The Shocking Truth!

THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT THE NEW YORK LITERARY SCENE

I was reminded of this truth—for the umpteenth time—in the follow-up to NEW POP LIT’s revelations about the n+1 lit journal operation:

http://newpoplit.com/opinion/beyond-hypocrisy-the-n1-story/

I’ve been beating up that insulated crowd of “intellectuals” a little bit on twitter, simply to draw attention to our story. I paused to wonder if I would ever get any twitter response or byplay from them. (I did have some guy attacking me anonymously at one of my twitter accounts in advance of the story, but none too effectively.) It occurred to me that I’ll never get byplay from any of them—for the key reason. What’s that shocking reason?

They’re not very bright! I’ve yet to meet one well-hyped New York City “literary” writer who could think very fast on his-or-her feet. And I’ve met more than a few of them, even before the big 2001 debate between the Underground Literary Alliance and the Paris Review staff at CBGB’s. (An affair which was ridiculously one-sided.)

“The shocking truth” is a revelation which disgraced interviewer Ed Champion must’ve come to on more than one occasion. He talked to enough of them. I don’t know to what he attributed it—but the irritating truth led to an 11,000-word online blow-up from him and something akin to a nervous breakdown.

You see, he had bought beforehand the mythology that these are the nation’s best writers.

The question: what’s the reason? Why aren’t Approved literary writers very sharp?

It could be because of the slow and deliberate way they’re trained to write. (Think of a typically slow and excruciatingly long Jonathan Franzen novel.) Such writers end up thinking slow and deliberately.

Or it could be that most of them are trust funders who’ve never been challenged by life, were never required to move fast or think quickly.

Even from the best of them you find scantly a trace of wit in their conversations. Some of them can be humorous—Daniel Handler comes to mind—but it’s a warped, childish, frat boy kind of humor. As I depicted him in a satirical ebook novel (still available!), it’s the kind of humor which takes delight in pulling the wings off butterflies. Bludgeon-like humor. Which I take it didn’t go over very well recently at some swanky Insider Manhattan affair he was hosting!

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Rambling: The last n+1 individuals I met in person was in 2009 at the Philadelphia Free Library’s Book Fair, at which those very radical n+1 people—looking very preppyish—had a table. I think Marco Roth was one of them, along with a collection of staffers or interns who looked like they just got done modeling for either Vogue or GQ magazines. I was with Philly-based poet Frank D. Walsh, who thinks and speaks so fast, with puns and asides, it’s tough for the best of us to keep up with his wide-ranging conversation. We chatted with the n+1’ers, an impromptu debate, for ten or fifteen minutes.

It was like conversing with pets. You know: the slow stare. They know you’re saying something, but they can only look at you with abject stupidity.

I’m not exaggerating!

Strange Encounters Dept.

Both are now the subject of literary scandals. But the objective reader asks: Have Ed Champion and Tao Lin encountered each other in the past?

They have, at least online. Here’s an example from 2007:

http://www.edrants.com/mcsweeneys-sells-its-lifetime-subscribers-the-brooklyn-bridge/

Both take opposing sides on the question, of all things, of Dave Eggers. I enter the picture as well, toward the end of the discussion. Makes interesting reading in hindsight.

Ed Champion and Tao Lin: Double Standard?

I’m not a fan of either individual. Their styles of attack are different. Ed Champion goes after you with a mallet, Tao Lin, a stiletto. One is crude, the other subtle.

Still, the question has to be asked: Why are many literary insiders defending Tao Lin and not Ed Champion?

Is it because several publishing concerns have invested heavily in Tao Lin? I speak of Random House, Melville House, and the lit journal n+1. They’ll likely try to salvage the guy, if possible.


It’s curious that women writers, such as Sheila Heti, or Champion’s antagonist Emily Gould, are defending Tao Lin on twitter. Regarding Ed Champion, there’s been widespread agreement that he should be blackballed. Yet Ed Champion, to my knowledge, didn’t physically assault anybody. By all accounts, he had a good relationship with his girlfriend Sarah Weinman. He did write an insulting and crude review, and threatened a woman writer via twitter—threatened her not physically, but that he would publish nude photos of her. Bad enough—but Tao Lin and his fellow “Alt Lit” writer Stephen Tully Dierkes are accused of something more.

Champion has been tagged with the label of ambition—but who’s been more ambitious than Tao Lin?

Tao was one of the cool kids. Ed clearly was not. In the final analysis, do charm and glamour win out?

I have no answers regarding the two of them—am trying to figure out the mind of the established literary world, which still carries clout. I’ll say this: the problem may be that literary culture is centered in a single town. Which creates a hive mindset; in which nonconforming individuals are continually ostracized, and the everpresent thought is: Who’s In and Who’s Out?

(Read more about his issue at http://newpoplitinteractive.wordpress.com/)

NEW POP LIT is the better alternative.

The Art of Propaganda

Is it madness to obsess over the Tom Bissell essay on the ULA?

Yes and no. Yes, in that the ULA campaign was pure madness from its very beginning. If you want to change anything in this world, it involves a level of madness.

No, in that when you examine an object from all sides, break it down like a watch into its parts and put it together again, you begin to understand how the thing operates—which also gains you understanding of the mind of the object’s creator.

Bissell’s essay, for instance, is a collection of dishonest statements and presentations surrounded by empty assertions. Yet journalists bought this presentation.

I have a fictional character in my new satirical ebook named Mr. Empathy. He’s based loosely on Bissell. In the sole chapter he’s in, Mr. Empathy describes his propaganda techniques to “Boss Eggers,” a fictional character based loosely on Dave Eggers.

How did I learn Bissell’s techniques? When I reread the essay, I was struck by the disconnect between Tom Bissell’s presentation of the ULA, and the reality. I was well placed to know the reality, having founded, with a few others, the organization, and been with it throughout its history. I know the entity “ULA” as no one like Tom Bissell could possibly know it. In the essay Bissell presents distortion after distortion AS IF these distortions are reality.

The distortions then become exaggerated by others. For instance, in the ULA essay Bissell says that George Plimpton had gone into his debate with the ULA “with high hopes and fellow feeling but grew swiftly disgusted” by what the ULA was about. First, Plimpton had corresponded with me for several years, had been a reader of my 90’s zeen, and well knew what I and the ULA were about. Second, at the debate everyone had a great time. We left on good terms. Ask anyone who was there—including the CBGB’s bartenders. Plimpton’s purported disgust had to have come later.

Bissell’s distorted, ill-informed remark is then distorted further by others, such as Ed Champion-- “Bat Segundo”—who in his interview with Tom Bissell this year presents Plimpton as having invited us to an event (we invited him to ours) and then been treated rudely—when in reality we treated the old dog with utmost respect. Those who heard the Segundo interview will likely distort events further.

Slippage between truth and presentation.

Bissell’s distortions have been accepted by the literary world as a true narrative, AS the reality. Again, the same question: Why have intelligent journalists and writers bought the false presentation?

The essay becomes a Rosetta Stone for understanding the entire mainstream media. Bissell is an integral part of that media. In no way does he stand outside it. He’s embedded himself within it. His distortions then aren’t simply a conscious attempt to smear the ULA—though that’s part of it. He’s channeling the literary world’s herd mind; expressing that mind; to do this, acting not like objective commentator, so much as a ventriloquist’s dummy. This is why the essay receives unquestioning acceptance by its Insider audience. That audience, through its unconscious wishes, wrote that essay. Bissell is giving the audience exactly what they already believe about the ULA—or about writers like those in the ULA. He’s expressing what they want to read.

Case in point is the unfair slam against underground writer Urban Hermitt. Bissell takes an excerpt of Hermitt’s writing out of context, then bolsters his presentation with an excerpted comment by myself, adds a few snarky words—and his audience applauds because he’s cutting down a writer who ostensibly doesn’t belong; who presumptively doesn’t belong; who couldn’t possibly be a good writer. (Urban Hermitt in fact is a terrific writer, though one who, yes, colors outside the acceptable lines.) One of the reviewers, Maria Bustillos, literally applauded in her review of the Bissell book at this point. The everpresent question: Why?

Bissell wasn’t giving her the watch—the object being examined—with his essay on the ULA. He wasn’t giving Maria Bustillos a bad two-dimensional photograph of the watch. He gave her a scribbled sketch of a distant glance of the watch. For Bustillos and others, this faked glimpse was all that was required for her approval, and more than approval, enthusiastic commendation. A mere fragment of reality thrown into a mix of dishonesty and fakery. It’s the essence of propaganda to connect with the herd mind, with the presumptions, premises, and prejudices of that mind, to stimulate the preconceptions in a happy way so that they know that their mind, their beliefs, their herd, all the totality of their world is well and fine, so the herd continues along untroubled not thinking about anything.

(Upcoming: a note about the physics of propaganda.)

Deconstructing Falsehood

THE BAT SEGUNDO TOM BISSELL INTERVIEW

Does the truth matter?

What can you do with a journalist, as in my recent exchange, who's helped smear a populist writers group, who refuses to examine the truth of the matter, and instead blindly clings to a distorted version?

"Don't bother me with the truth" is the attitude.

There's a point at which a false narrative becomes truth, simply due to the narrative's widespread acceptance.

It may be that Tom Bissell himself has accepted his own distortions, and the rationalizations for the distortions.

Listen to this interview, to the section referring to the Underground Literary Alliance (begins minute 26 or so). The discussion between Tom Bissell and Ed Champion, on Champions "Bat Segundo" show, is a contest to see how many lies can be crammed into a five minute time period.

http://www.edrants.com/the-bat-segundo-show-tom-bissell-part-two/

Tom Bissell speaks of his "attempt to take them seriously"; "to extend them some empathy when no one would."

These statements are untrue on a number of fronts.

First, Tom Bissell wrote his essay when the ULA was being covered by media across the nation and in other parts of the world. There'd been the numerous write-ups in "Page Six"; countless on-line stories in places like MobyLives and the Alternet; feature articles in alternative papers like the Boston Phoenix and Philadelphia Weekly, including a big article in Village Voice written by Bissell's current boss, Hillary Frey. (Mainstream media is a small world.) Also major write-ups in Soma and the Brown Daily Herald. At the same time The Believer essay came out, the ULA was the subject of feature articles in Black Book magazine (by Bruno Maddox) and the Glasgow Herald (by Aaron Hicklin).

But today, Tom says only he dared cover us! Only he cared, I guess.

Tom Bissell, then, is lying, not just to Ed Champion and the Bat Segundo audience. He's also lying to himself.

Second, Bissell's statements in the interview about his "empathy" ignore the context within which his essay was written. It was commisioned by The Believer, a Dave Eggers flagship, at a time Eggers was engulfed in an intense feud with the Underground Literary Alliance. How can this context be ignored? Bissell acts like he brought forth his essay out of the blue, purely from good intentions, and presented it, all by himself, to the world.

In the Bat Segundo interview, Bissell claims that he wanted to "entertain the possibility that some of the complaints were true." Yet he never looked into our major complaints, in which we documented instances of corruption in the literary world. In the Believer essay, Bissell finessed these matters. He surely didn't address them head-on or take them seriously.

On his part, Ed Champion's questions to Bissell border on the slanderous. I see what he's doing-- trying to be agreeable to his subject to get him to talk-- but in so doing, Ed throws the ULA completely under the bus, while also showing he doesn't know what he's talking about. (Or, his source is the widespread false narrative about us.)

For instance, Ed says, "George Plimpton of course makes this effort to invite them in, and of course they behave boorishly. . . ."

"Of course." Really, Ed? What's your source? You weren't there, unless you were hiding under a table.

The truth is that we invited George Plimpton to debate us. It was our event, not his. We had a contentiously exciting debate, then both teams sat down and had beers together. We parted amicably.

This is the TRUTH of what happened, not any after-the-fact distorted false narrative.

Ed Champion talks of "a duty to invite them in," "to go through the pain of an insulting boor," "even if they shit in our face." He says "go ahead and spit in our face," as if we ever did this. Many of his listeners will believe we did this. This is how false narratives are created. (The added irony is that Ed has often attacked me publicly on-line, while I've attempted to be civil in my dealings with him.)

No one, incidentally, ever invited us in! What a falsehood. All attention we received, from a closed and cronyistic literary world, we worked for. We did, yes, crash a few events on our own, with bought tickets some times but no gilt-edged invites. We asked embarrassing questions-- all that was ever required to get us thrown out.

Bissell, for his part, plays the injured party, and tells Ed Champion in aggrieved fashion, "you can't negotiate with someone who's going to crap in the room."

What does he mean by this? That I've stood up for myself when no one would? That the ULA's writers asked to be treated as equals?

Since what angered the literary establishment, including Dave Eggers, most of all were our exposes of corruption involving some of the biggest names in the lit-biz-- why doesn't Bissell say this? It's highly misleading to attribute the hostility we generated simply to "boorishness" or "bad behavior." Though I guess speaking about things one ought not to speak about is considered bad behavior by the In crowd.

In the Bat Segundo interview, as in his reprinted Believer essay, we still see Tom Bissell pitching his false narrative about the Underground Literary Alliance.

(Feedback from the parties involved is welcomed.)

Other Thoughts

YET ANOTHER ASIDE

I finally listened to the Bat Segundo interview with Tom Bissell. I have to give Ed Champion a grudging nod for pressing that cut-rate Eggers wannabe on the ULA and the current stagnant literary scene, which the Underground Literary Alliance unsuccessfully sought to change. The interview was interesting to me for a couple of reasons.

I noted Bissell’s innate superiority complex. He actually believes he was doing us a favor by trashing us in the essay—and maybe he was, because the prevalent view was to give us no notice whatsoever. Most of that crowd would rather have kicked us into the gutter. Tom Bissell by contrast threw us a few pennies-- “here, you peasants”—and thought he was being generous. Forget all the distortions in the essay, Tom. “Classocide.” We should be thanking you. Do I exaggerate? Slightly—but notice that the tone is to treat us as the Other-- “from that social milieu”—and not in any way approaching equals. His phrasing accepts, contrary to his misleading essay, the hierarchical power relationships that do exist in the literary world, of which Ed seeks to give his audience a glimpse. Tom Bissell states that I’d be impossible “to negotiate with,” because I’d “never be satisfied,” whatever that means. That I’d expect to be treated not as a hat-in-hand beggar, but an equal? That’s not how that world operates. “Negotiate.”

Bissell goes on to claim that one could “negotiate” with others of “that” milieu. Yet no one negotiated with the ULA after I broke with the team. An alternative outsiders group was created by former ULAers expecting to be accepted by the lit scene with open arms, once they were free of evil me. Boy, were they disappointed. They’re still waiting for their negotiation, I think. At least four individual ULA writers left the ULA in hopes of cutting a deal. There’s no point in naming them. They’re quite sad stories. Their rewards/payoffs were ridiculously minor. One of them was allowed to place a fawning essay on an insider website. Another is the token poor guy someplace. That kind of thing.

Tom Bissell and Ed Champion at least implicitly recognize that the world consists of leverage and power, where terms do need to be negotiated. The premise of the ULA recognized this—that only by creating leverage, by applying pressure, would we be allowed any kind of a voice. It’s the way of the world. The altruistic empathy of characters like the Dave and his various low-priced Bissell knockoffs is a pose for the gullible, nothing else.

p.s. A small correction to the interview. George Plimpton didn’t invite the ULA to an event. We invited him—to debate us at CBGB’s in New York City. To his credit, the establishment literary warrior showed up. Unlike all others of his breed, George Plimpton was fearless. He and his preppy staff were badly out of their depth, of course. Like throwing well-groomed poodles in with pit bulls. The Underground Literary Alliance then was the most exciting lit group on the planet. After the debate George and I, as respective leaders of our teams, had a polite chat over beers, while the old dog’s eyes popped-out at the see-through dress of our at-the-time zeen babe. George and I had an interesting talk, in which he probed my commitment to the ULA’s ideas. Not quite the way it’s portrayed. There were other dynamics going on. The real story is more interesting than a third-hand hearsay version. 

Have a good day!