Monday, October 11, 2004

Fighting the Overdogs

The advance of underground writers threatens the monopoly of the snobs and exposes the falseness of their poses. They can pretend they're exciting, alternative, and cutting edge only if we the genuine article aren't around. The Overdogs therefore have to shut us out. The urgency of this for them hasn't changed since we arrived on the scene. But having lost every encounter with the ULA, whether public (CBGB's debate), in print (the flawed BELIEVER article), or behind-the-scenes (the Amazon fiasco), they've altered their tactics, believing if the ULA is cut off from attention and interaction we'll magically vanish. It's a plan that can't work-- the Internet makes it impossible. We have vehicles to carry our message and sell our goods. Refusing interaction, they allow us to argue against the System with impunity; to frame the terms of debate and win that debate. We're getting the ULA message into more and more heads. As we're the only writers discussing the future, the future belongs to us. The softsmug overconfident Overdogs will lose. That's what literary revolution is about!

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