCs of Reading, that best describes Robert, and I scoured the internet for the exact quote. Pound talks about meeting a man who works in a post office over dinner, a man who has attended to all the old conversations in poetry, who knows all the prosody and knows all the bright spots of literature now lost to the past, such as the magic moment known as the villanelle competition in Provence. Ezra was describing a man much like this Robert DeValle.

DeValle makes certain that many, many cultural manifestations hit his radar screen. You caught him walking his beat, patrolling his querencia, at the Hamtramck blowout. The blowout is easy to find. Everyone finds it. Robert goes to the roots of Detroit and our art scene. When the Scarab Club held its last beam signing (and crikies, I can't think of her name), the only member of Detroit's art journalism corp attending was Robert DeValle. He's got a Taoist approach to art journalism. Artists arise from nothing and in time return to obscurity. DeValle is hip to them among the nothingness fore and aft.

Okay, and here's the favor for me, and the REAL PRIZE when it comes to Robert. Robert has writing talent that is probably tantamount to Thomas Pynchon's, but it's not getting to the printing press. Is your InZero and Living for Sundance community strong enough to raise RD to his epiphany and breakthrough? To be Confuscian about it, here's the second Golden Rule: establish yourself by establishing others.

Robert was on the hunt at the now lost paradise of Oslo. He was attending Mare's extravaganza two summers ago, which I think was called "Free Mare", and he stopped for refreshments at the table of people from Living for Sundance. Everyone was happy to have RD at the table, a scenester prize. Send him press releases, but you'll do better to add him to your A list.

RD does some pretty impressive footwork, working the city for arts intelligence as hard as Weegee worked it for photos of true crime and violence. He knows all about you before he recieves your first press release.