Saturday, June 04, 2005

Clueless Critics

East coast yupsters criticizing ULA writing probably at the same time listen to Bruce Springsteen on their stereos. (He was always popular with prep-types searching for a sense of reality.) Yet the ULA offers with writing what "The Boss" did with music. Listen to his "Rosalita" and see how Springsteen has substituted for slickness, polish, and musical rules and training-- musical "taste"-- his brand of immediacy, authenticity, and passion.

For Springsteen, rough grittiness, the expression of his background and life, IS the music-- not lilting harmonies and carefully placed exactly-hit notes.

No one argues that Springsteen isn't an important pop culture phenomenon. Well-schooled intellectualized rock critics have gushed over his relevance for decades. Yet these same kind of intellectuals close their minds to the true diverse roots-lit stylings and happenings of the Underground Literary Alliance.

What's striking about the ULA, in its appearances, publications, and its fan site, is how DIFFERENT it looks and sounds from mainstream literature. We're strikingly simple, strikingly "pop," strikingly real, strikingly new.

Lit critics who fail to awaken to the new zeitgeist will ultimately marginalize themselves. They appear to us already as obsolete dinosaurs, slow-thinking and heavy of foot, placidly munching weeds and cabbage while the world dynamically changes around them.

6 comments:

King Wenclas said...

p.s. I glanced at the "Galley Cat" blog for the first time in a while, and see no evidence of the depression she's supposedly suffering. Most depressed people are in bed, hiding under the covers-- not flouncing around on vacation in Los Angeles.
What's the yuppie definition of depressed? Being maxed out on a Lord & Taylor charge card?
I'm afraid we've been scammed.

Emerson Dameron said...

A bad mood that interferes with normal activity and persists for two weeks qualifies as clinical depression, so I'm willing to take GalleyCat's word that she's had it. I don't think it's relevant either way.

The most hyped medical developments of the last few decades concerned impotence and depression, which, I imagine, are *diagnosed* primarily among the rich. It's an assumption, and correct me if I err, but I don't think there are a lot of Wellbutrin 'scripts in the projects. They must be a happy bunch over there.

No antidepressant currently on the market has out-tested placebos. Not one.

King Wenclas said...

What about being in a bad mood for two decades??? What does that qualify as?

Jimbo said...

I found that part about all these supposedly anti-establishment literary groups actually being CIA covert operations pretty funny as well. Makes a person wonder what Mc Sweenys really is don't it?

Jimbo said...

What I find amusing is that you feel that what you do and are has an intrinsic value when really it's of a rather limited usefullness and only within the present order of things. Even your humour is derivative in the third or even fourth degree. One can chuckle at the Zoolander reference only if they watched the movie and found it amusing and to watch the movie and find it amusing you'd have to be the sort of person who reads magazines like GQ or Details. What are you going to be good for when your world comes crumbling down around you? Maybe you'll have a moment of self knowledge before they put you up against the wall piggy or maybe you'll just get frantic and poo your pants.

Jimbo said...

just keep believing that the america that is soon to come will have a need for you

you're becoming obsolete faster than you'd like to know