IT'S UNFORTUNATE that writers who heard about Jason Shinder's death last Friday, and googled his name for information, came up first with a 2006 post from this blog. Hardly what they wanted. (See www.kingwenclas.blogspot.com/2006/03/establishment-pet-poet-of-year-jason.html) Unfortunate for Mr. Shinder: the cost of being on the wrong side of literary history.
**********************************************
With the passing of both Liam Rector and Jason Shinder in recent months-- members of the most infamous Insider writers nest, at Bennington-- I'd guess the literary gods are temporarily appeased. It'd make a good time for the literary establishment to make peace. Their position won't improve. I'm in "exile" in Detroit. The literary Resistance is momentarily disunified, but this will change. Movements, like the patterns of life, proceed in up and down waves. Blackballing me hasn't worked. My message is getting out there, as the google searches done by folks this weekend indicate.
I should add that I have a line-up of strong posts ready to go up on this blog, as well as my other blogs, and a couple new blogs yet to follow. The literary establishment hasn't seen anything. Peace or war?-- it's your choice.
(More on Jason Shinder at www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Buy American Pop Lit at Barnes & Noble
Buy American Pop Lit at Amazon
Tweets
Fun Stuff
- A Tale of Two Literary Worlds
- Literary Nomenklatura
- The Literary Story Examined
- American Literary Apparatchiks
- The Believer ULA Essay Part I
- The Believer ULA Essay Part II
- The Believer ULA Essay Part III
- The Believer ULA Essay Part IV
- End of the Pods
- The Timid Generation
- Three Question Archive
- Jonathan Lethem and Postmodernism
- What Kind of Revolution Is It?
Blog Archive
-
▼
2008
(228)
-
▼
May
(36)
- Censorship?
- A PEN Quote
- The Dishonesty Brigade
- New Links
- Peace Gesture
- The PEN Board
- Miscalculation
- Two Undergrounds
- A Crazy Tale
- "Burning Mansions"
- Letter to PEN
- The Island
- Poem
- Points of Agreement?
- Defenders of Corruption
- New York Oz: The Reality
- Backwards
- Who's Harland?
- Victory Denied?
- More Writing!
- About Teaching
- The Monolith
- Tactic
- Smugness
- Is It True?
- Montezuma
- The Pod Way
- The Obligation of Students
- Why Change?
- Pathetically Bad
- "Star Spangled Poet II"
- To the Demi-Puppets
- This Blog
- The Gessen Problem
- Breaking the Stranglehold
- New York Media S.O.S.
-
▼
May
(36)
Links
- New Pop Lit
- Fast Pop Lit
- NPL News
- New Pop Lit's Open Mic
- New Pop Lit Extra
- American Pop Lit
- Happy America Lit
- The Literary Circus
- Crime City Blog
- Detroit Literary
- Election Follies 2012
- Literary Mystery
- Blitz Book Review
- El Cid Project
- Philly Zeen
- Populist America
- Philly Literary
- Happy Writing
- Petition to PEN
- ULA
- ULA Poetry and Fiction
- ULA Review
- ULA Press
- Wred
- How Publishing Is Rigged
- Dust Bowl Poetry
- Books Inq
- New Yorker Commas
- Random Rae
- American Dissident
- Blue Collar Holler
- Idiom Poets
- Piggy Plutocrats
- A Practical Policy
- Remnants
- Litkicks
- Complete Review
- Emerging Writers
- Germ Books
- Fran
- Salome
- Syntax
- First Line
- You Are Here
- Josh Saitz
- Sunday Salon
About Me
- King Wenclas
- The ultimate literary outlaw. "I could be bounded in a nutshell and call myself a king of infinite space." -William Shakespeare
7 comments:
Are you actually gloating about the deaths of writers you don't like? And in some way you believe this is benefitting literature?
I think it's fortunate that this is happening, as all of this exposes you for the rude, bitter, probably jealous person that you are.
As I started to read this post, I thought it might lead to some kind of acknowledgment or condolence wish about the death of a human being, albeit one whose work you did not like. But instead you showed yourself to be a hateful and troubled person.
But I'm only going to do as Jason would, and wish you peace and happiness.
Sorry to offend your sensibilities.
My attitude toward death-- including my own-- is akin to that of John Garfield at the end of "Body and Soul" when he says, "Everybody dies."
(Or, I'm surprised I'm still around, that I've lived as long as I have.)
Do Shinder and Rector suddenly become great poets now that they're dead? They were improperly lauded when alive-- this continues.
(Rector, by the way, is the character who turned me into a literary activist by publicly destroying my review zeen-- at Bennington-- because it documented corruption in the literary world.)
The bitterness seems to be coming from you-- because I don't genuflect to the memory of Jason Shinder as a poet.
I'll give him his props as an opponent.
p.s. I have to append another short comment, about how "wishing" so well displays the bourgeois mentality. The standard of value isn't truth, or ethics-- but manners.
An establishment poet can be the phoniest a-hole around; completely closed-minded; co-opting underground writers; interested only in maintaining or expanding his position, his power, and his turf.
But if he displays the right manners! Everything then becomes fine. Peace and love, everyone.
This is what I was criticizing about the Susan Nagel. The royals had manners; they kissed hands; they wished all peace and happiness. REALITY seldom concerned them.
It's the same attitude about Mr. Moody. He could do all kinds of corrupt things-- screwing struggling writers in the process-- but it's the whistle blower who's never forgiven. Why? Because to expose such a person is evidence of bad manners! Which for today's literary writers seems to be all that counts.
Phoniness across the board.
THAT's what you'll never get from me or from this blog. I'm not going to pretend to attitudes I don't have. No superficial genuflecting for this dog, sorry.
There's already enough folks in the lit world playing that game.
All right, you don't like his poetry. And he works in academia. And he held an event you weren't invited to. And I guess his friend ripped up your zine. This makes his death good news for the literary gods? People who liked him personally Googling him and finding you insulting him, this is a step forward for literature?
Oh snot.
No, my campaign is about radically changing literature, from top to bottom. That's what I'm after. In memory of Mr. Shinder, I halted posting for two days, and posted a statement of regret that my post appeared at google.
But I truly believe that literature has to change-- that my problem with Mr. Shinder went far beyond his merely holding an event. He represented everything wrong with literature now. Its cronyism, its insularity, and the artistic bankruptcy of its art.
Literature has been stuck in a concrete block now for decades. The longer this continues, the more drastic the change, when it eventually comes-- and it will come-- will be. The cycles of the universe.
Yes, in this sense the literary gods were not pleased, but appeased.
I offered peace. Don't want it?
You'll not get it.
Your entire edifice is rotten and can be dismantled, through words and reason, piece by piece.
Watch.
Post a Comment