My Strategy

Let me state that I have nothing but regard for the ULA. How could I not? It was my creation. I wish it nothing but success. We remain on the same side, as far as I'm concerned. Our objectives, I'd hope, are the same.

My leaving should've surprised nobody. I stated it and discussed it on this blog and on the ULA's private forum. I generally say what I mean and mean what I say.

And really, it was past time for me to leave. Once I realized I'd lost the support of the ULA's #2 and #3, my departure was a done deal. After what transpired the last couple months within the team, there was no way I could remain. I'd certainly put in enough years on the project. No one should begrudge my wanting a change. Besides, no one was listening to me anyway! I needed a break from the ULA, and it needed a break from me.

REBELLION
As I stated in my 12/31 note on this blog, the Underground Literary Alliance is not the rebellion itself, only one vehicle for it. I intend to continue literary rebellion, in my own way, but it will be a rebellion of one.

CONSIDERATIONS
The ULA wasn't working for me personally as that rebellion-- which isn't to say that it can't work well for others. I hope it does. I'll take some reflected glow in its success. Too much of my time over the past several years was taken up by the demands and debates of the team. Further, the ULA was becoming too easy a target. I found myself with no mobility, was too easily pinned down within the ULA. The point I was making with my 12/31 post, for those who cared to see it, is that the literary rebellion can exist outside any house or group or name. There are advantages to a group-- which is why eight years ago I formed one. The disadvantage is anchoring that rebellion to an organization which can be isolated and attacked, as it's been attacked very strenuously from the outside and the inside.

As I was almost always the target of those attacks, I can best help the ULA by stepping away from it.

STRATEGY
Moving to Detroit gave me a different perspective on the literary game board-- an opportunity to devise a different strategy. The ULA strategy which had been in place was sounder than most believed-- as I'll explain in coming days-- but had been reduced to, in football terms, running the ball straight up the middle; directly into the opposing line. (For this I take full responsibility.) It would've worked with full execution, but committed execution of the plan we didn't have and never had.

For me, the break from the team has been liberating. I no longer feel tied down worrying about who I please or displease with my words or actions. The only person I need to satisfy is me. I'm free to draw on the entire range of my talents, which are substantial. I'm the best publicist (or propagandist) the underground has seen in a generation. No one in the lit world can generate strong arguments and sustain them like I can.

THE ASSUMED PLAN
I'm putting together my own propaganda machine, my own personal "army," if you will, of up to a dozen blogs. With no distractions I'll be able to maintain them and create a synergy of noise. The Idea: using Detroit and Philly as bases from which to move about the country. (I'll be pursuing in those towns only peace.) Endless options open up to me. Do I target Chicago, for instance: a major prize? I can appear at open mics throughout the country, eventually head west and hook-up with undergrounders from Portland to the Bay area.

BACK-UP
Meanwhile, there IS a "Project X" on my drawing board, and a pre-Project X to set it up. Whether I get to them will depend on my situation.

Gordon Lish Meets Tolstoy

(Note: Gordon Lish is the editor who mangled Ray Carver's writing. Lish is himself a prominently published writer; a major influence on the "hippest" writers of today. I imagined what would happen if Lish were assigned the task of editing classic novelists like Melville or Tolstoy.)

GORDON LISH MEETS TOLSTOY
"First, Lev, baby, boychik, we have to take out this messy historical business. It has to go. Nobody wants to read it! It's history! Does anyone like history? A clue: a short little brief whispered I won't say it loudly little tiny clue: 'Dry as dust.' Okay? Are we getting the picture, the image here, Mr. Count? Yes, yes, I know, you have all that time on your hands on your nice little estate when you're not chasing peasant girls, but we're talking serious business here, Count. We're talking literature! We're talking readers! Is a teenage girl Hannah Montana teenage fan girl in Ocean Barf California going to care one gazoodle about all this historical junk you've crammed into this too-long book? Napoleon? Please. He's got to go, and your characters are talking about Napoleon almost on the very first page! NOBODY cares about Napoleon! Are we understanding what we're talking about here Mr. Bigshot Russian Novelist? Is the light glimmering? GET RID OF IT! Yes, yes, Moscow is very important, yes, crucial, you say. But don't you know one soft-pedalled whispered hint about writing strategies? What did they teach you in writing class? Were you sleeping? Snoozing snoring through your moustaches? Here's what we do: 'And then Napoleon captured Moscow.' There. Okay? That's it. Presto magic solution. SOLVED. Lightbulb? It gets us directly to the important stuff, which is how Natasha feels about it. We'll get inside her perky little head and stay inside there and eliminate the cluttered furniture; the houses, armies, generals, battles, landscapes, families, bad relations, rowdy peasants-- ugh!-- drunken lieutenants: the entire sorry soggy mess.

"And all this philosophical garbage?!! You have me tearing my hair out here in frustration at what you've presented me here with this manuscript, Count, really."

BONUS: GORDON LISH MEETS MELVILLE
"A whale? A white whale???!"

Inside Tip

WE'LL see coming up whether the New York publishing world any longer contains even an ounce of brains; whether those N.Y. insiders-- Gawker or whoever-- who still read this blog know how to spot and jump on opportunity. After all, the Choire Sichas, Maud Newtons, and Elizabeth Spiers of the Magic Island are nothing if not opportunists, and I'm giving here, if not the scoop of a lifetime, the opportunity of 2008.

I've just received and read Philly writer Lawrence Richette's latest novel, Private Screenings, published through Xlibris. Richette has always been that rarest of beings today, a competent novelist, but now he's outdone himself and written a great one. Perhaps the stress of his recent life (Philly people know what I mean) has opened the floodgates on his talent and bumped it to another level. I don't know the why, wherefores, or whatevers. I just know his new book is a terrific read. It's the best novel of this decade. Yes, believe it. That it was published through Xlibris, that it had to be published through Xlibris, makes it a bigger story.

I'll be reviewing the book on more than one blog simultaneously in a few weeks-- which leaves others (agents, reviewers, publishers) time to get quickly in step with what's happening: the full emergence of a major American writer.

Today's Question

Who's the Tiger Woods of literature, past or present?

Done with It

For those who were wondering, or if there was doubt--

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: I'm officially through (have been) with the ULA as an Active Member. I've asked to be taken down from my positions of prominence on the ULA site.

The ULA was a quixotic project. When I created it I carried many ideals. Few remain.

I'm still a supporter-- for now-- which means, passively observing from the sidelines, like Achilles at his ships. For further statement see Achilles's speech near the beginning of The Iliad when he was withdrawing from that team.

For me, the ULA is in the past. I'm moving forward.

On Raymond Carver

FANS
Writers who are fans of Ray Carver should be most outraged at the way he was treated. No better argument can be given for the original ULA campaign, which was supposed to change the dynamic of writers as powerless supplicants subservient to the whims of all-powerful editors and publishers.

The Ray Carver story shows that editorial decisions change the nature of artworks-- decisions based on ideology masquerading as aesthetics; completing the job begun in writing programs of gutting the writer's mind and his work of content and context, leaving mere vague feelings, which is what happened with Carver's writing.

Today's Question

Is baseball pitcher Roger Clemens lying?

Now Up

"Fantastic Detroit": a great new essay at www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com

ALSO:
-"Best Movie" #8 at www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com
-News at www.phillyliterary.blogspot.com

The King Wenclas Lit-Blog Network

More CIA Fun Stuff

THE DROOLING braindead mavens of what passes today for literary culture need to view American literature within context. From 1950 to 1990 that context was the Cold War. The leading literary figures during that period, including George Plimpton but also Robert Silvers of New York Review of Books, Norman Podhoretz at Commentary, the "New York Intellectuals" at Partisan Review and New Criterion, were COLD WARRIORS. Study their friggin' history! Is everyone in literature today an ignorant zombie? Are you going to tell me their political ideology had NO influence on editorial policy?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The guy we should've interviewed was Mailer, before he passed on. Curious that a few months before his death he'd been giving his usual flatulent interviews to adoring boozhie audiences, then suddenly was gone. (Smothered by a pillow?) (Maybe his son cryogenically froze him a la Ted Williams. We can hope.)

Mailer was a good buddy of Plimpton's and likely knew the truth. He'd written a novel about the CIA-- I plan to read it-- and had a sequel planned before being talked out of it to do instead a crapsterpiece about Hitler.

I suspect the troll on the mountain will make a reappearance at my "Plutocracy USA" tale (www.literarymystery.blogspot.com). That is, if I'm not "accidentally" run over by a Detroit snowplow in the interim.
**********************************************************
(Note: This Friday, February 8, is the seven-year anniversary of the great debate at CBGB's-- specifically, CB's Gallery-- preppy editors of the Paris Review including Mr. Plimpton against the ULA. It was a real exchange of conflicting ideas-- one of the great moments of literary history.)

Today's Question

A SUPER TUESDAY PACZKI DAY QUESTION

Who will be the next President? (BONUS QUESTION: Who were you supporting?)

The King Wenclas Lit-Blog Network

Much happening worth checking out:

-A Lawrence Richette essay now up at
www.phillyliterary.blogspot.com

-A new essay of my own at
www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com

-Chapter Eight now up at
www.literarymystery.blogspot.com
(with a special fictional appearance by none other than "George Plimpton.")

-A great new essay about the Cass Corridor upcoming at
www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com

HERE at this location I'll be doing a series of posts on the topic, "Compromise and Ray Carver." This story is at the heart of what's wrong with American literature today. The question of when to compromise, and in what areas, should be of concern for every writer.

Request

Could someone notify us here if the NY Times runs an article on the Harold Humes/Peter Matthiessen issue, or if they have this week already? I suspect it will be of the cover-up variety.
Thanks.

On James Linville

My communications over the last few years with former Paris Review editor James Linville have strengthened my belief in the Richard Cummings article. Mr. Linville sometimes appears to border on the unstable. He has a penchant for sending out hysterical e-mails (such as those sent to me and to a couple ULAers this weekend). If the New York Times deals with him for any length of time they'll realize this also. (I suspect they already have.)

It's James Linville who seems to lack any semblance of common sense. He has no perspective toward who myself and the ULA are, and what was important and newsworthy in the story we posted, and why we posted it. It's Linville who has behaved, since the Matthiessen story broke, like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off; bombarding people with scattershot e-mails; not even getting the names and roles straight of the ULAers to whom he's been sending them.

THE CONTEXT
The ULA has posted its "Monday Reports" with a belief in Thomas Jefferson's famous motto: put all ideas on the table and the truth will win out.

The ULA is not the New York Times. We don't have an army of paid fact-checkers. What the Underground Literary Alliance has been, through its history, is a mere handful of rabble-rousing truth seekers who work shitty low-pay jobs and pursue lit activities during stray moments of free time.

Unlike James Linville, I don't have the means to fly back and forth across the oceans to pursue this odd detail or that one. In truth, it's not what the ULA has been about.

THE OFFER
I notified James Linville before we ran the Richard Cummings article in 2005. J.L. refused to publicly deny Cummings's contentions, would not confirm or deny the central premise (which presumably he already knew to be true), and couldn't give me, and has never given me, a straight answer about anything. From Linville all has been vagueness and obfuscation.

As the piece ran on our site, I offered James Linville the opportunity to give us his response. He could've denied the essay, politely or with outrage. Linville could've attacked a particle of it or all of it, in as many words as he cared to utilize. For almost three years that offer has been open AND CONTINUES TO BE OPEN to James Linville. He has never sought to take advantage of it.

CREDIBILITY
If I've formed a question about the credibility of anyone in this affair, it's James Linville himself. Throughout he's behaved in ways cryptic and mysterious, acting-- bizarrely enough-- AS IF he were a secret agent; after the Matthiessen revelation flying back and forth from England on a moment's whim; arranging sudden consultations with Paris Review editors; behaving toward Richard Cummings-- whose essay, opinionated and foolhardy or not, was an act of bravery-- in a manner akin to stalking. Likely Linville isn't a "secret agent," but he sure enjoys playing one.

THE PROPOSED MEETING
Linville forwarded to me copies of many e-mails he sent Cummings, in which Linville was trying to arrange a meeting, alone, with Cummings, during which he wanted to "ask him one question." What the important and mysterious question was, and why he couldn't ask Cummings via e-mail, was not revealed. The request for a meeting was interspersed with bullying insults, attempts at intimidation. I'm sure I still retain copies of those e-mails. Cummings would've been crazy to meet the man.

THE PARIS REVIEW
Throughout, The Paris Review, to my knowledge, has never denied one iota of the substance of the Cummings article. Their current editor, in fact, has acknowledged the key point, saying this was "common knowledge" among the TPR staff. (Matthiessen's connection with the CIA was surely NOT common knowledge among the reading public.)

Several months AFTER the ULA ran the Cummings piece, I met with a representative of The Paris Review, Jonathan Dee, who wanted to interview me for a supposed book on George Plimpton. We met for lunch at McHale's in New York City. During the entirety of our taped conversation, Mr. Dee never once mentioned the Cummings matter. I eventually broached the subject myself, in a light-hearted way. He said nothing, did not seem to want to discuss the issue, so I moved on. Obviously, there was no apparent animus at that time toward me from the magazine, and no eagerness to question me or the ULA about what we were doing or saying regarding the CIA. They had pronounced uninterest in the story. So has it remained.

Many, many questions of course remain.

Advisory

Note: The Paris Review/CIA matter has resurfaced in the person of James Linville, who supposedly is cooperating with the New York Times on a story on the matter.

I hope the New York Times gives myself (and the ULA, if they wish to be involved), proper TIME to respond to this matter before running anything-- and hope they contact us themselves. I trust they won't rush into print a hatchet job.

As for myself, I eagerly welcome ANY public discussion of this matter, and hope that all parties-- including the Paris Review-- are involved in such discussion. I'll take full responsibility for the ULA running the Cummings piece, if need be, as I arranged it.

The fact is that the piece was run in the interest of BRINGING THIS MATTER TO DAYLIGHT. Again, any public discussion of this is a good thing.

I'll have much more to say on the matter-- and now feel free to bring James Linville's actions to light-- such as the 100+ e-mails he sent me after Peter Matthiessen admitted CIA backing of the journal-- which, after all, was the central revelation of the Cummings piece the ULA ran as a "Monday Report."

Bring it on!

The Real Shakspere

This week I jumped into a discussion on another blog, Daniel Green's "Reading Experience," on the post "Publish or Perish.) (See www.noggs,typepad.com/the_reading_experience)

On matters of literature, Green is my ideological opposite. He has a selfish view of literature-- if he had his wish the art would belong to him alone. The idea of reaching the masses is anathema to him.

He's advocated the polite kind of
poetry reading
of gentle words
and stripped-down verse
no rhythmn of rumbling building energy
of shouted unpleasantries
that shake the listener's spine--
no rhyme or euphonious line--
Not poetry at all.

And so he's far distant from the long ago literary performer who was the inspiration for THIS blog, Will Shakespeare.

THE QUESTION was about Ray Carver, and whether the art belongs to the artist, or to the conglomerate system of literary bureaucrats and skyscraper offices that bought it.

It's strictly a question of control. Amazing to me is how writers like Daniel Green are so eager to cede control to the hierarchs.

The irony is that people today applaud themselves for their non-conformity, yet are the most conformist generation of the most regulated and conformist society in history.

This subservient attitude is bad for literature and art.

An eye-opener for me was when I researched the original documents regarding "Shakspere," to understand the actual person.

His mentality was 180 degrees opposite that of writers today. With his writing itself he was restricted by no one. (He couldn't go too far with ideas against the Crown, of course.)

This man-- he was only a man; a roustabout actor-- felt free, as writers today are NOT free, to play with words, grammar, spelling. He wasn't a product of the Academy. There were no dictionaries. No editors as we know them. He was as much, or more, an artist of verbal language as of the written kind. His words and grammar were often made up on the spot. (He was much like a couple clown actor street writers I know.) This character Shakspere would never, NEVER, fit into today's hyperregulated system of literature.

Literary people today want stylistic standardization because they're creatures of the precision and standardization of the Machine Age introduced with Industrial Capitalism. The artisan exchanged for the assembly line.

Do we really need the standardization of literature? Which means, of our minds?

Why?

Well, to be plugged into proper jobs in this institutional bureaucracy or that one, that's why.

But what has this to do with art?

WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH ART???

Sure, Shakespeare was a genius, we say now. Yea, sure.

But in a way he wasn't a genius at all.

He was a scrambling boozing shitting struggling-to-survive-and-have-fun-while-doing-it character. He had fun, and today, hearing his words, seeing his plays, we have fun also.

Were Blake and Van Gogh geniuses?

Or were they not eccentrics of original vision?

What fun is there in foillowing the crowd?

Better to break the rules, snub the regulators, the school marms, the high priests of culture to step eagerly into the unknown.

Nine: "The Guns of Navarone"

An old-fashioned popcorn movie with a sense of wonder about it.

Dismissed as a straightforward action-adventure, there's more going on in it.

The movie's wonderful prologue, which speaks of the "gods and demi-gods" of ancient Greece, reveals this conscious attempt to create a modern-day myth, yet no one noticed.

We're cast quickly into myth, as a team of heroes is formed during WWII and sent on a seemingly impossible mission to destroy monsters: two gigantic German guns which rain fire on all around them. Few movies have so played with the forces of nature, as the band of commandos survive a sea storm; climb unscaleable cliffs; journey through tunnels and across snow-covered mountains on the way to their goal, which once glimpsed at the outset stand close in the back of our minds until presented again with all their terrible power. At the end the surviving heroes are thrown back into the sea from whence they came, come full circle, memories playing in their heads of their comrades and experience.

This is a movie not about ridiculous fantasy, but about myth; the creation of myth. The fiery guns are fantastic but very real at the same time, which adds to their strength as symbols. We know while viewing the action that such adventures, such heroics, DID happen, in the recent past. Which makes the heroics great and believable. No goofy CGI monsters, buff narcissistic gym-rats, or camera-trick hobbits, sorry.

Note: crucially important for the impact of "Guns" is the musical score by Dmitri Tiomkin. Motion pictures are a combination of arts. I rate the value of music as an ingredient in film very highly-- which is why with at least five of these choices, the film music is among the best ever written. Which is the case with the next selection. . . .

p.s. The remaining eight selections will be presented at my newest blog,
www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com

New Blog

I have to briefly interrupt my "Best Movies" series to announce another new blog at www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com
which will eventually serve as a co-blog base for my upcoming projects, along with "Demi-Puppets" of course.

Next up at "Happy": "The Dream."

Number Ten: "Zorba the Greek"

I haven't seen this in many years, since I was in my twenties and viewed it at some art house revival. I can't say how it would hold up if I saw it again. For me it was life-changing. Its message is that life, like art, is exotic and an adventure and a mystery. One has to plunge into the experience. It's a cliche to say it, but we're all on our own personal Odysseys, as is the Alan Bates character, who arrives in Greece with his stack of books. Dominating the action is quixotic con artist Zorba, played by cinematic madman Anthony Quinn, who also appears, curiously enough, in the next selection; the most questionable choice of the ten.

The Ten Best Movies?

STARTING with my next post I'll give my selections for the ten best motion pictures of all time. I'll include some explanation of each one, so that by the time the last selection (#1) is given, the reader will have a sense of the criteria used when I made my choices. It's a subjective list but an objective one at the same time; as all art criticism has to be.

I treated movies as art and experience. I looked for films which exploited the possibilities of the art; understanding as I did what those possibilities are. Too much film criticism over the years has treated film as A.) a literary work; B.) a piece of furniture, whose importance lies in how it's pieced together.

I considered the movies chosen as they appear on the big screen-- how this particular art was meant to be displayed.

You'll see as the list is given that I avoided many (not all) of the obvious choices-- what would be the fun in that? Also because many of the obvious choices are wrong.

Many films almost made the cut. I would've loved to have included "GodfatherII," for instance; surely a masterpiece. The big screen reveals the incredible tapestry of its set pieces. (Who can forget the parade in Little Italy?) It was left off my list because it's too consciously a masterpiece. Its greatness is all on the screen. Despite the tragedy of Michael Corleone, the darkness is on the surface, without enough resonant depths which leave the viewer a different person; which cause him to judge not just Michael Corleone, but himself. Still, it's a masterpiece all the same.

But enough talk. Next up: Number Ten.

Coming Changes

MY BREAK from, if not with, the ULA is for real. At some point I'll evaluate where I stand. In the meantime I'm moving ahead with fresh projects. I'm motivated and advocating for radical literary change but will be applying a new strategy and new tactics. Stay posted on these moves here and on my other blogs--
www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com
www.phillyliterary.blogspot.com
www.literarymystery.blogspot.com--
with a Chicago blog on the drawing board and another exciting new blog yet to follow.