Can They Defend the Essay?

THE FLAWED PRODUCT

Essayist Tom Bissell and the folks at The Believer are like manufacturers who put out a product, and after the product is discovered to be defective they’re nowhere to be found. No response to criticism. Survey Believer headquarters—lights off, nobody home.

If they have knowledge of the Tylenol strategy they don’t show it. No readiness to withdraw the product from shelves or make amends to the consumer. (In this case, though, the consumers are elitist literary people who may enjoy seeing underground writers unfairly kicked around. See Maria Bustillos and others.)

The questions are: The integrity of Tom Bissell as a writer, and the credibility of McSweeney’s as an organization. McSweeney’s and Dave Eggers have invested a great deal of energy in establishing themselves as advocates for the downtrodden. Everything in Tom Bissell’s Believer essay runs counter to this carefully manufactured image. One would think they’d be eager to resolve the dispute.

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.)

An Open Note to Dave Eggers

A PEACE GESTURE

I previously mentioned Dave Eggers’ 6/20/05 public rebuke of his former puppet Neal Pollack. More interesting than the takedown itself are some of the things Eggers said to defend and explain himself. I quote:

“—my hope that whatever came next in the literary world would be different, mellower, less tense, less rivalrous”

“it . . . continues to be our goal at The Believer, that the literary world could be one of community, of mutual support . . . and that anyone pissing in the very small and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world is mucking it up for everyone. . . .”

One can disagree with Eggers’ sentiments on several points.

1.) His is a plea to leave things as they are. The status quo. Which is fine from his perspective, because it leaves Dave Eggers at the center of literary power.

2.) What exactly does Dave Eggers mean by “community”? Who’s included? I’m reminded of the Orwell quote, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

3.) The mindset Eggers advocates could be likened to the stale peace of a totalitarian world. It’s like the word Islam, which means, “obedience,” and which some feckless souls take to mean “peace.” Peace equals obedience.

4.) I’ve always contended that the “very small” literary ecosystem Eggers talks about would grow in multiples A.) if it allowed alternative voices from different backgrounds and new, more populist styles of writing through its doors; B.) if it were more contentious and rivalrous; to make noise so that society knows it exists. For this you’d need to throw open the thick doors to the stuffy private club.

BUT, let’s take Dave Eggers’ statements at face value. If he was sincere in what he said—then why republish the Tom Bissell attack essay against the Underground Literary Alliance? The ULA had fragmented, in part because of the endless recession this country is in, which hurts those writers at the bottom most. Why kick us when we were down, and not a threat to anyone? The ULA campaign was in the past. Last decade’s story. We were now, all of us, struggling to sell our individual writings, and scarcely needed scornful attacks appearing across the literary landscape as a result of the reappearance of the Bissell tome. Attacks in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Guernica, Kirkus Reviews, and other places. What was Dave’s purpose, other than being “rivalrous” and “pissing in the very small and fragile ecosystem that is the literary world”? Surely, no writers group was in a more fragile condition than we were. We have no trust funds, inheritances, elite connections, tax shelter foundations or banker daddys to fall back on.

I then ask Dave Eggers to prove he’s for real by repudiating the Tom Bissell essay. Reprinting that at this time was a slap in the face on a section of American writers. An assault on true representatives of the 99%. It says there will be no end of rivalries—that it’s Dave Eggers, no one else, carrying on feuds. For him to publicly disavow that essay is the minimum that can be asked. It was a mistake to reprint the biased essay and it will be a bigger mistake for him to stand behind that severely flawed document.

The Shaky Empire

WHILE AT ONE TIME the McSweeney’s Gang was an important development in a stagnant literary scene, today the band of clubsters, cronyistas, fellow travelers and hangers-on is sustained by bluff, reputation, and bullying. Though their books, whether published by the Big Six or by McSweeney’s, still receive lavish media attention, their actual impact on the general public has become minimal.

Little girls in Minnesota who self-publish indie ebooks outsell the lot of them.

When you examine the evil empire up close there’s not a lot there.

What are their ideas?

Rehashed postmodernism; pose more than substance. Their overhyped intellectuals, Jonathan Lethem and Ben Marcus, are impressive only on paper. Given a fawning establishment literary world fueled by timidity, their sophistry is seldom challenged. It’s noteworthy that both much-awarded figures are defeatist about their own literary ideology. (See the link to a post about a Jonathan Lethem essay at the left side of this screen.)

Either would be slaughtered in a debate about literature with someone like myself. What’s more, they know it. Not that such debate would ever take place. Sustained by protective nursemaids behind protective barriers, what Lethem and Marcus lack even more than real intellect is intellectual courage.

What of the Emperor himself, Mr. Eggers?

Lately he’s been a one-trick pony, playing the role of Great White Father, savior to the Third World. His latest book, more of the same, is a dud.

The entire McSweeney’s/Believer ouevre, in fact, is growing visibly tired. Cutesy hipster posturing with trademark narcissistic posing by the usual bourgie grandees or their knockoffs, for whom the stunning currents of economic change and devastation the last four years have been no more than a mild puff of wind. They view the hectic tragic world from above, aristocrats in a crumbling castle with walls smelling of mold. In the near distance a tidal wave of readable, low-cost ebooks approaches. Not wishing to see the new wave, they sip more hipster wine or designer beer and move to the other side of the fortress. 

Classism Is Like Racism

I have a friend, a young woman I’ll call C, who’s been passed over for two management positions in the last six months for reasons of class. By that I mean, passed over because A.) she didn’t have the proper educational background, and B.) she didn’t enough look the past. Those who got the jobs are fine individuals, but there’s not a doubt in my mind that C would’ve done better—in part because she’s far hungrier a person. She’s bright enough, and works twice as hard as anyone else.

Classism may be this nation’s last allowable prejudice—a prejudice that’s enacted with intense feeling and, often, ruthlessness. I know this from experience. Good “liberal” people who wouldn’t think of behaving in a racist manner—at least not publicly—are utterly scornful of lower caste members of their own race. They’re free to indulge their true feelings toward anyone they perceive as beneath them.

In no area of American life does caste play a greater role than in today’s established literary scene. Think I’m wrong? Examine those who receive nominations for National Book Awards, NEA grants, and/or lavish media publicity, and you’ll find a preponderance of graduates from elite universities, chiefly but not exclusively from the Ivy League. Hear of a hyped writer—Teddy Wayne, say—with reviews in major publication after major publication, along with awards and grants, and likely as not the person will be from Brown, or Columbia, or in Wayne’s case, Harvard. It’s how the country operates. Connections and clubbiness. (The area of politics is little better—this year we have a contest of Harvard versus Harvard.)

Now, it could be that the literary stars from the Ivy league truly are as good as their press clippings say they are. Curiously, though—as I pointed out about Ben Marcus—their book sales are seldom if ever commensurate with the amount of publicity they receive. It could be they’re simply more adept at either gaming the system, or writing exactly according to their professors’ specifications. Conformity and obedience could be reasons why they went to, and graduated from, the “best” schools in the first place. (Though writers as diverse as Charles Murray and Paul Krugman have demonstrated with strong evidence that what college one attends is still largely a product of caste.)

Compounding matters, the staffs of the leading mainstream magazines—like Vanity Fair and The New Yorker—and leading websites—Salon and Slate—which cover literature are made up of graduates from the same dozen or so elite universities. Their bias is toward writers who think and sound like themselves.

Which means, writing styles like fashionable clothes. The right “look” is important. Clarity of style and thought is the last thing they want. Their goal is to distinguish themselves from the mob.

Nowhere is caste bias more prevalent than at the two trendiest, highest profile literary magazines/movements: The Believer and n+1. The difference between them is that one group is biased more toward Columbia, the other, Harvard and Yale. Do I exaggerate their importance? Not when one looks at the advances and publicity their writers and fellow travelers receive. Their writers extend through the entire system, found in any and all the major organs of the New York-based scene, whether The New Yorker, or New York Times Book Review, or Magazine, or New York Review of Books, or Salon or Slate. In a sense, all one big happy family.
Many writers of course exist on the margins of this clubby circle. They are most certain of all to do nothing to compromise their chances; will do or say nothing to offend the big guys.
The greatest irony is that most of the chief figures of this scene, from Dave Eggers to Jonathan Franzen to Keith Gessen, place themselves prominently and vociferously on the Left end of the political spectrum. Yet every fact of their careers and lives is an opposition to this. In their own field, the realm of literature, they’re reactionaries. The Jekyll/Hyde contradiction escapes them. 

The Bissell/Believer Back Story

TOM BISSELL’S DISTORTED ESSAY PART I

Reviewers and readers who take Tom Bissell’s 2003 Believer essay on the defunct Underground Literary Alliance, “Protesting All Fiction Writers!”—now reprinted with a different title in Bissell’s Magic Hours book of essays—at face value make a huge mistake. They should be aware of the essay’s context—the reason it was written and published. For the previous two years the ULA had been engaged in an intensely bitter feud with Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s, which kicked off when we protested an award to the publication for “Best Zine.” Things from there escalated. This was the backdrop to Bissell’s essay.

Bissell admits that Dave Eggers was initially opposed to the essay’s publication. A scant few months after its appearance, Eggers himself was caught posting anonymous attacks against the ULA on Amazon. Eggers carried extreme animus toward the ULA—from his perspective, with good reason. Could the essay have been approved if Bissell hadn’t assured the editors that it would be a proper takedown of the Underground Literary Alliance? A takedown, moreover, which fit the happy-face McSweeney’s/Believer image of pristine innocence. No easy feat.

In the essay, Tom Bissell presents himself as an innocent bystander; a disinterested observer objectively weighing facts. Gullible journalists today like Katie Ryder accept the presentation at face value. They swallow it whole, to the extent that Ryder, in an interview with Bissell, speaks of his tolerance, and absurdly applauds him for giving his subjects a “fair shot.” Yet in 2003 the essay was a partisan attack, and in it Bissell behaved like a partisan. He would not have been allowed the assignment otherwise.

The effectiveness of Bissell’s takedown can be judged by the result. The ULA was branded as a collection of no-talent whiners and thuggish authoritarians. His essay became the accepted source on us; the standard text. When I made a 2007 appearance on a PBS radio station, the host was still influenced by Bissell’s text, asking me wide-eyed and believing why the ULA wanted to ban Jeffrey Eugenides from publishing. A truly ill-informed statement. As evidenced by snarky or hateful statements still made about me online, the branding remains to this day.

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Journalists and reviewers wishing to understand Tom Bissell’s essay on the Underground Literary Alliance should realize that he did very little research on us. He exchanged several emails with one member out of forty. He made no effort to meet any of us, though many of us were a short bus ride away. He asked for none of our zines, though we were a writers group that sprung from the print zine scene and defined by it. He did read our web site, which contained a smattering of our writing.

To understand the ULA you’d have to understand the background we came from. The three initiators of the project, Steve Kostecke, Michael Jackman, and myself, were from Detroit. We’d witnessed wrenching social change and economic devastation, up close. First hand.

David M. Sheridan’s 1999 Michigan Quarterly Review essay about Detroit, “Making Sense of Detroit”-- http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0038.301;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mqrg -- is a great source, because it was written at the very time that plans for an underground writers group were being discussed and formed. It gives a compelling picture of what was happening to the city. Sheridan’s essay also quotes from an essay of my own about Detroit, an essay which alone would be a good source for my mindset at that moment of time. Without understanding Detroit it’s impossible to understand the Underground Literary Alliance.

Tom Bissell, in his Believer piece, dismisses Jackman’s talk of “injustice”—yet thoughts of injustice were inescapable from our brains. Sheridan states that I wrote about “violence and racism and poverty.” With trademark snarkiness, The Believer, in one of its tags to Bissell’s essay, mocked the ULA’s concerns as “alienated socioeconomic posturing.” I urge people to read Sheridan’s essay and then decide if our concerns were posturing.

Tom Bissell never did the hard research to find out where the ULA was from and what we were about, because he didn’t care what we were about. That wasn’t the point of his essay.

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Tom Bissell’s own striving-writer background included an editorial position at W.W. Norton in Manhattan, at the very heart of the tops-down Big Six publishing system. By accommodating himself to powerful individuals he made his way through the heart of the machine. This was the perspective he brought to his essay, to his look at ULAers and our writings.

Bissell made no  attempt to understand our alien style of literature, our psychology, or the DIY/ print zine ethos of the 1990’s. That ethos determined how the ULA operated—by consensus, with no hierarchies and no real leaders. Our titles were a game. The “Director”—Michael Jackman—in personality was the most detached and laidback of the ULA’s major players.

The DIY/punk aesthetic determined our occasionally provocative, in-your-face behavior, which we saw as theater. We were sending up, in our way, the sober self-seriousness of the literary elite, and the pronounced pin-drop solemnity of the standard literary reading. The punk aesthetic determined many of our various styles of zine writing—expressions of the sound of American reality, of a Greyhound bus or a punk show or the street, in all its crudeness, emotion, immediacy and spontaneity. It’s why in 2006 we protested a tepid establishment “Howl” celebration at Columbia University. ULAers saw ourselves as the legitimate heirs of the Beats, and heirs of Dada and other arts movements outside the walls of the canon and the publishing machine. Our stylized and impudent zines were our proofs of our authenticity and credibility. In his Believer essay Tom Bissell scorned the very idea of this kind of alternative writing. Yet it was the kind of writing we’d been selling, mostly to alienated young readers who otherwise wouldn’t have been reading anything.

Authoritarian? That was the opposite of what we were about. We were a rebellion against rules, regulation, constipation, and authority. We were a disorganized blast of noise. We did have strong voices. In one of his recent interviews with Katie Ryder, Tom Bissell still refers to our no-hierarchy group as “authoritarian.” This is an ignorant, know-nothing statement. Also an ironic one, seeing that Bissell works and writes in a world of hierarchy and authority.

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Bissell admits that his essay on Robert Kaplan was a “literary assassination.” His essay on the ULA was no less an attempted assassination. Unlike Kaplan, we had no standing, no resources, no body of powerful and connected friends with which to withstand such attacks.

(Much more to come on this blog.)

(Also see @KingWenclas for other remarks.)

Rome versus Carthage

I admit I’m taken aback by the reappearance of Tom Bissell’s hatchet job essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, “Protesting All Fiction Writers!” The essay, whose very title is a distortion, originally appeared in The Believer literary journal and has been included in Bissell’s new collection of essays, Magic Hours. The flawed essay is bad enough. Worse are the reviews of it, many of which mention the ULA with gleeful hostility. What’s the point? It’s a sudden rush of extreme animus toward a defunct organization whose writers were knocked out by the recession, their movement broken. It’s as if McSweeney’s (which published Bissell’s new book) and their many acolytes are ancient Rome, wishing to see every Carthaginian shred of our past literary threat knocked down and buried into the ground.

The Bluff of the Establishment Literary World

IN A MEETING with a foreign ambassador just before the start of World War II, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin analyzed the British Empire, marvelling at how a small island had established a world empire on bluff. He gave as example the few hundred Englishmen dominating the vast subcontinent of India.

A similar situation holds sway today in the established U.S. literary world. That world is built on, and sustained by, bluff.

Jonathan Lethem can write virtually anything, no matter how ridiculous, and unquestioning legions of readers and writers accept it, because it comes from a designated star.

The truth is that the clubby members of lit's power clique, even at intellectual journals like The Believer and n+1-- especially at journals like The Believer and n+1-- aren't very bright. Possible exception made for Eggers. Some are methodical plodders. Others are less than that, get by on pedigree or the certification of degrees. They all exist behind a flimsy facade of bluff which no ambitious writer dares question.

Why is this?

What today's name Insider writers are truly good at is gaming the system. They've been doing it their entire lives. It's how they slid into elite hierarchical slots at spots like Harvard, and prevailed at such places.

Occupy Writers, a latch-on to the Occupy movement by Insiders, was a good example of how this crowd of careerist opportunists were able to quickly spot a no-risk way to make themselves look good, and jump at it. Their win-lose risk radar is first class. In this instance, they ensured that if revolution ever takes place, the same people-- at least in the literary game-- will be in charge.

Character? Principles? Integrity? Honesty? For them, irrelevant concepts. As of course is the concept of democracy, which is not AT ALL what they're about. The pose is what counts-- being on the right side of the crowd.

But what about their writing?

At their best, their writing is competent. See Jonathan Franzen. Many of these people learned well through their many training programs how to be unspectacularly competent.

At its worst, with writers whose self-importance gets ahead of their meager talents, as with Jonathan Lethem and Miranda July, the writing is execrable, the childish thought behind it an embarrassment.

The shakiness of their world is compounded by the fact that most of them subscribe to a philosophy, postmodernism, which is intellectually bankrupt.

I wish more outside-the-clique writers would awake from their stupors, lose their timidity and begin to expose the In crowd for the emperors-without-clothes that they are.

Just my two cents worth. Take it for what you will.

Where's Jonathan Lethem?

NO RESPONSE FROM BELIEVER WRITER

I'm still waiting for a response to my takedown of Jonathan Lethem's October Believer essay. I sent The Believer people part of it, along with a link.
http://kingwenclas.blogspot.com/p/jonathan-lethem-and-postmodernism.html

Will they-- or Jonathan Lethem himself-- explain and defend their ideas and writing? Anyone?

About Jonathan Lethem and Postmodernism

Jonathan Lethem's "Postmodernism as Liberty Valance: Notes on an Execution" in the October issue of The Believer is bad writing backed by a ridiculous argument.

Lethem's objective isn't to write a clear and compelling essay. It's to present a facade of intellectualism, combined with trademark McSweeney's-style cutesiness added to show that, hey, he's one of us.

Behind his clog of words, Lethem has two points. He doesn't try to prove the points. They're assumed. The herd he writes for accepts the points on face value. The essay is affirmation. "Hallelujahs" in a praise-pomo church service. The purpose of the essay is showing off.

Lethem's two points:

1.) Literary postmodernism is under continual assault.

2.) Postmodernism is like the film character Liberty Valance.

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POINT ONE: Because literary postmodernism isn't under real attack, Lethem doesn't need to construct a real argument. His essay is a victory dance over pretend opponents. The idea is to make the unquestioning readership feel good: Rome replaying its wars with Carthage decades after the fact. A ritualistic dance.

Lethem writes,

"My version allegorizes the holding at bay, for the special province of literary fiction, of contemporary experience in all its dismaying or exhilarating particulars, as well as a weird, persistent denial of a terrific number of artistic strategies for illuminating that experience. The avoidance, that's to say, of any forthright address of what's called postmodernity, and what's lost in avoiding it (a sacrifice I see as at best pointless, an empty rehearsal of anxieties, and at worst hugely detrimental to fiction)."

What is he talking about?

Jonathan Lethem says of postmodernism:

"--the word is often used as finger-pointing to a really vast number of things that might be seen as threatening to canonical culture."

Really? By who?

Today, postmodernism IS canonical culture. The French critics Lethem defends in his essay are celebrated by the academy. They're part of the canon.

Lethem talks of the "collapsing of high and low cultural preserves--."

This sure isn't happening in Lethem's world! He's safely in the "high" end, along with metafiction, antinarrative, intertextuality, unreliable narration, "surrealism or magical realism or hysterical realism," irony, and the rest of the postmodern jumble. The academy does have values, of a sort. The intellectual jumble Lethem describes is its highest value.

The items Lethem lists and defends are now part of "high" culture. They've been around for fifty years. There's nothing threatening to "the literary community" about them. Go onto trendy lit-sites like HTML Giant and you see that these ideas and strategies ARE the literary community.

(To read this post in its entirety, click on http://kingwenclas.blogspot.com/p/jonathan-lethem-and-postmodernism.html )