Saturday, June 21, 2008

Irony

IT'S IRONIC that the self-proclaimed fans and defenders of the poster "Harland" are insistent the person be outed. To avoid this is why the individual vanished. Curious that I'm the one left protecting the person.

Take note, harland. Your anonymity was to protect against my presumed retribution against you. This assumption on your part was misguided. Attacking you isn't what I want, which to you should be obvious.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why wouldn't you want to attack him? Was he not a demi-puppet? You attacked him plenty before you decided you knew who he was.

Anonymous said...

I don't want him outed. I want to know what the letter is that falls in the center of his name. That won't out him. That'll signal, to me, to him, to everybody else, that you know precisely who he is. It won't out him at all. Won't come close to outing him. It's high odds that you'd guess the right letter, so a correct answer would indicate that you possess the information. An incorrect answer (or a failure to provide any answer) naturally would indicate the opposite.

In case you don't quite get how it works: say that there are fifteen letters, total, in "Harland's" first and last names. "Lothario Higgins." The correct answer would be the letter "o."

Karl Wenclas said...

??? Give me a break.
A point about Harland (who I can see sneering about my post). For all H's great intelligence-- whioh I don't doubt-- the person is locked into a straitjacket viewpoint about how art and business work. Therefore the many points made about Mr. Moody. Sorry, but from a p.r. viewpoint, that tactic was not only necessary, it worked-- it justified itself. (Along with the fact that the guy IS corrupt, of course.)

Anonymous said...

Amazing how the fearless King, exposer of all, sayer of all, gets all mealy-mouthed and mute whenever Harland comes up. What a phony King is! Just give us the fucking letter! Or leave yourself open to the charge that you are lying and covering your own ass here for some mysterious and probably corrupt reason...

Anonymous said...

King Wenclas 2.0: Polite, discreet, calm, carefully following the proscribed rules of literary etiquette. Jesus, next thing you'll know, he'll be wearing a top hat and a monocle!

King Wenclas said...

But, Harland can out himself anytime he wants!
I've put a plethora of clues out there. I can't help it, anonymous, if you're a friggin' idiot.
(p.s. I'm not following your "rules" of literary etiquette so much as my own rules of integrity. Also, I hope to make peace with the individual. Lacking that, then we'll see.)

King Wenclas said...

I wonder why a "signal" is needed so badly?
I've sent one privately. . . .

Anonymous said...

A public statement on your private attacks on a commenter would be in line with your professed philosophy of "openness." Right now you're acting like the CIA about this. "Nothing to see here! Move on!"

Harland said...

*Yawn*

Just needed to take a little nap!

I miss anything?

King Wenclas said...

Well now, you've fully outed yourself to me, H, wiping out any doubt I may have had.
Where did my magnaminity get me?
I could have dragged your corpse behind my chariot around the walls of the literary establishment again and again.
To readers who don't know what's happening:
I sent a friendly e-mail yesterday to this person. This post here is the only response.
Is your personal hostility that great, "Harland"? What's the motivation? Don't you think this is something we should resolve, or try to resolve, in private?
You're still being dishonest-- to me and to yourself.
Hold off awhile. Don't blunder. I'm sending you another e-mail.

Anonymous said...

If this post is Harland's only response, how do you know it's him?

This is really pathetic, King. You pride yourself on breaking down doors and taking names, and now suddenly, gosh, you're being so awfully decent to this guy.

Who here thinks King's just wailing and gnashing his teeth, trying desperately to figure out who this guy is? After all, it means King's managed to avoid addressing his actual arguments

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of a time, maybe a year ago, when King was convinced some poster was Stephen Elliott, dragged his name through the mud, and...oops, it wasn't him.

Harland said...

King, I didn't get any emails. I wasn't driven away. I just took a little break, like I said I would. I got bored and so I started lurking and I heard all about how you'd driven me off your blog and I thought "My! How presumptuous of the King!" and then I heard all about how you'd discerned my identity and I said, "My! How clever the King is!" and then I waited for the King to drag my corpse, etc., but he didn't and claimed -- this, the man who intimated that I'd be executed when the Real Revolution arrived -- to be the conciliatory soul of discretion, and I said, "My! The King's just blowing smoke out his ass! For a change!"

New readers may wish to know our story so far. (Ahem...)

King believes in a literary conspiracy. What evidence is there of a literary conspiracy? (a) He is not published, (b) his friends/associates are not published, and (c) neither he nor his friends/associates, who made their "reputations" disrupting literary events and antagonizing people who'd never done anything to them, are ever invited to participate in the greater literary discussion (panels, boards, reviews, etc). Not only that, but when their self-published books appear, the literary apparatus does not review them. Further, it seems that only published writers are selected to teach in creative writing programs. And, as icing on the cake, if the King cherry-picks a dozen writers who went to elite private colleges or elite creative writing programs, god damn if it doesn't turn out that twelve of that dozen didn't go to elite private colleges and/or elite creative writing programs! Seen enough?

There's more. There's an organization known as PEN. It's mandate, primarily, is to assert the human rights of writers, journalists, and authors around the globe, many of whom live in dangerously oppressive societies in the developing world. The King points out that in defending and advocating for such rights, PEN has forgotten about an entire, homegrown group of the oppressed -- the writers who, like himself, are passed on by publishers! Tens of thousands of people who want to publish books yet who are ignored in favor of the sworn-to-secrecy members of...the conspiracy.

Why does the conspiracy exist? Well, the King's sort of writer doesn't traffic in an interest in language, a gift for the vernacular that's girded by mastery of conventional grammar, syntax, punctuation, etc. The King's sort of writer doesn't care much for formal education or for thinking too hard about this or that, including his/her own ideas: why draw on some dessicated intellectual approach to thinking when Bill O'Reilly's out there, just reacting away? The King's sort of writer believes in writing the truth: the People's truth. It's the truth of working with your hands, the truth of walking down a dirty street in an abandoned industrial city. It's the truth of saying "no" to the man, or not being able to say "no" because your terrible job at Wal-Mart just kicks your ass. It's the truth of drinking Olde English 800 and hammering out everything you know on a rusty old Remington Portable. You know the kind of truth I mean. The Truth truth. Great Truth. And the Conspiracy doesn't want the People to hear this.

Have you heard enough yet, folks? The truth is out there.

Anonymous said...

All this talk about "elite" colleges and "the class system" is very silly. You make it sound like we live in an 1890s guilded age. I went to one of those schools you've been bashing, and my parents were middle-middle income. My freshman year roommate... his father had a lawn-cutting business... and by no means were we the exception. Because of their endowments and financial aid, it was easier for us to afford than our respective state universities. How did we get in? No conspiracy. Achievement, of which you seem fairly contemptuous.

If you're looking for an organization to represent unpublished authors, or self-published authors, you might consider joining the National Writers Union, or becoming an active member. They could use more energetic advocates.

Anonymous said...

but then the King doesn't really want to work on behalf of writers, or for an organization like the NWU that could use his communication skills. he wants a post at an elite institution, and the imagined power and privilege that go with it. fantasies of "le droit de seigneur" abound in the king's mind.

King Wenclas said...

Others have documented how most of those who attend elite universities come from the upper strata of society. There was even an essay in an issue of N+1 about this. Those from the bottom half are a tiny percentage. (In fact, there was a USA Today article about this which I mentioned on this blog. You can search for it.)
Harland is caricaturing my arguments. Restating them to make them a straw man which can be knocked down. Very cute, but the reality of the literary system today is very different. Attending writing programs is NOT about learning how to write, but obtaining access to the system Period. Anyone who believes otherwise is wasting their money.
It's a system which enforces conformity.
Judging by the response I've been receiving on this blog, it also does a good job of brainwashing.
Re Harland's identity. I can point out which points I made drove her off. My e-mail to the real identity triggered the reappearance.