The Primordial Swamp

OCCASIONALLY I drop onto one of the post-ULA underground forums out there, founded by ex-ULAers in the wake of the ULA’s literary rebellion. They’re a giant step backward, because they did away with that which was most crucial to the ULA’s noisemaking, the sense of an organized identity, a semi-cohesive unit confronting the established literary world with the stance of an outspoken equal. The literary underground today resembles a primordial swamp of thousands of random molecules bouncing about aimlessly, each going its own way, happy to exist at the lowest level of activity. The Rebellion was an attempt to climb out of the swamp. For a few years several of the molecules began moving as one in one direction. We believed that progress was possible. That it was necessary to escape from the swamp. We climbed briefly onto dry land before falling back into the aimless mess.