POSITIONING
The HTML Giant gang has positioned themselves for the short term. They've moved to the most status quo position on the literary game board. They're a defense of the system-as-is. They may be little more than a puppet-mouthpiece for lit's Billionaire Boys Club (that infamous troika) occasionally seen at places like Rumpus. As such, HTML Giant should drop the word "future" from their site. What they represent isn't the future, but business-as-usual, promoting the same moldy postmodern aesthetic posing of the lit-hipster crowd. A more apt word than "future" for them might be "static." Or, "stale." Or the phrase, "been done," with the possible addition, "too often." Or, "Literature's Dead End." Once you've put yourself into a corner there's nowhere to go.
I'm not running my mouth on this blog simply to bury Caesar. I'm creating an alternative to Caesar. First, an alternative literary philosophy. Second has to be an alternative literary art.
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It's heartening, in a way, to see HTML Giant post on their site an extremely partisan attack on myself and the ULA (which I'm no longer active with) by Tom Bissell which ran in The Believer seven years ago. Bissell interviewed not one ULA member before writing his piece. His interaction with us consisted of a few questions sent to a ULAer via email. Partly as a result, his essay was filled with inaccuracies, along with its objective misportraying us and cutting us down. No matter! It's adequate for HTML Giant's purposes. As I've implied, their objectivity is facade only. Whether they're aware of it or not, their blog represents a very skewed view of current American literature.
It's pleasing to see them honestly demonstrate their partisanship, the facade quickly dropped.
A reminder: I'm leery of Internet ghosts . . . remember the title of this site and its context. Or, to quote the Bard,
"--demi-puppets that by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make--"
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