Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Purveyors of Nonsense

Eggers, Handler, and Sedaris could apologize for concocting the fake letter. (All indications and evidence point to them as the originators.) They won't, because they're not big enough. For all their fame and wealth, their millions of dollars, their cumulative character could be put into a thimble. Their failure to acknowledge their mistake proves this.

Why would they care enough about the squawking of a rough band of unknowns to attack us? Because we're the genuine article. Our very existence shows them up as frauds. While they read at Versailles-like palaces, lecture at academies, or parade through gleaming offices of the corporate world, ULAers are engaged in the elemental struggle for survival. We're not insulated by jaded theory and overschooling, nor by success and millions, from the universal realities of the world-- which a Michael Jackman, say, among many others, in the tradition of a B. Traven or Jack London, captures so well. We have no money, pedigree, or connections. As writers we have something more valuable-- access to simple truth.

No comments: