Friday, June 08, 2007

We're Better

The irony, or maybe the point, about our disputes with Establishment Literature and their lapdogs is that our books are better than theirs. Our writers are better across the board, at fiction, poetry, performance, literary journalism (nonexistent in their world) and criticism.

They know this, and so the big conglomerates are trying to co-opt us, but still falling short.

Even Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, given feature coverage TWICE in the leading local paper by the Janissaries of Empire, isn't as good. It's too "literary," not gonzo enough to qualify as real underground.

Check out the products of the ULA's Cast of Characters, latest by well-named Crazy Carl Robinson, at www.literaryrevolution.com, key part of the Resistance to Status Quo Rule.

p.s. Our beef with the National Book Critics Circle is that they pose as neutral parties in the realm of literature-- when in truth they're not neutral at all, as shown by denying any coverage to our books at the same time they embrace the most ruthless of monopolistic empires. They hold the power-- yet feel under siege by the outcry from the literary barricades. They shut out alternative voices-- voices from the streets-- yet from their aristocratic castles brand those voices as intolerant. Proof of their Orwellian mindset. Yes, we're intolerant of falsity and phoniness, corruption and inertia. We're out to save literature.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I honestly don't understand what the purpose of that NBCC blog is; the members-in-charge have posted some nasty silly blanket-sounding statements against bloggers claiming/implying literary blog reviews aren't well-thought-out, are too quickly written, are parasitic of print reviews (when I think all reviews are somewhat parasitic by the very nature of a review which is "dependent on something else's" existence), etc.; meanwhile, the NBCC main-page posts often contain typos and grammatical errors. If they're going to repeatedly criticize others for posting too quick, they should look in a mirror.

But it's like they just want this exclusive blog where they can from-a-mountaintop-on-high look down at everyone outside their organization, which mountaintop is where they seem to think they are. They're losing their mountaintop positions in the print world so are now trying to create them in the web one. For a group that seemingly doesn't think much of the web, I think their actions in trying to insert-usurp themselves here show that they subconsciously think the web is the next place to be...