Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Ready to Abdicate?

Our opponents' responses are usually weak, beside the point, or absent. Compared to three years ago, they're putting up less and less of a fight.

Like the French royalty circa 1789, they know their standing has no foundation; that they're lacking in force and ideas.

Back in those times you had Edmund Burke spluttering about 10,000 swords raised in Marie Antoinette's defense, so she could serve cake instead of bread. But the swords never were raised-- the aristocrats of storied hype and myth when nudged were discovered to be foppishly feeble-minded. They ran away.

It's the same with today's lit world. The biggest names are jokes: Franzen; Beller; Birkerts; Moody; et.al.-- passive, intellectually stunted, and inarticulate when taken away from long struggled hours trying to write at their desks. (It's why none will contend rhetorically in person or on-line with ULAers. It'd be a mismatch.) The Last Great Literary Aristocrat, George Plimpton, was at least brave enough to debate us. We shredded his arguments, but he at least knew how to raise his voice. (He reminded me when I met him of the old knight discussing things with Villon in R.L. Stevenson's "A Lodging for the Night.")

The noble fakes in rouge and powdered wigs had best have their carriages drawn up now at their palace gates, so they can flee with their baggage to refuge in London or some other faraway place. The assault of the rebels of the ULA is going to increase.

2 comments:

AddledWriter said...

>>Compared to three years ago, they're putting up less and less of a fight.

Maybe because writers write?

King Wenclas said...

RR, the problem with Mr. Birkerts is that he's a fraud.

Do you know that at the outset of this campaign-- before we were even founded, I wrote Birkerts (I believe Mr. Bassett did also) explaining what the zine movement was about, and how it harmonized with his professed views? He had written an essay for Esquire in 1999 lamenting the fact there were no undomesticated writers like Hemingway on the scene today. I pointed out that there in fact were. I sent him a copy of "The Match" and urged him to write about Fred Woodworth, a living embodiment of Birkerts's views. (As you know, Fred spends his spare time rescuing books discarded by libraries. "The Match" displays publication as a work of art.) We reached out to Sven Birkerts and asked for his help. It was not forthcoming. The guy is just too embedded into the current system. He's sold his integrity and his intellectual soul.