Messaging

Where the literary underground stumbled during its “First Wave” from 2001 to 2007 is that we lost the messaging battle with our opponents. They defined what we were about. Their skewed view of the underground, our work and our goals, became the accepted narrative, even though the narrative was, at best, a caricature. And so we had radio hosts and magazine editors, having read anti-ULA propaganda, worrying publicly that we wanted to, or somehow could, exclude establishment writers. All we wanted and want is some small place among the smorgasboard of literature—or what should be a smorgasboard but instead has become a one item menu, the one item being a bowl of overcooked oatmeal.