About the Public

A successful show is energizing!

We at the Underground Literary Alliance know we're on the right path with our writing. Wred Fright's Emus is as readable and fun a book as to be found anyplace-- and well-written at the same time. (The subtle quality of the writing creates the sense of exuberance.) The multiple viewpoints-- not done! according to writing programs-- gives the book a three-dimensional quality which further brings the characters and actions to life.

Even the ULA's more experimental writers, such as Jack Saunders, or Mark Sonnenfeld reading poetry in parks, use experiment as ways to further engage an audience-- not to alienate one.

Withdrawing from the public into cocoons of self or intellectualism is the tactic of establishment writers and establishment WANNABE writers like Tao Lin, the well-known single-minded careerist whose single-minded pursuit of literary career is matched by the single-minded, McSweeney's-taken-three-steps-further nature of his prose: robbed of persons, plot, characters and character; literature without the literature.

Worse is Mark Z. Danielewski's glossy-covered Only Revolutions, one of those goofy ideas zeensters have tried for years with half the page, each page, printed upside down, so the reader has to keep turning the book up and down for any glimmer of sense from the nonsensical cutesy-posturing narrative. Which is fine for a one-dollar zeen but not so cool for a hard-cover book selling for twenty-fine bucks. I figure about five people total, insane intellectuals all, have the leisure time to endlessly experiment with this game, and they all live on Fisher's Island.

Yet, the conglomerate behind this slick but useless product is spending a huge sum of money producing and marketing it.

How can one not prevail over these monopolistic clowns? They have overpriced experimental trickeries fit only for doorstops or to weigh down papers on coffee tables and we have Wred Fright and the Emus. A win for us all the way.

(Catch Wred Fright, Crazy Carl Robinson, and a stuffed Emus TONITE at Freebird Books in Brooklyn. Info at www.literaryrevolution.com)