THE PROBLEM OF JONATHAN FRANZEN PART II
A Laundry List of Jonathan Franzen's Problems as a Novelist.
THE ABSENCE OF HEROES
The best novels contain strikingly memorable characters. The personalities in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Moby Dick, and The Octopus are real and more than real. The protagonists of The Count of Monete Cristo and The Great Gatsby vibrate with mystery. Novels give us characters who demand to be read.
This has been true of the best novels and always will be true. Jack Kerouac's novels radiate with the joy of heroes of contemporary life. Current underground novels Tales from the Texas Gang by Bill Blackolive, and Wred Fright's The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus, behind the action and comedy, are depictions of heroes. The authors see what's best in the humanity around them. In the tradition of Morte D'Arthur they collect this humanity in a gang or a rock band, then elevate it above the commonplace, giving our modern-day life meaning and purpose.
In Jonathan Franzen's famed novel we see none of this. There's no idealism, no mystery, no humor, no romance. Franzen is the purely objective writer. He objectifies his characters, and so his protagonist comes across as an android; his women as uninteresting objects, as a series of breasts.
It's a pessimistic mindset. This is how Franzen views life. There's no enthusiasm for people in his writing. (If he has none, how are his readers supposed to have any?) There's craft but no life in his sentences. His words just lay there, the resulting book a dead artifact.
We've all met charismatic persons animated far beyond the strictly material. One would hope we'd find them in the pages of literature, especially if we've paid $25 for the book!
The ULA was formed with individuals who are larger than life, including Blackolive, Fright, Jack Saunders, and Crazy Carl Robinson among them. We've added others. (Jessica Disobedience; Eric Broomfield; Frank Walsh!) Why would we settle for anything less from writing we espouse and admire?
THE ABSENCE OF MYTH
There's no depth to Jonathan Franzen's characters, no resonance to his narrative. What you see is what you get, aside from thin intellectualisms placed transparently ON TOP of the story he tells. (References to intellectual books.)
There are no superficial references in H. Rider Haggard's She, one of the most exciting novels ever written. There is an enormous amount of myth. The text presented is an essential part of the tale. Haggard, one of the first Europeans to travel through obscure parts of Africa, drew on historical legends of great African civilizations he'd heard about. He used the explorations of his adventurers as a metaphor for exploration of the subconscious. (She was a favorite novel of Freud and Jung.)
Haggard wasn't the only adventure writer to explore uncharted territory of the mind. Robert Louis Stevenson famously did so in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," another story of unusual power. Scott Fitzgerald does it in Gatsby, the ambition of his main character expressed by Fitzgerald's description of the ambition of America itself.
The Great Gatsby is the story of a dreamer and has the atmosphere of a dream. The expression of dreams, journeys into the subconscious, are the substance of the most truthful art. This is why dreamlike children's movies like "The Wizard of Oz" and "Lili" reverberate also to adults.
Franzen's The Corrections can't be called a great work of art. His characters aren't heroic, they have no darkness, no depth, no dreams, no tragedy, no greatness-- and neither does their author, which is why I've mocked him as robotic. His people and settings are relentlessly uninteresting because they're relentlessly dead.
DESCRIPTION WITHOUT CONTEXT OR PURPOSE
This is shown in Franzen's descriptions, the perfunctory cataloging of material substance, little distinction between any of it. The cataloging isn't done in a way to bring his characters to life. The ring in a person's ear doesn't highlight the individual in our eye. The detail is added in the same way Franzen describes furniture. His characters become furniture to us. They contain no echoes, merely thin irritations or mechanistic wants.
This isn't simply because of Franzen's realism. James Gould Cozzens was a realistic writer without illusions, but his description was done with a purpose. He presented his characters within a context of a larger world. He carried greater intent as a novelist. The Corrections strives to carry large themes, yet everything is enacted and described on a tiny scale.
For all James Gould Cozzens's unflinching hardness, he created moments of myth, heroism, and surprise. (The sudden appearance of General Beal at the gun range in Guard of Honor is like the arrival of the Black Knight in Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.) By elevating the system Cozzens describes, he elevates the flawed individuals stoically operating within it, giving their actions a sense of greatness.
WEAK STORYTELLING
There was a time when novelists weren't factory-produced automatons, but natural storytellers. Robert Louis Stevenson was called by South Pacific natives "Tusitala": Teller of Tales. Whether writing about detectives, pirates, or even bohemian artists in the hilarious novella "The Story of a Lie," Stevenson knew how to tell a story. There's a sense of adventure in all his works. The reader is eager to discover, "What happens next?"-- because of the enthusiasm Stevenson brought to his characters and settings. As all great novelists, he allows us to see every person, place, and plot with fresh eyes.
Enthusiasm isn't anywhere to be found in Franzen's The Corrections. The book is an expression of anti-enthusiasm. The characters move listlessly through a limbo-ed world, marooned among the mundane descriptive details of their environment; trapped in a dust-filled room with the rest of the furnishings. The people are affectless; with the pharmaceutical drug of the novel or without it. How could anyone ever tell the difference?
Which is fine if this is Franzen's goal-- but what reason does he give us to read his book? Fascinating characters? No. Great insight and knowledge? Little to be found. Compelling plot? Of course not!
The classic example of a storyteller achieving greatness as a novelist is Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers was enthusiastic and exciting; little else. When Dumas presents the same characters again many years later in The Vicomte de Braggelone the novelist has expanded in talent ten-fold. The tension of the interwoven threads of the story builds with irresistible force while at the same time Dumas presents the wide scope of society; the machinations of the political world. Amid the maneuverings, tragedies, and heart-racing excitement stands the iconic wearied soldier D'Artagnan, who represents in his person an entire code of life: an example to the other characters and to ourselves. The story is not narrowly constricted by details. It's expanded into a far-reaching experience of the world, of prisoners in dungeons and thrilling rides on horseback. It's spread further, deep into our hearts. The novel has reverberated through our souls with the enormous passion of its characters and the unrelenting power of the great story it tells.
Literature is the greatest art form because it has the greatest soul.
PAINT-BY-THE-NUMBERS
Film is being revolutionized through low-budget auteurs editing footage on the Internet; exemplified by Patrick King's promo ULA DVD "The Masked Professor," or by shocking works of realism and insanity like Jonathan Caouette's "Tarnation," which makes John Waters look like Walt Disney and every Hollywood filmmaker who lived appear to be standing in cement.
Underground writers are doing with literature what Caouette does with movies, taking words outside the refined restrictive box of academies and conglomerates into the crazed realism of the actual world. James Nowlan's Security destroys the pretenders of literature, this nation's conformist Benjamin Kunkels who think there's a rulebook for being transgressive or different; "Write Like Kafka in Five Easy Steps": endlessly imitative; who've never untethered themselves from their brainwashing long enough to be able to discover a new path, which a James Nowlan does without trying by being himself.
The difference between the pampered house pets of Approved Literature, and the wild beaten-up undomesticated article knocking over trash cans and crying on streetcorners is stark. The pets won't acknowledge our existence. How could they! Tagged and collared house cats resting on pillows on posh sofas in the mansion, well-scrubbed and brushed, they discourse among themselves with precisely modulated meows, mocking the "privileged few" who exist, somewhere, perhaps in the even larger house up the road. They know little about the harsh struggle of the outside world-- have pattered through it once or twice on bejeweled leashes in-between the constant brushing they endure in order to win ribbons at the next cat show.
Taken in their cages down the walk to the parked car to travel to the show, the pets shiver at the cold, and glance for a moment at eyes peering out from trees and bushes in the snow.
The authentic underground writer isn't fit for a cat show. Most of us are wacked-out to the max. Look at the teeth of a Frank Walsh, at his taped-up eyeglasses, at his workingman's hands representing decades of struggle, then read the unbought unregulated genius of his poems and prose and you'll see something is desperately wrong with the realm of Literature. It's a world of mansions of illusions of greatness; the ribboned pets at the show original and insightful only among themselves; staring arrogantly at one another from inside their cages as wealthy matrons gush over them, and their Masters move their cages about. The n+1 Abyssinians, who were briefly toward the back of the hall, causing frown-faced disgruntlement among them, are moved closer to the front. They notice a large Maine Coon in a fancy cage festooned with red and blue ribbons. Jonathan Franzen. They've arrived at the big-time, as designated by The New Yorker and the New York Times, who are there to cover the well-organized well-controlled event.
Do the pets know anything about being a cat? Is the Franzen animal, with correctly-spelled well-controlled sentences unlike what bedraggled James Nowlan does, really a great novelist?
******************************************************
Machine products like Franzen aren't natural writers. They're artificial creations, and so their creations likewise seem artificial. "I want to be a writer!" they say when they begin their training. "Turn me into one."
In a limited sense this can be done. The would-be writer works diligently on his story, in his workshop pounding the clunky object into shape, hammering out the rough spots, going through draft after draft, making it moderately readable, if not compelling, so that at the end of his labors the result resembles a story. It may even win awards, as stories of writers like Tom Beller and so many others have done, given by other well-trained lit writers able to spot the ably finished product absent snags or bumps, but lacking also emotion, opinion, force, and truth.
I'm reminded of an essay of mine about zeens published in Open City in the 1990's. Editor Beller tried to impose his unwieldy training, his stiff New Yorker standards, upon a zeen rant with its own internal rhythmns, its vastly different dynamics.
(Message to Van Gogh: "Paint inside the lines, please.")
The writing instructor: You can't write about this and you can't write about that!
ULA writers: Each has his or her own vision about what makes a story. They've developed their own art, by their lights, so what you see from each of them is unique, and when you put them together the reader is given not endless homogenization, but a kaleidoscope of standards, styles, and aesthetic ideas. We might be more likely to discover a Stephen Crane, a self-publisher whose writing was all over the place.
The instructor's voice barges in: "Stay inside the lines, sir. Please remain inside the lines!"
The epitomy of the literary writer is Jonathan Franzen. The quintessential establishment pet, diligently following direction and performing by the rules until finally being rewarded, after countless grants and advances, with large promotional backing for The Corrections. He does everything so well! The handlers are pleased with him. He writes with approved literary style and while he's at it throws in a (weak) imitation of meaning and ideas. His book justifies the entire expensive university/foundation/conglomerate process.
It looks like a novel. If you don't expect too much from the novels you buy, like great excitement and flow, it reads like one. Sort of.
Franzen is a Frankenstein monster, as is his book, put together in a laboratory with various accummulated parts. There it goes!-- out into the world, as its agents and editors look on proudly. Mechanically it travels across the landscape, up hills and down, arms swinging stiffly, eyes staring blankly ahead, the pages turning, turning, with great effort but turning all the same, a painful slog. The monster covers distance because it's inexhaustible, you can see it motoring slowly over the horizon, not sure where it's destined but continuing on, almost like a real person or a real novel.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
The Co-Optors
I spoke with ULA poet Frank Walsh last night. We agreed that the mini-conclave a little over a week ago here in Philly was a successful get-together, highlighted by performances by guests Shawn Terreri and Natalie Felix, as well as special guest Jessica Disobedience (aka "Edna Million") and the usual ULA suspects. Some special guests like Philly novelist Larry Richette were in the audience. I didn't do follow-up hype for it because it wasn't a ULA show, but a modest reading; more a semi-private affair. Full of energy for all that.
We haven't adequately done follow-up noise about the great ULA Cleveland trio of shows, which were hugely successful. The ULA is alive and well.
In our conversation, Walsh and I agreed that the biggest threat to undergrounders isn't the demi-puppets, who can't be blamed for their cattle-like behavior anymore than, well, cattle can! No, far more dangerous are those who would intentionally co-opt our stance without reality behind it. This is why I've criticized n+1, once I realized they were frauds more intent on preserving and protecting the status quo-- literary things as they are-- than changing it.
Walsh and I both have felt for years that our very existence as writers, as performers and noise-makers, is under threat. The establishment would just as soon we not exist. They would prefer to wipe us out-- because we're the genuine article. This feeling, exaggerated or not, is very real. And isn't it true? Hasn't there been a nonstop assault on the American working class for twenty years? I wrote about this in a long essay for a lit-mag in 1994. Things are worse now.
We fear those who would co-opt our standing and appropriate our message.
We haven't adequately done follow-up noise about the great ULA Cleveland trio of shows, which were hugely successful. The ULA is alive and well.
In our conversation, Walsh and I agreed that the biggest threat to undergrounders isn't the demi-puppets, who can't be blamed for their cattle-like behavior anymore than, well, cattle can! No, far more dangerous are those who would intentionally co-opt our stance without reality behind it. This is why I've criticized n+1, once I realized they were frauds more intent on preserving and protecting the status quo-- literary things as they are-- than changing it.
Walsh and I both have felt for years that our very existence as writers, as performers and noise-makers, is under threat. The establishment would just as soon we not exist. They would prefer to wipe us out-- because we're the genuine article. This feeling, exaggerated or not, is very real. And isn't it true? Hasn't there been a nonstop assault on the American working class for twenty years? I wrote about this in a long essay for a lit-mag in 1994. Things are worse now.
We fear those who would co-opt our standing and appropriate our message.
Theoretical Diarrhea
The reason the novel is dying is because of Theory. Self-important establishment writers can write novels only with books of Theory stacked high beside them; Theories upon Theories about the novel. They add more Theory upon that. They phone university presses to assure themselves more books about Theory are on the way. "Ship them to me overnight!"
At one time, authors like Dickens just wrote the things. All the novelist needs is knowledge of the world and life and the ability to tell a story.
At one time, authors like Dickens just wrote the things. All the novelist needs is knowledge of the world and life and the ability to tell a story.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Taking Bets
Now that I've scribbled out a few thousand passable words to a novel about Detroit, I'm accepting bets regarding my original claim: that it'll blow Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections out of the water. (I expect Mr. Franzen, if he believes in his own work, and who's not hurting for cash, to put up a hundred.)
I expect antagonists of mine to jump at this. They can choose any esteemed lit critic they want to call it, once my book is further along. How can they possibly lose the bet?
My thinking: I don't have NEA, PEN, Guggenheim, MacArthur, et.al. grants up the ass like establishment pets have. I need some other incentive! (Writing novels is a notoriously inefficient use of one's time, unless you're in with the right crowd.)
(I'm also scribbling out a short play. . . .)
I expect antagonists of mine to jump at this. They can choose any esteemed lit critic they want to call it, once my book is further along. How can they possibly lose the bet?
My thinking: I don't have NEA, PEN, Guggenheim, MacArthur, et.al. grants up the ass like establishment pets have. I need some other incentive! (Writing novels is a notoriously inefficient use of one's time, unless you're in with the right crowd.)
(I'm also scribbling out a short play. . . .)
Saturday, August 19, 2006
New Feature
DEMI-PUPPET OF THE MONTH!
The first winner of this prestigious new award will be announced on one of the last days of August, to celebrate the demi-puppet who made the biggest contribution during the past month to the cause of establishment literature. Suggestions are welcomed.
The first winner of this prestigious new award will be announced on one of the last days of August, to celebrate the demi-puppet who made the biggest contribution during the past month to the cause of establishment literature. Suggestions are welcomed.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
ULA Action
The ULA's temporary stagnation shows what happens to a group which becomes too dependent on one aspect, such as a web site. To counteract this dependence I'm restarting our snail-mail PR campaign which was so successful in our first days.
ULA ROCKETGRAMS
To supplement the arguments on this blog I'll be mailing colorful well-reasoned one-page arguments to a variety of lit-establishment targets-- to let them know the ULA campaign is ongoing. Our purpose as a group-- the reason the ULA was created-- is to lobby for the cause of underground writers. For instance: What good are Lefty magazines like The Nation if they give attention and publicity only to conglomerate monopoly writers from the MonoClass? We need to call them on their hypocrisy.
I plan to issue these mailings monthly. They will be strictly external to the ULA; part of our activist campaign. Mailings designed to strengthen the ULA's unity are the arena now of others in the ULA, including new Director Patrick King.
Any demi-puppet or Overdog can ensure receiving the new broadsides by sending $5 cash (or check payable to K. Wenclas) for 12 issues to me at PO Box 42077, Philadelphia PA 19101. (This covers my expenses.) Include a name or title and address-- whether for yourself or for any publishing/literary/academy person or office you want to receive them. The outbursts will name names and are guaranteed to be exciting.
ULA ACTION UNIT
This is a new team within the ULA team. Its purpose will be to generate focused pro-ULA propaganda, through snail mail or e-mail, on a consistent basis. Other ULAers are welcome to sign on board. For now this unit has one member: me.
The renewed noise is only beginning.
ULA ROCKETGRAMS
To supplement the arguments on this blog I'll be mailing colorful well-reasoned one-page arguments to a variety of lit-establishment targets-- to let them know the ULA campaign is ongoing. Our purpose as a group-- the reason the ULA was created-- is to lobby for the cause of underground writers. For instance: What good are Lefty magazines like The Nation if they give attention and publicity only to conglomerate monopoly writers from the MonoClass? We need to call them on their hypocrisy.
I plan to issue these mailings monthly. They will be strictly external to the ULA; part of our activist campaign. Mailings designed to strengthen the ULA's unity are the arena now of others in the ULA, including new Director Patrick King.
Any demi-puppet or Overdog can ensure receiving the new broadsides by sending $5 cash (or check payable to K. Wenclas) for 12 issues to me at PO Box 42077, Philadelphia PA 19101. (This covers my expenses.) Include a name or title and address-- whether for yourself or for any publishing/literary/academy person or office you want to receive them. The outbursts will name names and are guaranteed to be exciting.
ULA ACTION UNIT
This is a new team within the ULA team. Its purpose will be to generate focused pro-ULA propaganda, through snail mail or e-mail, on a consistent basis. Other ULAers are welcome to sign on board. For now this unit has one member: me.
The renewed noise is only beginning.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Upcoming
It looks like I won't be quite as strapped for time as I thought I might be. This will allow me to put down a few words to my proposed novel, but also to improve this blog.
UPCOMING in future posts:
-"The Problem of Franzen Part II"
-"Calamitous Nonsense by Marsha Pretzl: A Novel"
-"The Miseducation Scam Part III"
and a lot of other good stuff.
UPCOMING in future posts:
-"The Problem of Franzen Part II"
-"Calamitous Nonsense by Marsha Pretzl: A Novel"
-"The Miseducation Scam Part III"
and a lot of other good stuff.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Links
I've finally figured out how to add links to this blog. If you want your site or blog added, please e-mail me. All that I ask is for you to link this blog on your blog or site! (Or inform me if it already is. Thanks!)
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Meet the ULA
Frank Walsh is hosting an impromptu ULA event this Sunday, August 13th, 3:30 pm, at Kaffa Crossing, a restaurant at 4423 Chestnut Street in West Philly. Special Guest is Jessica Disobedience from Chicago, who'll be reading. A few others of us will likely read as well-- then we'll have a discussion about literature and its future, and a question-answer period. ALL are welcome; friend, foe, or curious onlooker. I'm told the affair will be very informal, so just show up, watch the poetry, order food, and hang out. We'll see ya there!
Friday, August 04, 2006
The Mystery of Talent Part III
Amazing the either-or simplistic mindset of brainwashed factory products of the literary establishment.
When I speak of natural writing talent I'm not talking about genetics. What a robotic conception these people have of humans!-- as if we were all created in petri dishes.
A person may feel more deeply than others from a variety of causes-- most undoubtedly environmental. Maybe he or she was bounced around in the womb, or starved of proper nourishment. Maybe the mother was an alcoholic or crack addict. Maybe the youngster faced a thousand hardships yelled-at abused pushed into corners hiding from the violence of life or society from gigantic 19th-century factories obscuring the sky the child running hiding finding companionship in urban tunnels with stray cats, growing a nascent sympathy for the most downtrodden of God's creations. How does one explain Dickens's vast humanity and feeling? Did his talent have anything to do with his own "Hard Times," his years of child labor? Did that influence his art? Gee, I don't know. What do you think?
My focus is on preserving and announcing natural talent once it exists. A natural writer is a natural writer-- Bill Blackolive a classic example, capturing in his voice the dialect rhythmns and life of the gritty east Texas world around him. I don't know what created him-- an intermix of influences. As a writer he's a force of nature impossible to measure or quantify, restrict or tame, as the machine operators of Literature want to do with every product they designate "writer" with proper MFA stamp of approval. He's not one of the robots.
The zeen movement of the 90's spawned not writers from test tubes or factories, but, like musician Buddy Holly, purposeful creations of themselves. The three best writers of all of the zeen talents, better than the best of the men like Aaron Cometbus and Michael Jackman, were young women; two of them who were in their teens, the other scarcely out them. The two carried zeen names-- Jennifer Gogglebox and Ammi Emergency. The other was briefly a member of the ULA.
Their zeens were explosive-- raw writing talent unlike anything seen since Stephen Crane; literary versions of a young unharnessed Elvis. Their sentences raged with rhythmn, energy, and feeling; loud, colorful, vulgar, angry, and sexy. Phenomenal talents, all three. ALREADY they blew away the very best of the established literary scene. They were Mary Gaitskill without the restrictive training; Gaitskill Untamed.
What happened to the three? Maybe they themselves will someday say. With the possible exception of Ammi, these once-striking talents represent at this time Potential Unrealized.
Everyone knows where I stand on this question. Natural talent needs not an institutionalized school, not a conforming factory, not to be regulated or screened, squelched and compressed, rough edges smoothed, unique voice taken away, served up in Mao jacket like any other stamped-out commodity of the machine. Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and others who changed the face of music did so with the help of promoters like Sam Phillips and Norman Petty who understood the new and operated independent of the conglomerate regime.
Current ULA zeen babe Jessica Disobedience, a huge hit in Cleveland, will be visiting Philly this upcoming week. Maybe she can become part of a new stable of talent, with Frank Walsh, Patrick King, Eric Broomfield, and others, which we're slowly putting together in this city.
When I speak of natural writing talent I'm not talking about genetics. What a robotic conception these people have of humans!-- as if we were all created in petri dishes.
A person may feel more deeply than others from a variety of causes-- most undoubtedly environmental. Maybe he or she was bounced around in the womb, or starved of proper nourishment. Maybe the mother was an alcoholic or crack addict. Maybe the youngster faced a thousand hardships yelled-at abused pushed into corners hiding from the violence of life or society from gigantic 19th-century factories obscuring the sky the child running hiding finding companionship in urban tunnels with stray cats, growing a nascent sympathy for the most downtrodden of God's creations. How does one explain Dickens's vast humanity and feeling? Did his talent have anything to do with his own "Hard Times," his years of child labor? Did that influence his art? Gee, I don't know. What do you think?
My focus is on preserving and announcing natural talent once it exists. A natural writer is a natural writer-- Bill Blackolive a classic example, capturing in his voice the dialect rhythmns and life of the gritty east Texas world around him. I don't know what created him-- an intermix of influences. As a writer he's a force of nature impossible to measure or quantify, restrict or tame, as the machine operators of Literature want to do with every product they designate "writer" with proper MFA stamp of approval. He's not one of the robots.
The zeen movement of the 90's spawned not writers from test tubes or factories, but, like musician Buddy Holly, purposeful creations of themselves. The three best writers of all of the zeen talents, better than the best of the men like Aaron Cometbus and Michael Jackman, were young women; two of them who were in their teens, the other scarcely out them. The two carried zeen names-- Jennifer Gogglebox and Ammi Emergency. The other was briefly a member of the ULA.
Their zeens were explosive-- raw writing talent unlike anything seen since Stephen Crane; literary versions of a young unharnessed Elvis. Their sentences raged with rhythmn, energy, and feeling; loud, colorful, vulgar, angry, and sexy. Phenomenal talents, all three. ALREADY they blew away the very best of the established literary scene. They were Mary Gaitskill without the restrictive training; Gaitskill Untamed.
What happened to the three? Maybe they themselves will someday say. With the possible exception of Ammi, these once-striking talents represent at this time Potential Unrealized.
Everyone knows where I stand on this question. Natural talent needs not an institutionalized school, not a conforming factory, not to be regulated or screened, squelched and compressed, rough edges smoothed, unique voice taken away, served up in Mao jacket like any other stamped-out commodity of the machine. Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and others who changed the face of music did so with the help of promoters like Sam Phillips and Norman Petty who understood the new and operated independent of the conglomerate regime.
Current ULA zeen babe Jessica Disobedience, a huge hit in Cleveland, will be visiting Philly this upcoming week. Maybe she can become part of a new stable of talent, with Frank Walsh, Patrick King, Eric Broomfield, and others, which we're slowly putting together in this city.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Crimes Against Literature: Janet Maslin
The New York Times remains an important venue for book reviewing. A positive write-up in its pages signals to the rest of the mass media machine that an author is worth lauding.
This past Monday, July 31, Janet Maslin came through with a rave review of yet another rich kid prep school novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Columbia grad Marisha Pessl. The novel is about a young woman and her professor father. According to Maslin it's filled with "tireless annotations and digressions," a "mock-academic" title, and "literary attributions or historical antecedents for every thought," some of them bogus. Sound exciting? Maslin admits we live in a world "wholly without need for additions to its Prep School Confidential bibliography." Still, she loved the book.
Maybe Pessl's novel really is as good as Janet Maslin claims. More likely it fulfills its intent: appealing to bonded members of the Establishment Literary Club.
Marisha Pessl's novel sounds like another example of information in place of knowledge and wisdom; yet one more literary product with an off-putting title and constant off-putting references: superficial reminders of one's expensive overeducation in the pattern of today's trendy lit scene from n+1 to McSweeney's. The motive is to separate themselves from the rest of the population. (Here's a case when Jonathan Franzen's reading of Thorsten Veblen may actually mean something. In place of the conspicuous consumption of products the elite, Franzen included, now rely on the conspicuous but meaningless flaunting of the names of intellectual theorists. Footnotes have replaced tails and top hat with this bunch. Thorsten Veblen isn't an author of ideas so much as a name to drop. Veblen has become a top hat.)
We're witnessing the suicide of an art form. Writers and publishers are deliberately narrowing their audience. For Insider Janet Maslin, Pessl's book is right up her alley. By hyping one more in an endless stream of prep-school lit, Maslin participates in the narrowing of literature.
Literature's Dirty Little Secret is that literary overdogs don't WANT the art to reach anyone outside their exclusive club. They figure the rest of us are illiterate economic slaves with no desire or need to read. The mystery of books is reserved for themselves. Anyway, this is the path they're on.
Would the Times choose an underground writer or editor to review an underground novelist? What if we arrange the re-release of the classic Fred Woodworth work Dream World? What about the upcoming release of ULA novels by Wred Fright and James Nowlan-- or the current release of books by Leopold McGinnis and Jack Saunders? But wait! Those are productions outside the Mono-Class to which Maslin and Pessl belong. These books might actually broaden literature's audience.
By its choices, the New York Times contributes to the ghettoization of an art.
This past Monday, July 31, Janet Maslin came through with a rave review of yet another rich kid prep school novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Columbia grad Marisha Pessl. The novel is about a young woman and her professor father. According to Maslin it's filled with "tireless annotations and digressions," a "mock-academic" title, and "literary attributions or historical antecedents for every thought," some of them bogus. Sound exciting? Maslin admits we live in a world "wholly without need for additions to its Prep School Confidential bibliography." Still, she loved the book.
Maybe Pessl's novel really is as good as Janet Maslin claims. More likely it fulfills its intent: appealing to bonded members of the Establishment Literary Club.
Marisha Pessl's novel sounds like another example of information in place of knowledge and wisdom; yet one more literary product with an off-putting title and constant off-putting references: superficial reminders of one's expensive overeducation in the pattern of today's trendy lit scene from n+1 to McSweeney's. The motive is to separate themselves from the rest of the population. (Here's a case when Jonathan Franzen's reading of Thorsten Veblen may actually mean something. In place of the conspicuous consumption of products the elite, Franzen included, now rely on the conspicuous but meaningless flaunting of the names of intellectual theorists. Footnotes have replaced tails and top hat with this bunch. Thorsten Veblen isn't an author of ideas so much as a name to drop. Veblen has become a top hat.)
We're witnessing the suicide of an art form. Writers and publishers are deliberately narrowing their audience. For Insider Janet Maslin, Pessl's book is right up her alley. By hyping one more in an endless stream of prep-school lit, Maslin participates in the narrowing of literature.
Literature's Dirty Little Secret is that literary overdogs don't WANT the art to reach anyone outside their exclusive club. They figure the rest of us are illiterate economic slaves with no desire or need to read. The mystery of books is reserved for themselves. Anyway, this is the path they're on.
Would the Times choose an underground writer or editor to review an underground novelist? What if we arrange the re-release of the classic Fred Woodworth work Dream World? What about the upcoming release of ULA novels by Wred Fright and James Nowlan-- or the current release of books by Leopold McGinnis and Jack Saunders? But wait! Those are productions outside the Mono-Class to which Maslin and Pessl belong. These books might actually broaden literature's audience.
By its choices, the New York Times contributes to the ghettoization of an art.
Literary Gentrification
Beware the literary gentrifiers preppy corporate chain writers moving like Starbucks into the neighborhoods of undergrounders co-opting us bulldozing us obliterating us removing the genuine article so they take up all space with their latte coffee poses and their artistic showiness.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The Problem of Jonathan Franzen
I met a demi-puppet writer at Dirty Frank's several weeks ago. After winning (to his surprise) a bet with him about Ingemar Bergman movies; after listening for two hours to his praise of contemporary establishment novelists, I bet the character five dollars that I could write a better novel than Franzen's The Corrections.
The question is whether I'll ever have nine years, as Franzen did, to do nothing else but write such novel. I'd settle for nine months-- or nine weeks. (It's unlikely I'll have nine days.)
I have to admit I've never read The Corrections in its entirety. I've made half-a-dozen tries. The first several attempts I couldn't get past the detail disease of the first pages; a word-clotted dense mass of uninteresting verbiage.
I've since gotten further, not by much. "Chip," some kind of academy-dwelling 35 year-old adult Baby, is one of the most uninteresting characters ever written. After a few pages about drooling rich people we find stooge Chip at the airport waiting for Mom and Dad, pouting over the prospect like a ten year-old. I flip a few pages ahead. Chip, teaching at a university (what else?) has a crush on one of his arrogant female students. Chip stumbles around, carrying a book by Thorsten Veblen under his arm: his sole touchstone to understanding the world. He can't use experience as a guide; he's had none. He's been in the bubble of the fake programmed "ideas" of the institutional educational system his entire life. Very boring. A slow going slog indeed.
Something is funny about the setting. Franzen, who lived for a decade off grant money, is no long-time resident of universities. Why choose this role for his character? Will it obtain the immediate recognition and sympathy of the bulk of the literary community? Aha! Maybe Franzen is not quite as stupid as he appears. He knows that a mono-class of the overeducated dominates literature now.
Anyway, it's a terrible book. I've read ENOUGH of it to know that. An unending coagulated mass of literary shit. The Corrections is an expulsion of upper-middle class excrement. If it's accurate-- if these are the spineless confused febrile people who run this society-- then this country truly is doomed and one shouldn't feel too bad about the upcoming collapse. If our great America really has morphed into just a great collection of self-absorbed silliness; of decrepit rich old man Alfred and his no less mentally decrepit son, as portrayed by a mentally decrepit novelist, then the sleeper cells of crazed Islamic fanatics we're told about who are nauseated by the vomitry of our civilization should have an easy time of it. Arrogant women; weak men; encroaching academy-caused cultural senility afflicting male and female, young and old alike; people who believe in nothing, not even themselves. This the depressing picture given by the endlessly long endlessly detailed endlessly stultifying endlessly imbecilic first section of the highly-praised novel. Robotic characters dwelling in a robotic world. Stiff, mechanical, insular, with a few simplistic ideas thrown in to satisfy self-important demi-puppets who applaud themselves continually over their expensive educations.
Writing a better novel isn't the question. I could blindfold myself at one of Jelly Boy the Clown's carnival shows with pen and paper in front of me and come up with a better one-- some scrawled inscrutabilities in the resulting text, maybe, but with way more truth, energy, and hope.
The question is whether I'll ever have nine years, as Franzen did, to do nothing else but write such novel. I'd settle for nine months-- or nine weeks. (It's unlikely I'll have nine days.)
I have to admit I've never read The Corrections in its entirety. I've made half-a-dozen tries. The first several attempts I couldn't get past the detail disease of the first pages; a word-clotted dense mass of uninteresting verbiage.
I've since gotten further, not by much. "Chip," some kind of academy-dwelling 35 year-old adult Baby, is one of the most uninteresting characters ever written. After a few pages about drooling rich people we find stooge Chip at the airport waiting for Mom and Dad, pouting over the prospect like a ten year-old. I flip a few pages ahead. Chip, teaching at a university (what else?) has a crush on one of his arrogant female students. Chip stumbles around, carrying a book by Thorsten Veblen under his arm: his sole touchstone to understanding the world. He can't use experience as a guide; he's had none. He's been in the bubble of the fake programmed "ideas" of the institutional educational system his entire life. Very boring. A slow going slog indeed.
Something is funny about the setting. Franzen, who lived for a decade off grant money, is no long-time resident of universities. Why choose this role for his character? Will it obtain the immediate recognition and sympathy of the bulk of the literary community? Aha! Maybe Franzen is not quite as stupid as he appears. He knows that a mono-class of the overeducated dominates literature now.
Anyway, it's a terrible book. I've read ENOUGH of it to know that. An unending coagulated mass of literary shit. The Corrections is an expulsion of upper-middle class excrement. If it's accurate-- if these are the spineless confused febrile people who run this society-- then this country truly is doomed and one shouldn't feel too bad about the upcoming collapse. If our great America really has morphed into just a great collection of self-absorbed silliness; of decrepit rich old man Alfred and his no less mentally decrepit son, as portrayed by a mentally decrepit novelist, then the sleeper cells of crazed Islamic fanatics we're told about who are nauseated by the vomitry of our civilization should have an easy time of it. Arrogant women; weak men; encroaching academy-caused cultural senility afflicting male and female, young and old alike; people who believe in nothing, not even themselves. This the depressing picture given by the endlessly long endlessly detailed endlessly stultifying endlessly imbecilic first section of the highly-praised novel. Robotic characters dwelling in a robotic world. Stiff, mechanical, insular, with a few simplistic ideas thrown in to satisfy self-important demi-puppets who applaud themselves continually over their expensive educations.
Writing a better novel isn't the question. I could blindfold myself at one of Jelly Boy the Clown's carnival shows with pen and paper in front of me and come up with a better one-- some scrawled inscrutabilities in the resulting text, maybe, but with way more truth, energy, and hope.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Buddy Holly Died for Our Sins
Buddy Holly's death was like a mythic sacrifice, plane dropping from an icy sky into the frozen American heartland, the blood of Holly and his compatriots flowing over the ground, replenishing rock n' roll so that the music didn't die as maybe it should've. Instead it lived another few decades before eventually (after Kurt Cobain's death-- the last great original rock talent) fading away.
The last six months of Buddy Holly's life remain a mystery. He seemed on a hectic pace to cram as much activity as possible into these weeks, as if he knew he hadn't much longer to live: The mystery of Holly's sudden marriage to a woman he scarcely knew one month after Peggy Sue married drummer Jerry Allison. (Allison's drumming is omnipresent on Holly's recordings.) Ostensibly because of a dispute with producer Norman Petty, Holly broke from the Crickets and fled to New York City. (Yet he and new bride Maria Elena invited Peggy Sue and Jerry Allison along on their honeymoon in Mexico City.)
There's the mystery of Buddy Holly's final recordings found as from beyond the grave on his Ampex tape recording machine.
It may be that artistic genius is marked by an ability to feel more deeply than ordinary people. The last recordings show that Buddy Holly felt very deeply indeed. They're imbued with yearning, loneliness, and melancholy. "What to Do," "Crying, Waiting, Hoping," "Learning the Game," and "Peggy Sue Got Married" are not the products of someone who's just happily wed!
"You recall a girl who's been in nearly every song" he reveals in the second recording named after her. He named the first one, "Peggy Sue," after her supposedly only at Jerry Allison's request. Yet the song makes sense with no other name. Any other name would destroy the relentless alliteration: "Pretty pretty pretty pretty Peggy Sue." What other Sue could he have been thinking of, anyway, than the beautiful ubiquitous presence of the band's narrow small town life?
Another strange part of the story is that for Buddy Holly the "music died" before the plane crash. Holly was no longer able to crack the Top 40. He signed on to the shoddy Midwest "Winter Dance Party" because he was barely able to pay the rent on he and his bride's cold Greenwich Village apartment. Elvis was in the army; other stars vanished for other reasons. Rock, at that time still a rinky-dink flash-in-the-pan movement, seemed to many to be over.
Considering it included some of the biggest remaining names in rock n' roll, like Holly, Dion, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, the Winter Dance Party was a pathetically low-budget, marginal affair. How big could rock have been? They played for small sums in gyms and VFW halls for hick teenage residents of cow pasture towns far from any semblance of a real city.
Earlier that cold, cold winter, before Holly departed, he left a handful of last recordings on his Ampex machine. Genius recordings. Who got them after his death? Were Norman Petty and Jerry Allison involved in the later overdubbing? This would have been appropriate.
Rock music didn't die that night. It was resurrected. The plane crash became legendary. A Buddy Holly song went to #1 in Britain, hugely influencing the Beatles, Stones, and most of the rest of the bands who became the British invasion a few years later.
It's a mythic story; unreal. Peggy Sue; Maria Elena. Nothing is logical or certain about any of the tale.
We're left finally with the image of a plane falling out of a frigid night sky.
The last six months of Buddy Holly's life remain a mystery. He seemed on a hectic pace to cram as much activity as possible into these weeks, as if he knew he hadn't much longer to live: The mystery of Holly's sudden marriage to a woman he scarcely knew one month after Peggy Sue married drummer Jerry Allison. (Allison's drumming is omnipresent on Holly's recordings.) Ostensibly because of a dispute with producer Norman Petty, Holly broke from the Crickets and fled to New York City. (Yet he and new bride Maria Elena invited Peggy Sue and Jerry Allison along on their honeymoon in Mexico City.)
There's the mystery of Buddy Holly's final recordings found as from beyond the grave on his Ampex tape recording machine.
It may be that artistic genius is marked by an ability to feel more deeply than ordinary people. The last recordings show that Buddy Holly felt very deeply indeed. They're imbued with yearning, loneliness, and melancholy. "What to Do," "Crying, Waiting, Hoping," "Learning the Game," and "Peggy Sue Got Married" are not the products of someone who's just happily wed!
"You recall a girl who's been in nearly every song" he reveals in the second recording named after her. He named the first one, "Peggy Sue," after her supposedly only at Jerry Allison's request. Yet the song makes sense with no other name. Any other name would destroy the relentless alliteration: "Pretty pretty pretty pretty Peggy Sue." What other Sue could he have been thinking of, anyway, than the beautiful ubiquitous presence of the band's narrow small town life?
Another strange part of the story is that for Buddy Holly the "music died" before the plane crash. Holly was no longer able to crack the Top 40. He signed on to the shoddy Midwest "Winter Dance Party" because he was barely able to pay the rent on he and his bride's cold Greenwich Village apartment. Elvis was in the army; other stars vanished for other reasons. Rock, at that time still a rinky-dink flash-in-the-pan movement, seemed to many to be over.
Considering it included some of the biggest remaining names in rock n' roll, like Holly, Dion, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, the Winter Dance Party was a pathetically low-budget, marginal affair. How big could rock have been? They played for small sums in gyms and VFW halls for hick teenage residents of cow pasture towns far from any semblance of a real city.
Earlier that cold, cold winter, before Holly departed, he left a handful of last recordings on his Ampex machine. Genius recordings. Who got them after his death? Were Norman Petty and Jerry Allison involved in the later overdubbing? This would have been appropriate.
Rock music didn't die that night. It was resurrected. The plane crash became legendary. A Buddy Holly song went to #1 in Britain, hugely influencing the Beatles, Stones, and most of the rest of the bands who became the British invasion a few years later.
It's a mythic story; unreal. Peggy Sue; Maria Elena. Nothing is logical or certain about any of the tale.
We're left finally with the image of a plane falling out of a frigid night sky.
Where's Wood?
No response from James Wood to the ULA-style rockets lobbed in his direction with this blog's review of his book. He remains hunkered down in shelter.
Of course, as a Protector of Literature, Wood isn't allowed to break down the wall surrounding his kind to respond. To do so would be to break the rules of the literary club. His membership card and entrance pass would be taken from him.
In truth, I went easy on him. I focused on his supposed strength-- religion-- when I examined his review of writer J.F. Powers. In so doing, I quickly realized James Wood is a fraud.
I've yet to address Powers's most renowned story. Wood says there's no spirituality in J.F. Powers's work. Yet when one realizes the indirect influence of Buddhism on Powers, everything falls into place. There's no spirituality in Powers, Wood claims-- yet "Lions, Harts, Leaping Does" is one of the most spiritual stories ever written.
Wood missed this because he's purely a mechanistic writer-- like so many, a manufactured product; a robot. Trained to view writing not as a living thing which vibrates, alive; with a soul (in Frank Walsh's words, "with music"), Wood sees literature only as a crafted object; words sanded smooth then pounded together with a hammer.
Wood the supposed expert on Christianity missed that the religion at its core is a layer of Buddhism atop the foundation of the Old Testament, with a smattering of Greek mystery cultism thrown in. A pacifist who (like Kenneth Rexroth) was a Conscientious Objector during World War II, J.F. Powers saw in his religion mainly the Buddhist part of it. This is reflected in his writings.
J.F. Powers was one of the best American story writers-- yet I can't find a book of his in any monopoly chain store. (There are, however, thousands of ridiculous preppy "Chick Lit" novels, and other junk, cramming the shelves.) The tragedy of literature now.
Of course, as a Protector of Literature, Wood isn't allowed to break down the wall surrounding his kind to respond. To do so would be to break the rules of the literary club. His membership card and entrance pass would be taken from him.
In truth, I went easy on him. I focused on his supposed strength-- religion-- when I examined his review of writer J.F. Powers. In so doing, I quickly realized James Wood is a fraud.
I've yet to address Powers's most renowned story. Wood says there's no spirituality in J.F. Powers's work. Yet when one realizes the indirect influence of Buddhism on Powers, everything falls into place. There's no spirituality in Powers, Wood claims-- yet "Lions, Harts, Leaping Does" is one of the most spiritual stories ever written.
Wood missed this because he's purely a mechanistic writer-- like so many, a manufactured product; a robot. Trained to view writing not as a living thing which vibrates, alive; with a soul (in Frank Walsh's words, "with music"), Wood sees literature only as a crafted object; words sanded smooth then pounded together with a hammer.
Wood the supposed expert on Christianity missed that the religion at its core is a layer of Buddhism atop the foundation of the Old Testament, with a smattering of Greek mystery cultism thrown in. A pacifist who (like Kenneth Rexroth) was a Conscientious Objector during World War II, J.F. Powers saw in his religion mainly the Buddhist part of it. This is reflected in his writings.
J.F. Powers was one of the best American story writers-- yet I can't find a book of his in any monopoly chain store. (There are, however, thousands of ridiculous preppy "Chick Lit" novels, and other junk, cramming the shelves.) The tragedy of literature now.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
New ULA Director
This past Thursday night I met Frank Walsh and Patrick King at the Irish Pub between 11th and 12th on Walnut Street. There we affirmed the upcoming announcement of Pat King as new ULA Director. We've gotten the support-- at least not the objection!-- of the rest of the team to this long-needed long-awaited move.
Also present at the meeting were local photographer Geoff Hall, as well as Scooter the Cat, who seems to be kind of a fixture at the Pub.
Pat outlined his ideas for future ULA progress. He and Frank will be spearheading things on the east coast, Frank acting as lead talent and prime motivator to ensure our new Director remains on track! I'm cutting back my ULA activities the next couple months, but will offer advice and hopefully be available for local ULA meet-ups, especially during visits of ULAers from other parts of the country.
Wred's Cleveland readings generated tremendous excitement within the ULA team. He also obtained some fantastic local press coverage which we should get up on the site asap.
During our discussion I was given an early copy of the upcoming Slush Pile #5-- our Protest issue. It's very well done. Editor Steve Kostecke may be the most talented of all ULAers. Note his recent Monday Report at www.literaryrevolution.com, or his story "Auslanders Raus!" which is available somewhere. It's our hope, while the Philly chapter pushes the activist campaign forward, that Steve and other behind-the-scenes ULAers can do more to strengthen the foundations and unity of the organization itself.
The only contribution I noticed Scooter make to the discussion was trying to steal our food! (He/she spent most of the time resting comfortably between Frank and Geoff, occasionally reaching a paw up.)
This blog will of course continue on as before.
Also present at the meeting were local photographer Geoff Hall, as well as Scooter the Cat, who seems to be kind of a fixture at the Pub.
Pat outlined his ideas for future ULA progress. He and Frank will be spearheading things on the east coast, Frank acting as lead talent and prime motivator to ensure our new Director remains on track! I'm cutting back my ULA activities the next couple months, but will offer advice and hopefully be available for local ULA meet-ups, especially during visits of ULAers from other parts of the country.
Wred's Cleveland readings generated tremendous excitement within the ULA team. He also obtained some fantastic local press coverage which we should get up on the site asap.
During our discussion I was given an early copy of the upcoming Slush Pile #5-- our Protest issue. It's very well done. Editor Steve Kostecke may be the most talented of all ULAers. Note his recent Monday Report at www.literaryrevolution.com, or his story "Auslanders Raus!" which is available somewhere. It's our hope, while the Philly chapter pushes the activist campaign forward, that Steve and other behind-the-scenes ULAers can do more to strengthen the foundations and unity of the organization itself.
The only contribution I noticed Scooter make to the discussion was trying to steal our food! (He/she spent most of the time resting comfortably between Frank and Geoff, occasionally reaching a paw up.)
This blog will of course continue on as before.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Overrated James Wood
A Review of The Irresponsible Self.
"James Wood." "James Wood." "James Wood." That names pops up again and again in the journals of the established literary world-- the man behind the name applauded as our culture's top literary critic in place of ultra-constipated scared-to-make-waves demi-puppets like Sven Birkerts.
Read Wood's book of essays and the emotion which comes to the non-brainwashed person is one of disappointment. "Is that all there is?" A dozen or so nicely-written reviews by a nice person who uses a few nice-sounding phrases and after you've finished reading the book you remember nothing.
I recall the topics. The Catholic writer J.F. Powers is one of them. James Wood pretends to understand Powers's quaintly simple Midwestern priests with their quaintly simple Midwestern congregations; an objective observer standing outside the window.
James Wood is a confidently intelligent commentator in a plush armchair in a wood-panelled study, dressed in silk robe and blue slippers, pondering the intricacies of "Literature" while smoking a pipe. His fans note how old-fashioned he sounds. They're right. The sturdy, competent reviewer. There's comfort in reading him. The world has mutated distorted grown loudly insane around us. Inside the book of essays nothing has changed. It could be 1950 or 1850. Wood is completely out of date.
This is his appeal. His reviews are fenced-in by his limitations. The workmanlike reviewer obediently completing his assignment; an essay of prescribed length, strictly devoted to the problem at hand: the book in his lap. For today's moldering lit-crowd, competence is plenty.
Wood writes well enough not to pass as a mediocrity-- yet no other word better describes him. His reviews are smooth enough not to be plodding-- mediocre in their smoothness-- there's no imagination whatsoever about the format. The rules are strictly followed.
FEATURED AUTHOR: J.F. POWERS
For James Wood, J.F. Powers's tales of parishes and priests are devoid of spirituality, "the opposite of an advertisement for the church." For James Wood, Powers's "priestly heroes are ferociously unappealing . . . Powers is very threatening, and ought not to be easily enjoyed by Catholics. . . ." For James Wood, the mundane lives and settings in the novels and stories is all there is. To James Wood, Powers seems only to mock his characters, without joy; secretly he's angry and depressed.
Is this right?
Powers's "Zeal" pokes fun at an enthusiastic young priest on a train who argues against tipping; a priest who ineptly attempts to keep stray young men and women apart. By the end of the narrative this simpleton has become the hero of the story, "on his feet and trying, which was what counted in the sight of God, not success." A jaded Bishop who observes the priest's zealous actions is changed. The aggressive rock-like blockheaded priest is irresistible.
Near the beginning of the story Powers says, from the Bishop's point of view, "To share the command with such a man as Father Early, however, would be impossible. It would be to serve under him. . . ." The Bishop ends by doing exactly that. To him Father Early has become one of Christ's "twelve legions of angels."
What happened? "I'll tell you a secret, Bishop. When I was in seminary, they called me Crazy Early." Early is a type of Holy Fool made fun of only to be raised up. Powers isn't just someone who writes well, "a delicate stylist" as Wood would have it. Powers sets the reader up for a surprise payoff consistent with the threads of the narrative-- a moral surprise as well as one of plot. The esteemed Bishop humbles himself by helping the young priest with his flock-- in so doing rediscovering the humility of his religion's original message. Powers, who was a devout Catholic, depicts modest victories. In Powers's world their modest, human scale increases their importance. They're parables.
This is true of "The Presence of Grace." Powers spends nine-tenths of the story mocking an eccentric dormouse of a pastor. At the end of the tale the man has become "that Solomon," as Powers celebrates his wisdom. "Life was a dark business for everyone in it, but the way for pastors was ever lit by flares of special grace." The pastor's seeming weaknesses have become strengths.
"And great affirmations!" There is nothing equivocal about Powers's meaning. One wonders how James Wood missed it. Maybe he was speed reading.
The pastor described early on: "But he had no power from his priesthood to deny the undeniable, for instance, that he'd spoiled a good chasuble. When he said, 'S not ink,' nothing was changed."
By the end of the story when he says, in response to gossip about a parishioner (a matter of more import than an ink spot) "'S not so,'" the pastor's stubborn illogic is revealed to be right and just.
In this case the pastor is an example to the young priest serving under him. The pastor represents the contradictions of the Church. Through him it redeems itself. To think that Powers's stories are in any way anti-Catholic, as Wood does, is ludicrous. Behind the bureaucratic snafus and trivialities of Powers's priests lies the core of his religion, hidden but able to be revealed at any moment. Finding spirituality amid the banal is the essence of his art. ("But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise." I Cor 1:27.)
Little morals are sprinkled throughout the works-- often, as with Father Burner in "Defection of a Favorite," (aided by a cat!) nothing more than an acceptance of things as they are; a sudden Buddhist-like compassion for his pastor which leads Burner on a slow path toward wisdom. (Those who strive too hard for something, like "The Prince of Darkness," are usually punished.) There is karmic harmony in Powers's universe which underlies the machinery of the Church.
Inside the comedy of Catholicism Powers finds kernels of truth and wisdom-- the message of Christianity from the start, which was founded on failure. ("I believe because it's absurd," said an early Christian.) J.F. Powers is explaining the religion, not mocking it. The well-paid New Yorker book reviewer James Wood wasn't sharp enough to notice.
Why not? Despite his smooth prose, James Wood is an imitation of an old-fashioned book reviewer. His book is a just-built 50's-style malt shop designed for tourists. It's not the genuine article. He's faking it.
(Questions Wood does raise, such as why Powers doesn't portray his priests sex lives, are so beside the point they're goofy. They ignore context, the 1950's Midwestern setting of the writing and the goals of the writer.)
**************************************************
"Harumph!" comes from the armchair. (Maybe the gentleman needs something more in his pipe.) The truth of the famous James Wood analysis doesn't matter as long as it sounds reasonable enough to con his audience.
He keeps the Powers review going just fast enough to keep you reading-- twenty-five miles per hour with no sudden noises, bumps, or detours. When you finish you say, "That's nice," close his book and drop comfortably to sleep.
James Wood is a speed-limit driver. He was respected and esteemed in his early 30's, maybe at age 20, because he sounded like the machine. He always drove the speed limit. Staying within the orange cones, never knocking one over, has earned Wood a teaching job at Yale and regular reviewing job at The New Republic.
Just as Jonathan Franzen the Mechanical Man is put forward as a manufactured facsimile of a great novelist, James Wood stands-in for the role of great critic. The staus quo has to have one! Anybody around? Yes. An ambitious careerist standing to the side with accreditations of conformity wants the part. That's him putting his hand up. He's not very good-- has no outstanding strength of character or courage of voice-- but seems to know the words, at least the poses. More than anything he's eager to please the stuffy rich folks and critics in the boxes. He's sober and predictable. That'll do! His fans feel he's deep, but then, most are robots.
They celebrate his ambition. James Wood takes on writers like Dostoevsky with whom he has nothing in common. The Russian author's unparalled passion, his chasms of yearning, emotion, and soul to Wood are abstract qualities to be analyzed in a jar.
James Wood reviewing Dostoevsky is an ant contemplating a forest fire. He seeks simple explanations of Brothers Karamazov; distilled into a phrase: "Christ is not an idea." There you have it! The mysteries of Karamazov have been solved by Professor Wood. There was no real depth to the book after all. The robots can rest peacefully, unchallenged. Any rumblings of unease brought about by reading the novel have been removed.
Wood tries to explain the unexplainable; to measure and quantify Dostoevsky's huge universe. He misses the humanity of the situations, the characters, and the stories. The true subject of Wood's logical ANALysis shouldn't be Fyodor Karamazov or the underground man-- but the relief they throw on bourgeois society, on "The Clean and the Saved" in the drawing rooms who respond to the characters with horror. What is Dostoevsky's message, really? What is he saying? That we're human beings, outrageous and flawed; the trick in life is to not be embarrassed to be yourself. (Which really IS a simple explanation.) What bursts from every page of Dostoevsky is the sheer gross vibrating humanity of it all; the vast sympathy for the characters; a sympathy, vibration, life missing from the logical analytical writing of James Wood. He's hardly been touched. He sounds like a programmed android whose computer banks inform him this writing is something about which he should be moved-- there's no passion in his response; he remains dry and logical. Upper-crust British, I guess. Cambridge and all that rot. "We laugh," reading Saul Bellow, he assures us. "We delight in the curling power of invention whereby" etc etc., but these are assertions. Wood is unable to transfer these emotions to us; his prose is so crafted it's hard to buy that he believes the assertions himself.
The man in the silk robe and slippers may as well be reading stock quotes from the Wall Street Journal.
It's about assurances, of maintaining everyone's self-image. The uptight audience members at Miller Theater during the "Howl" reading were there to assure themselves that, despite the utter bourgeois conformity of their comfortable money-and-possession-oriented lifestyles, they are very much like the Beats; they really are! The intrusion of the ULA shattered the illusion.
Wood's readers want to know they're as full of life as Augie March, even if they're not. "We laugh," Wood tells them. "We delight." He's done the experiencing of art for them. Affirmations of humanity among automatons. "Self-convincing," Wood would call it.
This is book reviewing for the upper-middle class. James Wood well knows his audience.
The great irony about James Wood is that his criticisms of the priests of J.F. Powers apply to the inhabitants of the established literary order:
-"They are full of ambition-- but only the ambition to go from curate to pastor."
-"too conventional" -"courtiers of compromise"
-"The parochialism and claustrophobia of their minds and conversation, for all the sour prosperity of their businesslike approach, has a naivete, a complacency, a closedness. It is shop-talking with nothing to sell. They may not be worldly enough, in fact. Their worldliness may be that they are too easy inside their own little world." (These quotes from James Wood.)
***************************************************************
Of course, for the literati, Wood's failures are redeemed by the "fine artistry" of his prose. Which means, watch for the explosions of "fine artistry" coming as from a man inside a stall at a public washroom:
"the dry ground of their souls is moistened by the author's gentle laughter."
("______________!")
"It is a sad and affecting story, whose placement at the end of this often ebullient and warmly comic book bathes what has gone before in grave twilight."
("_________________!")
"At times one wishes that he had hoarded that writerly autumn less jealously, and daubed his characters more generously with his complicating dapple."
("____________________!")
"But it grandly exuberates with more diverse elements-- lyricism, comedy, realism, vernacular-- than any other contemporary English prose, and in America it deserves more praise than Bellow's now elderly canonicity perhaps encourages."
("__________________________________!!!")
One cringes at such artistry, washing hands quickly and hurrying out of the room.
**********************************************************
Maddening superior torpor unending smugness and snobbery passing as wisdom; chapters of layers of sentences going through the motions of pretended knowledge from academy ivory towers, plaudits for the man who captures the rhythmns of the stacks.
A JAMES WOOD POEM
Savior of the lit'ry pack:
James Wood.
Determined that he's not a hack,
James Wood.
Bags of bluff that others lack!
James Wood.
The man who'll bring our lit-world back
James Wood!
INTERLUDE
A Coming Big Event.
Establishment icon James Wood has gotten so big on the lit scene it's decided to give him a Big Award bigger than the National Book Sham or other awards he's been a finalist for, excuses for black ties swanky tables rich people but, you know, Big, a BIG award emphasis on BIG wheelbarrow-needed-to-bring-it-on-stage-sized BIG. No hotel ballrooms for this affair. No. A big enough venue to hold Wood's reputation. Carnegie Hall!-- no. Madison Square Garden!-- no. The Hollywood Bowl! Organizers settle on a soccer stadium in Brazil which holds 200,000 people. This, maybe, will be big enough. The day is set! Literary celebrities to be flown in from all corners of the globe. Rushdie with bodyguards. Cynthia Ozick wearing sunglasses. Wood's almost-friend Jonathan Franzen chosen as presenter. The day has come! The gigantic stadium is filled. Usual last-minute problems. Franzen won't make it-- he boarded the wrong flight and has landed in Alaska. No matter! Fossilized novelist John Updike arrives as replacement. Two hundred thousand flashbulbs as night falls; a fanfare of trumpets backed by timpani and symbals of a full orchestra: an original composition, "Tribute to James Wood." The Big Award is placed onto the stage by a monstrously big 80-foot crane. (Meanwhile storm clouds have gathered. Organizers worry it's going to rain.) John Updike propped and positioned at the microphone has started to speak. At a corner of the stage waiting for his big moment is Mr. Wood. From the perspective of the high rows of the stadium he appears tiny. Big screens magnify his image, to Biggie size, almost as big as his reputed ability. Suddenly clouds break last second thunder sounds downpour audience scrambling literary celebrities soaked James Wood crying big missed moment climbs into rented limousine driven away vast stadium drowned empty except for immoveable soggy-suited John Updike forgotten on puddled stage enunciating carefully to nobody to the wet air his precisely written speech.
********************************************************
The most hilarious and sad apart of the James Wood book is that this paint-by-the-numbers reviewer is regarded by the sheep of the literary world to be at the extreme edge of recklessness-- which says a great deal about themselves.
"Sparkling with electric energy"; "the strangest literary critic we have"; "polemical"; "terrific intensity."
These people live in a safe and narrow world. Hand the book to passengers on a bus and they'll soon be sleeping. In the cloistered world of Literature it's the latest thing. "That Mantovani sure does rock." Refined stiffs snapping their fingers to Tony Bennett or Harry Connick.
A "literary eviscerator" mannequin Elissa Schappell calls him. No, Wood is more of a pampered kennelled guard dog hanging around the aristocrats at the chateau. They toss a stray steak his way and watch him bound. "Isn't he just the best?" the ruffled fops affirm. One day the mastiff steps off the grounds, where packs of untamed wolves roam, and is seen no more. "Whatever happened to good old Woodsie?" one of the aristocrats thinks to ask. "He was so true and loyal." Others say tut-tut, as the sky darkens, the air chills, and curious movement rustles the shadows outside the well-trimmed hedges.
The James Wood kind of book reviewer is obsolete, superceded by bloggers able to be more lively, immediate, personal, expansive, and real. I had total freedom as a zeenster in the 90's. I maintain total freedom now. If I care to insert a not-very-good poem into the midst of my random speculations and rants I'll do so. The structure-- this blog has one-- is akin to the structure of Jack Saunders's novels. You can't see it but it's always there.
The Underground Literary Alliance has broken further out of the barriers of the box by introducing literature into the actual world through our living persons. Our criticism of the decayed aristocratic words of a Rick Moody or Elissa Schappell has been very direct! We want literature to live-- the only way it'll attract the general public.
IT WAS ASKED inside the ULA if it was wise to show me, Frank Walsh, and others drinking before our "Howl" crash. Yes! We revel in our humanity as writers. For us there are no hierarchies or walls. We welcome other writers to sit down with us. Literature is the fundamental art and belongs to everyone. This is the ULA message.
"James Wood." "James Wood." "James Wood." That names pops up again and again in the journals of the established literary world-- the man behind the name applauded as our culture's top literary critic in place of ultra-constipated scared-to-make-waves demi-puppets like Sven Birkerts.
Read Wood's book of essays and the emotion which comes to the non-brainwashed person is one of disappointment. "Is that all there is?" A dozen or so nicely-written reviews by a nice person who uses a few nice-sounding phrases and after you've finished reading the book you remember nothing.
I recall the topics. The Catholic writer J.F. Powers is one of them. James Wood pretends to understand Powers's quaintly simple Midwestern priests with their quaintly simple Midwestern congregations; an objective observer standing outside the window.
James Wood is a confidently intelligent commentator in a plush armchair in a wood-panelled study, dressed in silk robe and blue slippers, pondering the intricacies of "Literature" while smoking a pipe. His fans note how old-fashioned he sounds. They're right. The sturdy, competent reviewer. There's comfort in reading him. The world has mutated distorted grown loudly insane around us. Inside the book of essays nothing has changed. It could be 1950 or 1850. Wood is completely out of date.
This is his appeal. His reviews are fenced-in by his limitations. The workmanlike reviewer obediently completing his assignment; an essay of prescribed length, strictly devoted to the problem at hand: the book in his lap. For today's moldering lit-crowd, competence is plenty.
Wood writes well enough not to pass as a mediocrity-- yet no other word better describes him. His reviews are smooth enough not to be plodding-- mediocre in their smoothness-- there's no imagination whatsoever about the format. The rules are strictly followed.
FEATURED AUTHOR: J.F. POWERS
For James Wood, J.F. Powers's tales of parishes and priests are devoid of spirituality, "the opposite of an advertisement for the church." For James Wood, Powers's "priestly heroes are ferociously unappealing . . . Powers is very threatening, and ought not to be easily enjoyed by Catholics. . . ." For James Wood, the mundane lives and settings in the novels and stories is all there is. To James Wood, Powers seems only to mock his characters, without joy; secretly he's angry and depressed.
Is this right?
Powers's "Zeal" pokes fun at an enthusiastic young priest on a train who argues against tipping; a priest who ineptly attempts to keep stray young men and women apart. By the end of the narrative this simpleton has become the hero of the story, "on his feet and trying, which was what counted in the sight of God, not success." A jaded Bishop who observes the priest's zealous actions is changed. The aggressive rock-like blockheaded priest is irresistible.
Near the beginning of the story Powers says, from the Bishop's point of view, "To share the command with such a man as Father Early, however, would be impossible. It would be to serve under him. . . ." The Bishop ends by doing exactly that. To him Father Early has become one of Christ's "twelve legions of angels."
What happened? "I'll tell you a secret, Bishop. When I was in seminary, they called me Crazy Early." Early is a type of Holy Fool made fun of only to be raised up. Powers isn't just someone who writes well, "a delicate stylist" as Wood would have it. Powers sets the reader up for a surprise payoff consistent with the threads of the narrative-- a moral surprise as well as one of plot. The esteemed Bishop humbles himself by helping the young priest with his flock-- in so doing rediscovering the humility of his religion's original message. Powers, who was a devout Catholic, depicts modest victories. In Powers's world their modest, human scale increases their importance. They're parables.
This is true of "The Presence of Grace." Powers spends nine-tenths of the story mocking an eccentric dormouse of a pastor. At the end of the tale the man has become "that Solomon," as Powers celebrates his wisdom. "Life was a dark business for everyone in it, but the way for pastors was ever lit by flares of special grace." The pastor's seeming weaknesses have become strengths.
"And great affirmations!" There is nothing equivocal about Powers's meaning. One wonders how James Wood missed it. Maybe he was speed reading.
The pastor described early on: "But he had no power from his priesthood to deny the undeniable, for instance, that he'd spoiled a good chasuble. When he said, 'S not ink,' nothing was changed."
By the end of the story when he says, in response to gossip about a parishioner (a matter of more import than an ink spot) "'S not so,'" the pastor's stubborn illogic is revealed to be right and just.
In this case the pastor is an example to the young priest serving under him. The pastor represents the contradictions of the Church. Through him it redeems itself. To think that Powers's stories are in any way anti-Catholic, as Wood does, is ludicrous. Behind the bureaucratic snafus and trivialities of Powers's priests lies the core of his religion, hidden but able to be revealed at any moment. Finding spirituality amid the banal is the essence of his art. ("But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise." I Cor 1:27.)
Little morals are sprinkled throughout the works-- often, as with Father Burner in "Defection of a Favorite," (aided by a cat!) nothing more than an acceptance of things as they are; a sudden Buddhist-like compassion for his pastor which leads Burner on a slow path toward wisdom. (Those who strive too hard for something, like "The Prince of Darkness," are usually punished.) There is karmic harmony in Powers's universe which underlies the machinery of the Church.
Inside the comedy of Catholicism Powers finds kernels of truth and wisdom-- the message of Christianity from the start, which was founded on failure. ("I believe because it's absurd," said an early Christian.) J.F. Powers is explaining the religion, not mocking it. The well-paid New Yorker book reviewer James Wood wasn't sharp enough to notice.
Why not? Despite his smooth prose, James Wood is an imitation of an old-fashioned book reviewer. His book is a just-built 50's-style malt shop designed for tourists. It's not the genuine article. He's faking it.
(Questions Wood does raise, such as why Powers doesn't portray his priests sex lives, are so beside the point they're goofy. They ignore context, the 1950's Midwestern setting of the writing and the goals of the writer.)
**************************************************
"Harumph!" comes from the armchair. (Maybe the gentleman needs something more in his pipe.) The truth of the famous James Wood analysis doesn't matter as long as it sounds reasonable enough to con his audience.
He keeps the Powers review going just fast enough to keep you reading-- twenty-five miles per hour with no sudden noises, bumps, or detours. When you finish you say, "That's nice," close his book and drop comfortably to sleep.
James Wood is a speed-limit driver. He was respected and esteemed in his early 30's, maybe at age 20, because he sounded like the machine. He always drove the speed limit. Staying within the orange cones, never knocking one over, has earned Wood a teaching job at Yale and regular reviewing job at The New Republic.
Just as Jonathan Franzen the Mechanical Man is put forward as a manufactured facsimile of a great novelist, James Wood stands-in for the role of great critic. The staus quo has to have one! Anybody around? Yes. An ambitious careerist standing to the side with accreditations of conformity wants the part. That's him putting his hand up. He's not very good-- has no outstanding strength of character or courage of voice-- but seems to know the words, at least the poses. More than anything he's eager to please the stuffy rich folks and critics in the boxes. He's sober and predictable. That'll do! His fans feel he's deep, but then, most are robots.
They celebrate his ambition. James Wood takes on writers like Dostoevsky with whom he has nothing in common. The Russian author's unparalled passion, his chasms of yearning, emotion, and soul to Wood are abstract qualities to be analyzed in a jar.
James Wood reviewing Dostoevsky is an ant contemplating a forest fire. He seeks simple explanations of Brothers Karamazov; distilled into a phrase: "Christ is not an idea." There you have it! The mysteries of Karamazov have been solved by Professor Wood. There was no real depth to the book after all. The robots can rest peacefully, unchallenged. Any rumblings of unease brought about by reading the novel have been removed.
Wood tries to explain the unexplainable; to measure and quantify Dostoevsky's huge universe. He misses the humanity of the situations, the characters, and the stories. The true subject of Wood's logical ANALysis shouldn't be Fyodor Karamazov or the underground man-- but the relief they throw on bourgeois society, on "The Clean and the Saved" in the drawing rooms who respond to the characters with horror. What is Dostoevsky's message, really? What is he saying? That we're human beings, outrageous and flawed; the trick in life is to not be embarrassed to be yourself. (Which really IS a simple explanation.) What bursts from every page of Dostoevsky is the sheer gross vibrating humanity of it all; the vast sympathy for the characters; a sympathy, vibration, life missing from the logical analytical writing of James Wood. He's hardly been touched. He sounds like a programmed android whose computer banks inform him this writing is something about which he should be moved-- there's no passion in his response; he remains dry and logical. Upper-crust British, I guess. Cambridge and all that rot. "We laugh," reading Saul Bellow, he assures us. "We delight in the curling power of invention whereby" etc etc., but these are assertions. Wood is unable to transfer these emotions to us; his prose is so crafted it's hard to buy that he believes the assertions himself.
The man in the silk robe and slippers may as well be reading stock quotes from the Wall Street Journal.
It's about assurances, of maintaining everyone's self-image. The uptight audience members at Miller Theater during the "Howl" reading were there to assure themselves that, despite the utter bourgeois conformity of their comfortable money-and-possession-oriented lifestyles, they are very much like the Beats; they really are! The intrusion of the ULA shattered the illusion.
Wood's readers want to know they're as full of life as Augie March, even if they're not. "We laugh," Wood tells them. "We delight." He's done the experiencing of art for them. Affirmations of humanity among automatons. "Self-convincing," Wood would call it.
This is book reviewing for the upper-middle class. James Wood well knows his audience.
The great irony about James Wood is that his criticisms of the priests of J.F. Powers apply to the inhabitants of the established literary order:
-"They are full of ambition-- but only the ambition to go from curate to pastor."
-"too conventional" -"courtiers of compromise"
-"The parochialism and claustrophobia of their minds and conversation, for all the sour prosperity of their businesslike approach, has a naivete, a complacency, a closedness. It is shop-talking with nothing to sell. They may not be worldly enough, in fact. Their worldliness may be that they are too easy inside their own little world." (These quotes from James Wood.)
***************************************************************
Of course, for the literati, Wood's failures are redeemed by the "fine artistry" of his prose. Which means, watch for the explosions of "fine artistry" coming as from a man inside a stall at a public washroom:
"the dry ground of their souls is moistened by the author's gentle laughter."
("______________!")
"It is a sad and affecting story, whose placement at the end of this often ebullient and warmly comic book bathes what has gone before in grave twilight."
("_________________!")
"At times one wishes that he had hoarded that writerly autumn less jealously, and daubed his characters more generously with his complicating dapple."
("____________________!")
"But it grandly exuberates with more diverse elements-- lyricism, comedy, realism, vernacular-- than any other contemporary English prose, and in America it deserves more praise than Bellow's now elderly canonicity perhaps encourages."
("__________________________________!!!")
One cringes at such artistry, washing hands quickly and hurrying out of the room.
**********************************************************
Maddening superior torpor unending smugness and snobbery passing as wisdom; chapters of layers of sentences going through the motions of pretended knowledge from academy ivory towers, plaudits for the man who captures the rhythmns of the stacks.
A JAMES WOOD POEM
Savior of the lit'ry pack:
James Wood.
Determined that he's not a hack,
James Wood.
Bags of bluff that others lack!
James Wood.
The man who'll bring our lit-world back
James Wood!
INTERLUDE
A Coming Big Event.
Establishment icon James Wood has gotten so big on the lit scene it's decided to give him a Big Award bigger than the National Book Sham or other awards he's been a finalist for, excuses for black ties swanky tables rich people but, you know, Big, a BIG award emphasis on BIG wheelbarrow-needed-to-bring-it-on-stage-sized BIG. No hotel ballrooms for this affair. No. A big enough venue to hold Wood's reputation. Carnegie Hall!-- no. Madison Square Garden!-- no. The Hollywood Bowl! Organizers settle on a soccer stadium in Brazil which holds 200,000 people. This, maybe, will be big enough. The day is set! Literary celebrities to be flown in from all corners of the globe. Rushdie with bodyguards. Cynthia Ozick wearing sunglasses. Wood's almost-friend Jonathan Franzen chosen as presenter. The day has come! The gigantic stadium is filled. Usual last-minute problems. Franzen won't make it-- he boarded the wrong flight and has landed in Alaska. No matter! Fossilized novelist John Updike arrives as replacement. Two hundred thousand flashbulbs as night falls; a fanfare of trumpets backed by timpani and symbals of a full orchestra: an original composition, "Tribute to James Wood." The Big Award is placed onto the stage by a monstrously big 80-foot crane. (Meanwhile storm clouds have gathered. Organizers worry it's going to rain.) John Updike propped and positioned at the microphone has started to speak. At a corner of the stage waiting for his big moment is Mr. Wood. From the perspective of the high rows of the stadium he appears tiny. Big screens magnify his image, to Biggie size, almost as big as his reputed ability. Suddenly clouds break last second thunder sounds downpour audience scrambling literary celebrities soaked James Wood crying big missed moment climbs into rented limousine driven away vast stadium drowned empty except for immoveable soggy-suited John Updike forgotten on puddled stage enunciating carefully to nobody to the wet air his precisely written speech.
********************************************************
The most hilarious and sad apart of the James Wood book is that this paint-by-the-numbers reviewer is regarded by the sheep of the literary world to be at the extreme edge of recklessness-- which says a great deal about themselves.
"Sparkling with electric energy"; "the strangest literary critic we have"; "polemical"; "terrific intensity."
These people live in a safe and narrow world. Hand the book to passengers on a bus and they'll soon be sleeping. In the cloistered world of Literature it's the latest thing. "That Mantovani sure does rock." Refined stiffs snapping their fingers to Tony Bennett or Harry Connick.
A "literary eviscerator" mannequin Elissa Schappell calls him. No, Wood is more of a pampered kennelled guard dog hanging around the aristocrats at the chateau. They toss a stray steak his way and watch him bound. "Isn't he just the best?" the ruffled fops affirm. One day the mastiff steps off the grounds, where packs of untamed wolves roam, and is seen no more. "Whatever happened to good old Woodsie?" one of the aristocrats thinks to ask. "He was so true and loyal." Others say tut-tut, as the sky darkens, the air chills, and curious movement rustles the shadows outside the well-trimmed hedges.
The James Wood kind of book reviewer is obsolete, superceded by bloggers able to be more lively, immediate, personal, expansive, and real. I had total freedom as a zeenster in the 90's. I maintain total freedom now. If I care to insert a not-very-good poem into the midst of my random speculations and rants I'll do so. The structure-- this blog has one-- is akin to the structure of Jack Saunders's novels. You can't see it but it's always there.
The Underground Literary Alliance has broken further out of the barriers of the box by introducing literature into the actual world through our living persons. Our criticism of the decayed aristocratic words of a Rick Moody or Elissa Schappell has been very direct! We want literature to live-- the only way it'll attract the general public.
IT WAS ASKED inside the ULA if it was wise to show me, Frank Walsh, and others drinking before our "Howl" crash. Yes! We revel in our humanity as writers. For us there are no hierarchies or walls. We welcome other writers to sit down with us. Literature is the fundamental art and belongs to everyone. This is the ULA message.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
The Mystery of Talent Part II: Writers
How to account for Buddy Holly's "Well . . . All Right" and "Learning the Game"?
"Well . . . All Right" destroys the stale myth that early white rock n'rollers did nothing but rip-off black r&b artists. The recording sounds distinctly European, reminding me of Renaissance dances I've heard played on archaic instruments. The melancholy "Learning the Game" is straight ballad-- it could've been played in medieval times.
We can speculate that Buddy Holly, like other country "hillbilly" singers such as the Carter Family, Hank Williams, the Everly Brothers, even Elvis Presley, inherited remnants of a folk tradition brought over from England centuries prior-- just as black blues performers carried remnants of folk sounds from Africa; blended of course in both cases white and black with their reactions to the New World. (Rock n' roll was created when these two traditions collided.)
The biggest mistake so-called "experts" on art make is to underrate the role of instinct in its creation. Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly were instinctive artists who'd been soaking in their regional culture (and popular culture on the radio) their entire lives. By age 20 they'd learned everything they needed to know to become two of the greatest interpreters of popular music this nation has produced.
Should they have been sent to Julliard?
When they met the experts, their art suffered. It's well-known what happened to Elvis when he was cleaned-up and tamed by RCA and the movie studios (and the army). Holly encountered a similar fate when he dropped mentor Norman Petty and band the Crickets to move to New York. His last studio session produced his worst recordings since his first crude rockabilly efforts. Awful junk. Studio strings replaced his masterful guitar! Unbelievable. The experts had no idea what to do with Buddy Holly. (The recordings he made in his apartment on an Ampex tape recorder before his death showed he hadn't lost his talent.)
********************************************************
The biggest mistake this culture makes with artists of all kinds is to overemphasize schooling. We're a machine civilization which stresses order, regulation, and schooling. Too much schooling destroys natural talent. The more I hear about writing workshops, the more convinced I become about how damaging they are. Hit from all sides, the young writer can only become disheartened and confused. Maybe these programs are okay for those with marginal talent. For the phenom they could be disastrous. (And sorry, Jonathan Safran Foer isn't my idea of a phenom.)
Why do we think writers should be different from musicians? Many people, by the time they're 20, have been reading and writing for well over a decade; precociously absorbing and filtering the literary experience along with their experience of the world. The best of them, like Stephen Crane and Scott Fitzgerald-- America's two best natural talents-- by this age are already prepared to be great. They should be promoted, encouraged, advised, directed-- but their instinct and genius must oversway all; they must be allowed to run free.
(Part III: The Future of Literature.)
(Also Coming: "Overrated James Wood.")
"Well . . . All Right" destroys the stale myth that early white rock n'rollers did nothing but rip-off black r&b artists. The recording sounds distinctly European, reminding me of Renaissance dances I've heard played on archaic instruments. The melancholy "Learning the Game" is straight ballad-- it could've been played in medieval times.
We can speculate that Buddy Holly, like other country "hillbilly" singers such as the Carter Family, Hank Williams, the Everly Brothers, even Elvis Presley, inherited remnants of a folk tradition brought over from England centuries prior-- just as black blues performers carried remnants of folk sounds from Africa; blended of course in both cases white and black with their reactions to the New World. (Rock n' roll was created when these two traditions collided.)
The biggest mistake so-called "experts" on art make is to underrate the role of instinct in its creation. Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly were instinctive artists who'd been soaking in their regional culture (and popular culture on the radio) their entire lives. By age 20 they'd learned everything they needed to know to become two of the greatest interpreters of popular music this nation has produced.
Should they have been sent to Julliard?
When they met the experts, their art suffered. It's well-known what happened to Elvis when he was cleaned-up and tamed by RCA and the movie studios (and the army). Holly encountered a similar fate when he dropped mentor Norman Petty and band the Crickets to move to New York. His last studio session produced his worst recordings since his first crude rockabilly efforts. Awful junk. Studio strings replaced his masterful guitar! Unbelievable. The experts had no idea what to do with Buddy Holly. (The recordings he made in his apartment on an Ampex tape recorder before his death showed he hadn't lost his talent.)
********************************************************
The biggest mistake this culture makes with artists of all kinds is to overemphasize schooling. We're a machine civilization which stresses order, regulation, and schooling. Too much schooling destroys natural talent. The more I hear about writing workshops, the more convinced I become about how damaging they are. Hit from all sides, the young writer can only become disheartened and confused. Maybe these programs are okay for those with marginal talent. For the phenom they could be disastrous. (And sorry, Jonathan Safran Foer isn't my idea of a phenom.)
Why do we think writers should be different from musicians? Many people, by the time they're 20, have been reading and writing for well over a decade; precociously absorbing and filtering the literary experience along with their experience of the world. The best of them, like Stephen Crane and Scott Fitzgerald-- America's two best natural talents-- by this age are already prepared to be great. They should be promoted, encouraged, advised, directed-- but their instinct and genius must oversway all; they must be allowed to run free.
(Part III: The Future of Literature.)
(Also Coming: "Overrated James Wood.")
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
The Mystery of Talent Part I: Buddy Holly
What interests me is the organic origin of art.
Toward that end I've been listening to the recordings of 50's rock n' roller Buddy Holly. What I've discovered is that he wasn't just some guy who died in a plane crash. He was phenomenally talented.
Striking about many of the recordings is his guitar playing. Buddy Holly was not only the best songwriter, next to Chuck Berry, of the early rock era. He was not only one of the most ambitious and versatile vocalists, along with Elvis, Jackie Wilson, and one or two others. Buddy Holly was also one of the era's best lead guitar players.
In 1956, at the beginning of his career, when he was, what-- 19?-- Holly was effortlessly covering the licks of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. When co-producing recordings of his own songs a year or two later, he used his guitar to help create a wall of sound, pre-dating Phil Spector. (Drums were used prominently. Note "Peggy Sue.")
Holly overdubs his guitar on "Listen to Me." It's spellbinding. One can hear his clean bright playing on other songs like "Words of Love" and "Heartbeat."
Buddy Holly should've been as big as Elvis. At the time he had enough trouble just making the charts, overshadowed by lesser lights like Ricky Nelson. Nelson had the best rock-pop songwriters crafting his material. His band included legendary guitarist James Burton. Buddy Holly had more talent than Nelson and Burton combined. (Note the explosive guitar solo in "Peggy Sue," as fine as anything James Burton or Chuck Berry did.) Buddy Holly had as much talent in his person, as singer, guitarist, and songwriter, as whole bands of the later "British Invasion," including the Beatles.
At his death at age 22 he may have been more advanced in these categories than the best later talent at the same age. This includes Lennon, Dylan, McCartney, Jagger, Keith Richards, George Harrison-- the lot of them.
Buddy Holly was a true phenom-- a natural talent. Why he wasn't bigger in his lifetime was because in the charisma department he was the anti-Elvis. You've seen the photos, the nerdiness and large eyeglasses. This was before subcultures like punks and folkies embraced nerdiness.
Would Buddy Holly have taken his art to another level? Some of the last songs he wrote, "What to Do" and "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" indicate he could have. He had moved with his new wife Maria Elena into New York City's Greenwich Village in 1959, right before his death. It's fascinating to speculate about Holly meeting the young Bob Dylan when Dylan moved into the neighborhood a couple years later. What a meeting of young minds that would've been!
The two best Buddy Holly songs-- and recordings-- are "Well . . . All Right" and "Learning the Game." They're timeless and poignant, up there with the best of Bob Dylan and John Lennon-- the highest praise I can grant Buddy Holly. Where did these songs come from? What was the source of his art? This is the mystery to figure out.
(To be continued.)
Toward that end I've been listening to the recordings of 50's rock n' roller Buddy Holly. What I've discovered is that he wasn't just some guy who died in a plane crash. He was phenomenally talented.
Striking about many of the recordings is his guitar playing. Buddy Holly was not only the best songwriter, next to Chuck Berry, of the early rock era. He was not only one of the most ambitious and versatile vocalists, along with Elvis, Jackie Wilson, and one or two others. Buddy Holly was also one of the era's best lead guitar players.
In 1956, at the beginning of his career, when he was, what-- 19?-- Holly was effortlessly covering the licks of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. When co-producing recordings of his own songs a year or two later, he used his guitar to help create a wall of sound, pre-dating Phil Spector. (Drums were used prominently. Note "Peggy Sue.")
Holly overdubs his guitar on "Listen to Me." It's spellbinding. One can hear his clean bright playing on other songs like "Words of Love" and "Heartbeat."
Buddy Holly should've been as big as Elvis. At the time he had enough trouble just making the charts, overshadowed by lesser lights like Ricky Nelson. Nelson had the best rock-pop songwriters crafting his material. His band included legendary guitarist James Burton. Buddy Holly had more talent than Nelson and Burton combined. (Note the explosive guitar solo in "Peggy Sue," as fine as anything James Burton or Chuck Berry did.) Buddy Holly had as much talent in his person, as singer, guitarist, and songwriter, as whole bands of the later "British Invasion," including the Beatles.
At his death at age 22 he may have been more advanced in these categories than the best later talent at the same age. This includes Lennon, Dylan, McCartney, Jagger, Keith Richards, George Harrison-- the lot of them.
Buddy Holly was a true phenom-- a natural talent. Why he wasn't bigger in his lifetime was because in the charisma department he was the anti-Elvis. You've seen the photos, the nerdiness and large eyeglasses. This was before subcultures like punks and folkies embraced nerdiness.
Would Buddy Holly have taken his art to another level? Some of the last songs he wrote, "What to Do" and "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" indicate he could have. He had moved with his new wife Maria Elena into New York City's Greenwich Village in 1959, right before his death. It's fascinating to speculate about Holly meeting the young Bob Dylan when Dylan moved into the neighborhood a couple years later. What a meeting of young minds that would've been!
The two best Buddy Holly songs-- and recordings-- are "Well . . . All Right" and "Learning the Game." They're timeless and poignant, up there with the best of Bob Dylan and John Lennon-- the highest praise I can grant Buddy Holly. Where did these songs come from? What was the source of his art? This is the mystery to figure out.
(To be continued.)
Latest ULA Event
I couldn't make it, but from all sights and sounds the ULA-sponsored shows in Cleveland this past weekend were a huge success-- thanks mainly to the enormous work put into them by Wred Fright. Many of the ULA's biggest stars were present-- including Frank Walsh, Jelly Boy the Clown, Pat King, Crazy Carl Robinson, Jessica Disobedience, Adam Hardin, and many others. For the latest write-ups on the readings and performances see www.wredfright.com/wfnews.html.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Literature without Roots
(I've sweated and slept alongside the straits of the Detroit River. For years I lived and worked near that dark waterway of the darkest of North American cities, so that the fast-rushing river still runs through my veins and my soul.)
I'm trying to figure out what's happening to establishment literature-- why, for instance, a promising new journal like n+1 is so intellectually sterile. Surely it's one piece of a larger process. Understanding it is close to impossible. I make the attempt regardless.
Why the stark difference between n+1 and a literary journal from the 1960's, Ted Solotaroff's New American Review, which wasn't monotone monochrome but an explosion of energy and color?
It's not just that the writers back then were better-- Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison of "Cadillac Flambe," and company. It's that the writers back then, for all their intelligence and learning, had roots. Their subject was the ground they stood on: America; that diverse mad inferno of a country raging on all sides around them. The writers expressed their direct observation of the country while drinking from the living model of the Beats. The subject of the Beat masterpieces "Howl" and "On the Road" is America. They're a vast loud confused love-and-hate cultural expression of America. A visitor from another planet could ask, "What is America?"-- you would point him to that poem, that novel, and say, "There!"
The writers and editors of New American Review had roots. Of course. Culture without roots is an oxymoron; an impossibility.
Yet this is exactly the kind of literature one finds with n+1. It's as if in forty years the planet has undergone a fumigatory transformation so that we now live in a sterilized future of steel walls, omnipresent air-conditioning, and plastic capsules. Conversation between the floating pod people remains at a sanitized murmur.
Instead of hearing Motown's "Sound of Young America" blaring from the streets, or Chuck Berry, or Elvis Presley (in his voice the multi-cultural blending of all organic strands of American music as his person blended Scoth-Irish American-Indian African Jewish bloodlines), suddenly we're given a soundtrack of the techno-airless electronic notes of "Forbidden Planet." There are no streets: no life, no earth, no populace.
I can only guess that the four n+1 editors were placed into isolation booths during college. Talk about torture! These fellows were forced to read the mind-destroying convolutions of Marcuse Agamben Foucault Lacan Heidegger Derrida Habermas Jameson Cioran Lyotard Eagleton Baudrillard etc etc etc for eight years, until their eyes bled. Extreme sensory deprivation: Jerry Mander's worst nightmare. The person couldn't possibly come out of the experience sane and whole.
I have no idea really what these university isolation chambers are like. I'm speculating. I envision a series of brains in jars, labelled "Foucault"; "Heidegger"; and so on, the students connecting their own minds with the jars through electrical cables. This is the only plausible explantion for the depth of the brainwashing shown in the pages of n+1 through the non-stop name-dropping of approved intellectual icons; no original throughts anywhere to be found. They ingested all of it; lingusitic complexities layered upon complexities so that all truth is lost; everything said means itself and its opposite. One can call it profound or one can call it nonsense.
The n+1 editors left the most esteemed Temples of Academe, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, with hi-tech helmets fitted onto their heads; screens on every side filtering experience so the individual never directly senses the actual world. Between him and the world are intermediaries; green-lettered names scrolling on virtual-reality screens; "Adorno," "Agamben," and the like. (You can't see the helmets, but they're there.)
Any scattered glimpses of America in n+1 are accidental. There's more depiction of Armenia. American culture has vanished, been wiped out.
Solzhenitsyn, when discussing the Russian Empire, argued that the first victim of the Soviet system was Russia itself. The first victim of the multi-national conglomerate globalization of culture is America. This is true of American literature at its highest levels, which is being replaced by an "International Style" of lit as devoid of personality, of roots and place, as the blank International Style of architecture. n+1's sterile intellectualism is well fit for a conglomerate-based international empire. Am I being unfair? n+1 opposes empire in its pages while they behave and sound like members of an empire expanding across the planet. They belong to the world: the world belongs to them. Their own land isn't a specter in their heads. They've left it behind them.
More important than what they say is how they say it, and more, what's left unsaid, unfelt. How can they oppose empire when they embody it?
Deny us our authentic culture and you'll soon be denying other people's theirs.
The ULA is the real American literature of today. Our two legendary icons, Jack Saunders and Bill Blackolive, are American folk writers. In their words you'll find the rhythmns and experiences of America. This is our foundation-- the wellspring of cultural renewal. We hope to build on this to give the reader the voices of young America; America reborn. (We hope from our Canadian members also a sense of place, of the tangible Canadian nation I experienced while living across a narrow waterway from it for so long.)
(Upcoming: A Review of James Wood.)
I'm trying to figure out what's happening to establishment literature-- why, for instance, a promising new journal like n+1 is so intellectually sterile. Surely it's one piece of a larger process. Understanding it is close to impossible. I make the attempt regardless.
Why the stark difference between n+1 and a literary journal from the 1960's, Ted Solotaroff's New American Review, which wasn't monotone monochrome but an explosion of energy and color?
It's not just that the writers back then were better-- Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison of "Cadillac Flambe," and company. It's that the writers back then, for all their intelligence and learning, had roots. Their subject was the ground they stood on: America; that diverse mad inferno of a country raging on all sides around them. The writers expressed their direct observation of the country while drinking from the living model of the Beats. The subject of the Beat masterpieces "Howl" and "On the Road" is America. They're a vast loud confused love-and-hate cultural expression of America. A visitor from another planet could ask, "What is America?"-- you would point him to that poem, that novel, and say, "There!"
The writers and editors of New American Review had roots. Of course. Culture without roots is an oxymoron; an impossibility.
Yet this is exactly the kind of literature one finds with n+1. It's as if in forty years the planet has undergone a fumigatory transformation so that we now live in a sterilized future of steel walls, omnipresent air-conditioning, and plastic capsules. Conversation between the floating pod people remains at a sanitized murmur.
Instead of hearing Motown's "Sound of Young America" blaring from the streets, or Chuck Berry, or Elvis Presley (in his voice the multi-cultural blending of all organic strands of American music as his person blended Scoth-Irish American-Indian African Jewish bloodlines), suddenly we're given a soundtrack of the techno-airless electronic notes of "Forbidden Planet." There are no streets: no life, no earth, no populace.
I can only guess that the four n+1 editors were placed into isolation booths during college. Talk about torture! These fellows were forced to read the mind-destroying convolutions of Marcuse Agamben Foucault Lacan Heidegger Derrida Habermas Jameson Cioran Lyotard Eagleton Baudrillard etc etc etc for eight years, until their eyes bled. Extreme sensory deprivation: Jerry Mander's worst nightmare. The person couldn't possibly come out of the experience sane and whole.
I have no idea really what these university isolation chambers are like. I'm speculating. I envision a series of brains in jars, labelled "Foucault"; "Heidegger"; and so on, the students connecting their own minds with the jars through electrical cables. This is the only plausible explantion for the depth of the brainwashing shown in the pages of n+1 through the non-stop name-dropping of approved intellectual icons; no original throughts anywhere to be found. They ingested all of it; lingusitic complexities layered upon complexities so that all truth is lost; everything said means itself and its opposite. One can call it profound or one can call it nonsense.
The n+1 editors left the most esteemed Temples of Academe, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, with hi-tech helmets fitted onto their heads; screens on every side filtering experience so the individual never directly senses the actual world. Between him and the world are intermediaries; green-lettered names scrolling on virtual-reality screens; "Adorno," "Agamben," and the like. (You can't see the helmets, but they're there.)
Any scattered glimpses of America in n+1 are accidental. There's more depiction of Armenia. American culture has vanished, been wiped out.
Solzhenitsyn, when discussing the Russian Empire, argued that the first victim of the Soviet system was Russia itself. The first victim of the multi-national conglomerate globalization of culture is America. This is true of American literature at its highest levels, which is being replaced by an "International Style" of lit as devoid of personality, of roots and place, as the blank International Style of architecture. n+1's sterile intellectualism is well fit for a conglomerate-based international empire. Am I being unfair? n+1 opposes empire in its pages while they behave and sound like members of an empire expanding across the planet. They belong to the world: the world belongs to them. Their own land isn't a specter in their heads. They've left it behind them.
More important than what they say is how they say it, and more, what's left unsaid, unfelt. How can they oppose empire when they embody it?
Deny us our authentic culture and you'll soon be denying other people's theirs.
The ULA is the real American literature of today. Our two legendary icons, Jack Saunders and Bill Blackolive, are American folk writers. In their words you'll find the rhythmns and experiences of America. This is our foundation-- the wellspring of cultural renewal. We hope to build on this to give the reader the voices of young America; America reborn. (We hope from our Canadian members also a sense of place, of the tangible Canadian nation I experienced while living across a narrow waterway from it for so long.)
(Upcoming: A Review of James Wood.)
What's Wrong with The New Yorker
The New Yorker could never cover the ULA's story, our historic Howl Protest actions and the like. If they did the story would be horribly tainted. They're full supporters of the cultural status quo, of the narrowness of the "literary" story and the bland inocuousness of "literary" poetry.
They're Ford Motor in the Twenties: You can buy any color you like as long as it's black.
They're Baskin Robbins selling only one flavor.
Asking the stuffy prepster Ivy Leaguers "sold" body-and-soul on the attributes of the purely literary to consider other writers-- particularly outsiders-- would be like asking Ford to promote other car companies. It ain't gonna happen. Which is why we make our own noise and treat establishment outlets like The New Yorker as our competition-- the enemy.
They're Ford Motor in the Twenties: You can buy any color you like as long as it's black.
They're Baskin Robbins selling only one flavor.
Asking the stuffy prepster Ivy Leaguers "sold" body-and-soul on the attributes of the purely literary to consider other writers-- particularly outsiders-- would be like asking Ford to promote other car companies. It ain't gonna happen. Which is why we make our own noise and treat establishment outlets like The New Yorker as our competition-- the enemy.
Against Binary Thought
Yes or No.
Red or Blue.
Right or Left.
Republican or Democrat.
Column A or Column B.
There are only two choices. Enter this corridor or that one. Later you realize they both go in the same direction, toward a dead end.
What are the Vegas odds that either side is 100% right?
A dispassionate gambler would figure that one side is one-third right, and the other is one-third right-- leaving a third of the pie for new ideas which have never been thought of or tried.
My goal is for the ULA to live in that new third, and leave stale polarized binary bipolar blue smoke and mirrors behind.
Red or Blue.
Right or Left.
Republican or Democrat.
Column A or Column B.
There are only two choices. Enter this corridor or that one. Later you realize they both go in the same direction, toward a dead end.
What are the Vegas odds that either side is 100% right?
A dispassionate gambler would figure that one side is one-third right, and the other is one-third right-- leaving a third of the pie for new ideas which have never been thought of or tried.
My goal is for the ULA to live in that new third, and leave stale polarized binary bipolar blue smoke and mirrors behind.
A Tale of Two Saunders
Keith Gessen in n+1 #4: "George Saunders, the great short story writer and my advisor at Syracuse, told me he knew only two non-teaching writers in his generation (born around 1960): Donald Antrim was one and I forget the other."
Curious the contrast between George Saunders and the ULA's Jack Saunders (no relation). Jack has lived a life opposite to that of the teaching writer. His struggle to survive as a writer outside the system is described in his LitVision/ULA novel, Bukowski Never Did This. The independent writer's struggle is the theme of the work, which looks like no novel ever written, is unique to itself, yet filled with clarity and truth.
www.litvision.org
www.literaryrevolution.com
Curious the contrast between George Saunders and the ULA's Jack Saunders (no relation). Jack has lived a life opposite to that of the teaching writer. His struggle to survive as a writer outside the system is described in his LitVision/ULA novel, Bukowski Never Did This. The independent writer's struggle is the theme of the work, which looks like no novel ever written, is unique to itself, yet filled with clarity and truth.
www.litvision.org
www.literaryrevolution.com
Thursday, July 06, 2006
"Cocktails with Molly Ivins"
Yes, kids, it's time to sign up for the yearly Nation magazine cruise.
All aboard! Join the line-up of pseudo-Lefties aboard a gigantic luxury liner. Play blackjack with Victor Navasky! Screen movies with Jane Smiley! Be waited on by Third World types aboard ship and on the islands!
Signs are already going up throughout the Caribbean. Reggae songs celebrating the wealthy Americans are already being played. The Great White Liberals are on their way.
"Katrina she no own the ship
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!
No one own it so they say
not even rich white billionaire lady
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!
"Victor he done played the game
Rushing now they all to save us
Big white boat it rides the waves
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!
"These rich liberals they be good
Sailing now with lots of money
Drink they rum eat lots of food
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!"
A conga line has started on the island, poor happy smiling natives joining in with the rich visitors who've arrived like white gods in their Big Boat; like Columbus himself! Steel drums sound everyplace. The happy singing grows louder. "Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!"
(Note: The Philly chapter of the Underground Literary Alliance is organizing its own competing excursion. So far all we can come up with for ideas is to "Ride the Ducks"-- a famed local tourist outing; small wheeled boats with quacking ducks painted on them which ride on the river as well as on land. Riders get free the famous "Wacky Quacker" for noise making, which sounds like ULA style. We're not sure though if ULA members and fans can afford the ride's $24 per person charge!)
All aboard! Join the line-up of pseudo-Lefties aboard a gigantic luxury liner. Play blackjack with Victor Navasky! Screen movies with Jane Smiley! Be waited on by Third World types aboard ship and on the islands!
Signs are already going up throughout the Caribbean. Reggae songs celebrating the wealthy Americans are already being played. The Great White Liberals are on their way.
"Katrina she no own the ship
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!
No one own it so they say
not even rich white billionaire lady
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!
"Victor he done played the game
Rushing now they all to save us
Big white boat it rides the waves
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!
"These rich liberals they be good
Sailing now with lots of money
Drink they rum eat lots of food
Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!"
A conga line has started on the island, poor happy smiling natives joining in with the rich visitors who've arrived like white gods in their Big Boat; like Columbus himself! Steel drums sound everyplace. The happy singing grows louder. "Na-tion Ma-ga-zine Is Coming!"
(Note: The Philly chapter of the Underground Literary Alliance is organizing its own competing excursion. So far all we can come up with for ideas is to "Ride the Ducks"-- a famed local tourist outing; small wheeled boats with quacking ducks painted on them which ride on the river as well as on land. Riders get free the famous "Wacky Quacker" for noise making, which sounds like ULA style. We're not sure though if ULA members and fans can afford the ride's $24 per person charge!)
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Battle of Ideas: Rebellion Against the Status Quo
At its most basic, the ULA campaign is a battle of ideas-- which is why we confront ideologues of the literary status quo like those at n+1. As we've seen, contrary ideas are alien to them.
One would think the mandarins and foot soldiers of literature-- advocates of free expression-- would welcome a test of ideas. Instead, they flee from it, the admirable George Plimpton having been the lone exception.
This is the case for several reasons.
TECHNICIANS
Even the most brilliant of status quo writers, such as Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, machine-products, are technicians incapable of seeing and questioning the barriers of the tiny intellectual world in which they live.
They're geniuses of Lilliput. Imagine a toy city with a toy castle, and toy figures playing various roles. This is contemporary literature.
Note the toy Franzen figure, wearing its various medals and honors. Best of the Best! And yes, in the toy city, he truly is. There: Move him into the castle. Place him upon the parapet! Put four small other toy figures below to represent his audience. Hear the applause! Well, you can't, not really, but remember we're playing "Let's Pretend."
Can any of the plastic figures (bought on sale at Wal-Mart) question his world? Of course not! At least, none ever does.
In the same way, today's esteemed literary figures never question the premises of their situation. Their arguments take place within the castle, no outsider voices allowed. Jonathan Franzen and James Wood argue over trivialities in the pages of n+1. Plastic toy figures debating nothingness, and all are happy; the toy world remains safe and just.
My letter, on the other hand, could never be published, because it attacks the premises of n+1 itself; the shaky foundation upon which it's placed itself.
I didn't play by the rules! I behaved like a member of the audience who doesn't buy the illusion; a spectator at a puppet show who cries out, "They're only puppets!"
PRIESTS, NOT ENTERTAINERS
This isn't to imply there's anything entertaining about status quo writers. They're inept as entertainers. Today's academy-trained writers aren't entertainers. They're priests for whom writing and reading is a duty accompanied by inscrutable prose layered with footnotes.
MONO-CLASS LITERATURE
Walk through the "Literature" section of a chain bookstore, scan the volumes of essays, and you'll see they're the product of one cute and refined class of persons, giving one perspective on the society of letters. Jonathan Franzen; David Foster Wallace; Sarah Vowell-- all from the top 5% socio-economic level of America, carrying in their heads the same assumptions and view of the world-- the same assumptions about American literature and their privileged place within it. They're spokespersons for written American culture because, well, because they are. It's already been determined by someone-- by whichever hierarchy or institution makes such decisions. Far be it from them to question these happenings, which for them would be like questioning the natural order of the universe.
Within the toy city, they really are the best. They have the paper degrees, honorariums and accolades to prove it! (They even have a toy opposition represented by New Criterion, graduates of Dartmouth rather than Brown, Columbia, or Yale. They're the red figures in the plastic bag, not the blue ones.)
One couldn't ask Jonathan Franzen to leave Lilliput (to debate the ULA) because that would turn his universe on its head. It'd be a step into the unknown, a place establishment writers never go.
THE FAILURE OF THE STATUS QUO
Because they're mere technicians, status quo commentators are incapable of stepping back and considering the position of literature within society as a whole. If they did, they'd see consistent failure. The publishing world has grown only modestly in fifty years-- most of the sales by a handful of lackluster "popular" novelists named Grisham or Albom producing works as lobotomized of intelligence and real passion as are the most hyped of the Iowa-style workshop books and stories. Fifty years ago even the blockbusters like Tobacco Road were real novels; actual literature.
As literature has stagnated, the rest of the culture has exploded exponentially-- sports, TV, movies, music-- so that literature's place in society, by remaining static, has become marginal. It's become Lilliput. It's undergone a fifty-year retreat into the safety of ivy-covered walls.
A few status-quo commentators in stray careless moments acknowledge the retreat ("all" writers are in universities)-- at the same time they turn away from those who fight for literature outside the safety of the walls; whose strategy isn't one of retreat, but of headfirst ATTACK full of clowns, voices, debates, signs, rhetoric, ballyhoo, noise.
The wrong people are in charge of literature. Franzen, Foster-Wallace, James Wood and their ilk aren't strategists. They don't see the depth of the decline, much less know how to reverse it. It's time to relegate them to the corner of irrelevance they love so much and let others move to the forefront.
One would think the mandarins and foot soldiers of literature-- advocates of free expression-- would welcome a test of ideas. Instead, they flee from it, the admirable George Plimpton having been the lone exception.
This is the case for several reasons.
TECHNICIANS
Even the most brilliant of status quo writers, such as Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, machine-products, are technicians incapable of seeing and questioning the barriers of the tiny intellectual world in which they live.
They're geniuses of Lilliput. Imagine a toy city with a toy castle, and toy figures playing various roles. This is contemporary literature.
Note the toy Franzen figure, wearing its various medals and honors. Best of the Best! And yes, in the toy city, he truly is. There: Move him into the castle. Place him upon the parapet! Put four small other toy figures below to represent his audience. Hear the applause! Well, you can't, not really, but remember we're playing "Let's Pretend."
Can any of the plastic figures (bought on sale at Wal-Mart) question his world? Of course not! At least, none ever does.
In the same way, today's esteemed literary figures never question the premises of their situation. Their arguments take place within the castle, no outsider voices allowed. Jonathan Franzen and James Wood argue over trivialities in the pages of n+1. Plastic toy figures debating nothingness, and all are happy; the toy world remains safe and just.
My letter, on the other hand, could never be published, because it attacks the premises of n+1 itself; the shaky foundation upon which it's placed itself.
I didn't play by the rules! I behaved like a member of the audience who doesn't buy the illusion; a spectator at a puppet show who cries out, "They're only puppets!"
PRIESTS, NOT ENTERTAINERS
This isn't to imply there's anything entertaining about status quo writers. They're inept as entertainers. Today's academy-trained writers aren't entertainers. They're priests for whom writing and reading is a duty accompanied by inscrutable prose layered with footnotes.
MONO-CLASS LITERATURE
Walk through the "Literature" section of a chain bookstore, scan the volumes of essays, and you'll see they're the product of one cute and refined class of persons, giving one perspective on the society of letters. Jonathan Franzen; David Foster Wallace; Sarah Vowell-- all from the top 5% socio-economic level of America, carrying in their heads the same assumptions and view of the world-- the same assumptions about American literature and their privileged place within it. They're spokespersons for written American culture because, well, because they are. It's already been determined by someone-- by whichever hierarchy or institution makes such decisions. Far be it from them to question these happenings, which for them would be like questioning the natural order of the universe.
Within the toy city, they really are the best. They have the paper degrees, honorariums and accolades to prove it! (They even have a toy opposition represented by New Criterion, graduates of Dartmouth rather than Brown, Columbia, or Yale. They're the red figures in the plastic bag, not the blue ones.)
One couldn't ask Jonathan Franzen to leave Lilliput (to debate the ULA) because that would turn his universe on its head. It'd be a step into the unknown, a place establishment writers never go.
THE FAILURE OF THE STATUS QUO
Because they're mere technicians, status quo commentators are incapable of stepping back and considering the position of literature within society as a whole. If they did, they'd see consistent failure. The publishing world has grown only modestly in fifty years-- most of the sales by a handful of lackluster "popular" novelists named Grisham or Albom producing works as lobotomized of intelligence and real passion as are the most hyped of the Iowa-style workshop books and stories. Fifty years ago even the blockbusters like Tobacco Road were real novels; actual literature.
As literature has stagnated, the rest of the culture has exploded exponentially-- sports, TV, movies, music-- so that literature's place in society, by remaining static, has become marginal. It's become Lilliput. It's undergone a fifty-year retreat into the safety of ivy-covered walls.
A few status-quo commentators in stray careless moments acknowledge the retreat ("all" writers are in universities)-- at the same time they turn away from those who fight for literature outside the safety of the walls; whose strategy isn't one of retreat, but of headfirst ATTACK full of clowns, voices, debates, signs, rhetoric, ballyhoo, noise.
The wrong people are in charge of literature. Franzen, Foster-Wallace, James Wood and their ilk aren't strategists. They don't see the depth of the decline, much less know how to reverse it. It's time to relegate them to the corner of irrelevance they love so much and let others move to the forefront.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Bookforum Follies
Frank Norris in his great novel The Octopus depicted a scene of a swanky party of rich people in San Francisco raising money for poor people in India; gorging themselves with drink and feast while a sick homeless woman outside the party perishes on the streets.
In 100 years little has changed, this never more evident than in today's literary world where the darlings of hipness and wisdom pour forth their sympathy over the horrors of the world-- just as long as it's not about anything happening in their own backyard! Just as long as their concern won't affect the structure and corruption of their own society.
The summer issue of Bookforum prints poetry from prisoners at Guantanamo. Given not all of the prisoners are true jihadists who stand against everything Bookforum represents-- but surely some of them are. Paeans to Allah run through the poems: "And Islam will prevail in all corners of the earth."
What misplaced sympathy! Bookforum celebrates a few hundred individuals who may be prisoners-of-war. At the same time, over one million individuals sit ignored in jails and prisons throughout America, in conditions more horrendous than those in Guantanamo; a large percentage of these people-- as many as half-- in for non-violent drug law violations.
Does anyone care about them? Is their existence acknowledged? Why isn't Bookforum publishing their poetry-- or the poetry of downtrodden people throughout this vast nation? Would this run too close to home?
Does Bookforum show concern only when it's safely chic; for those a safe enough distance away to have no meaning? (Manhattan is ringed with brutal jails and prisons full of warehoused souls; locked up in part to preserve the pristine conditon of the Imperial City's golden class, those who circulate at the top of the city's vast multi-colored hierarchy, including the city's privileged literati regularly lauded in Bookforum's pages. "The Clean and the Saved.")
How about a story, Bookforum, not about jihadists, but about zeen writer Cassidy Wheeler? (See Bill Blackolive's 10/10/05 Monday Report, "Letter from a Chained Man," at www.literaryrevolution.com about Wheeler's situation.) Or why not publish poetry from prisoners whose work is circulated by Anthony Rayson's South Chicago ABC Zine Distro (covered on this blog on 1/5/05 in "Zeen Review Extravaganza")?
Come on, Bookforum. Push yourselves away from your wine bars, buffet tables, and chi-chi p.c. campaigns. Wake up to the awful happenings in your own country.
In 100 years little has changed, this never more evident than in today's literary world where the darlings of hipness and wisdom pour forth their sympathy over the horrors of the world-- just as long as it's not about anything happening in their own backyard! Just as long as their concern won't affect the structure and corruption of their own society.
The summer issue of Bookforum prints poetry from prisoners at Guantanamo. Given not all of the prisoners are true jihadists who stand against everything Bookforum represents-- but surely some of them are. Paeans to Allah run through the poems: "And Islam will prevail in all corners of the earth."
What misplaced sympathy! Bookforum celebrates a few hundred individuals who may be prisoners-of-war. At the same time, over one million individuals sit ignored in jails and prisons throughout America, in conditions more horrendous than those in Guantanamo; a large percentage of these people-- as many as half-- in for non-violent drug law violations.
Does anyone care about them? Is their existence acknowledged? Why isn't Bookforum publishing their poetry-- or the poetry of downtrodden people throughout this vast nation? Would this run too close to home?
Does Bookforum show concern only when it's safely chic; for those a safe enough distance away to have no meaning? (Manhattan is ringed with brutal jails and prisons full of warehoused souls; locked up in part to preserve the pristine conditon of the Imperial City's golden class, those who circulate at the top of the city's vast multi-colored hierarchy, including the city's privileged literati regularly lauded in Bookforum's pages. "The Clean and the Saved.")
How about a story, Bookforum, not about jihadists, but about zeen writer Cassidy Wheeler? (See Bill Blackolive's 10/10/05 Monday Report, "Letter from a Chained Man," at www.literaryrevolution.com about Wheeler's situation.) Or why not publish poetry from prisoners whose work is circulated by Anthony Rayson's South Chicago ABC Zine Distro (covered on this blog on 1/5/05 in "Zeen Review Extravaganza")?
Come on, Bookforum. Push yourselves away from your wine bars, buffet tables, and chi-chi p.c. campaigns. Wake up to the awful happenings in your own country.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
The Ballad of Phillip Lopate
See him thumping down the streets
kicking vagrants, punching Beats
Call him Phillip Lopate
Pontificating from cushy Academy's nest
P for Professor on his chest
Stifling rebellion is what he does best!
Well-trained Phillip Lopate
Sour features, turned down thumb
"Jack Kerouac was a bum!"
Watchdog Phillip Lopate
Face of conformity, institutionalized school
"Everybody has to follow the rules!"
Guardian Phillip Lopate
Wears the grimace of a cop
New ideas make him blow his top
Officer Phillip Lopate
"Single File! Get in line!
Or I'll have you do hard time!"
Authority's Voice Phillip Lopate
Others control him, behind the scenes
pushing his buttons, pulling his strings
Obedient Phillip Lopate
Watch him speak now on the stage
Establishment Protector full of rage
"Dare not tamper with Literature's page!"
The man they call Phillip Lopate.
(chorus)
Oh, yeah, Phillip Lopate
Yeah, yeah, Phillip Lopate
Oh, my, Phillip Lopate
Say goodbye please Phillip Lopate!
kicking vagrants, punching Beats
Call him Phillip Lopate
Pontificating from cushy Academy's nest
P for Professor on his chest
Stifling rebellion is what he does best!
Well-trained Phillip Lopate
Sour features, turned down thumb
"Jack Kerouac was a bum!"
Watchdog Phillip Lopate
Face of conformity, institutionalized school
"Everybody has to follow the rules!"
Guardian Phillip Lopate
Wears the grimace of a cop
New ideas make him blow his top
Officer Phillip Lopate
"Single File! Get in line!
Or I'll have you do hard time!"
Authority's Voice Phillip Lopate
Others control him, behind the scenes
pushing his buttons, pulling his strings
Obedient Phillip Lopate
Watch him speak now on the stage
Establishment Protector full of rage
"Dare not tamper with Literature's page!"
The man they call Phillip Lopate.
(chorus)
Oh, yeah, Phillip Lopate
Yeah, yeah, Phillip Lopate
Oh, my, Phillip Lopate
Say goodbye please Phillip Lopate!
Cricket Farnsworth?
n+1'ers can gain all the plaudits, ascots, and British government grants they want and for pure preppy literary snobbery they're mere pretenders, maybe why they dislike the bow-tie wearing genuine snob article at New Criterion so much.
Can n+1 boast, as New Criterion can, of an office manager named Cricket Farnsworth?
(Coming Soon: The ULA's Cricket Farnsworth Fan Club.)
Can n+1 boast, as New Criterion can, of an office manager named Cricket Farnsworth?
(Coming Soon: The ULA's Cricket Farnsworth Fan Club.)
Writers
There are two kinds of writers.
Those who are in the Underground Literary Alliance,
and those who wish they were in the Underground Literary Alliance.
Those who are in the Underground Literary Alliance,
and those who wish they were in the Underground Literary Alliance.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
No One Is Safe
Frankly, I'm becoming of the mind that it makes no sense trying to get along with the elitist snobs of today's literary scene. They'll never accept undergrounders as equals.
The irony is that most of them are terrible writers. I've barely scratched the surface of going after the new (#4) n+1 publication-- haven't mentioned the fiction, which is beyond horrendous. Purely awful. n+1 publishes creative writing gutted of characters, life, the world; hamster-brained solipsism or hyper-intellectualized crap (yes, it really is that bad); and they have the closed-minded gall to be offended at my letter depicting them in a plexiglass box in a museum! (Have they read the dense story they published by Ilya Kliger, about museums or something, with possible appeal nationwide to a grand total of 43 people?)
Their real complaint against me is one of manners. The prime force within the literary world today isn't ethics talent intelligence excitement entertainment or quality-- but manners. Lit folk worry that ULAers might disturb their carefully modulated gentility. (I might make a fool of myself. Heavens!) These people are completely uptight and take what they do all too seriously, which is why their ideas and art are dry and decayed.
n+1's pretentiousness is evident on every page. For all the posturing, it's little more than a snobbier version of Open City. (Even uses the same kind of artsy photos between pages to assert its profundity.) The "best" lit journal? The ULA's Slush Pile blows it away with simple honesty and reality. (Copies may still be found in the zeen section at Tower Records.)
It's time for the ULA to put on its war paint and begin crashing more readings and parties. That person next to you with the fake moustache stuffing hors d'oeuvres in his pockets might be Frank Walsh, or Patrick King, or Jelly Boy, or me.
The irony is that most of them are terrible writers. I've barely scratched the surface of going after the new (#4) n+1 publication-- haven't mentioned the fiction, which is beyond horrendous. Purely awful. n+1 publishes creative writing gutted of characters, life, the world; hamster-brained solipsism or hyper-intellectualized crap (yes, it really is that bad); and they have the closed-minded gall to be offended at my letter depicting them in a plexiglass box in a museum! (Have they read the dense story they published by Ilya Kliger, about museums or something, with possible appeal nationwide to a grand total of 43 people?)
Their real complaint against me is one of manners. The prime force within the literary world today isn't ethics talent intelligence excitement entertainment or quality-- but manners. Lit folk worry that ULAers might disturb their carefully modulated gentility. (I might make a fool of myself. Heavens!) These people are completely uptight and take what they do all too seriously, which is why their ideas and art are dry and decayed.
n+1's pretentiousness is evident on every page. For all the posturing, it's little more than a snobbier version of Open City. (Even uses the same kind of artsy photos between pages to assert its profundity.) The "best" lit journal? The ULA's Slush Pile blows it away with simple honesty and reality. (Copies may still be found in the zeen section at Tower Records.)
It's time for the ULA to put on its war paint and begin crashing more readings and parties. That person next to you with the fake moustache stuffing hors d'oeuvres in his pockets might be Frank Walsh, or Patrick King, or Jelly Boy, or me.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Ridiculous
The most hilarious part of n+1's refusal to debate Stefan Beck was when Keith Gessen pointed out that Beck was merely "Associate Editor" at New Criterion, while they were "Editors" with a capital E-- all four of them.
Well! Clearly inappropriate to put them on the same playing field. The proposed debate would not have been doable simply on matters of protocol.
(The Four n+1 Editors arrive at the theater to discover that Beck has already entered. Improper! Not done! They refuse to walk into the theater until Beck comes back OUTside the theater and waits until THEY-- the "Four"-- have gone in. After all. Social position, you know.)
After they imposed their "No Beck" condition on the event, I scouted around to see who I could recruit to represent the Criterion team instead. No, not the figureheads on the masthead. Truth is that Beck and another obscure guy run the entire operation. Kimball, Kramer, et.al. died eons ago-- were stuffed and mummified and are now kept in a closet at the New Criterion office, in a back room; carted out solely for black-tie fundraising events.
Then who else? Who has a name big enough in n+1 eyes to prod them into a public exchange?
Only one person: Jonathan Franzen.
Yes, the ultimate hermetically-sealed writer himself. A safe opponent. We could've slapped a "New Criterion" t-shirt on Franzen and no one would've noticed the difference. In fact there's little difference between any of these clowns. "Right"; "Left": they come from the same backgrounds and schools, follow the same rules, and all suffer from the same aesthetic lethargy and artistic constipation.
Frank Walsh would've done intros. The n+1 "Four" wait pompously on stage, having taken their chairs first. Smugly they preen and pose. Franzen steps out, overwhelmed by the setting, blinking in the glare of lights behind huge eyeglasses.
"Oprah?" he says.
Well! Clearly inappropriate to put them on the same playing field. The proposed debate would not have been doable simply on matters of protocol.
(The Four n+1 Editors arrive at the theater to discover that Beck has already entered. Improper! Not done! They refuse to walk into the theater until Beck comes back OUTside the theater and waits until THEY-- the "Four"-- have gone in. After all. Social position, you know.)
After they imposed their "No Beck" condition on the event, I scouted around to see who I could recruit to represent the Criterion team instead. No, not the figureheads on the masthead. Truth is that Beck and another obscure guy run the entire operation. Kimball, Kramer, et.al. died eons ago-- were stuffed and mummified and are now kept in a closet at the New Criterion office, in a back room; carted out solely for black-tie fundraising events.
Then who else? Who has a name big enough in n+1 eyes to prod them into a public exchange?
Only one person: Jonathan Franzen.
Yes, the ultimate hermetically-sealed writer himself. A safe opponent. We could've slapped a "New Criterion" t-shirt on Franzen and no one would've noticed the difference. In fact there's little difference between any of these clowns. "Right"; "Left": they come from the same backgrounds and schools, follow the same rules, and all suffer from the same aesthetic lethargy and artistic constipation.
Frank Walsh would've done intros. The n+1 "Four" wait pompously on stage, having taken their chairs first. Smugly they preen and pose. Franzen steps out, overwhelmed by the setting, blinking in the glare of lights behind huge eyeglasses.
"Oprah?" he says.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
"The Best"?
Keith Gessen assures me that whatever my criticisms, n+1 is still "the best" literary journal out there.
The Best?
The "Best" isn't afraid of conflicting ideas, as n+1 clearly is. They've shrunk from engagement again and again.
Early in the year, after n+1 was trashed by Stefan Beck in New Criterion, I offered to stage and promote a debate between the two parties. All they'd have to do is show up. Stefan Beck was open to the idea. Gessen never gave me an answer, beyond a condition that Beck-- the initiator of the dispute-- not be part of it! Strike One.
On May 1st I exchanged e-mails with Gessen, pointing out the noise we'd made with our "Howl" protest, holding open the possibility of joint action. His answer was disingenuous, not mentioning a public discussion they'd already set for May 16th at The Kitchen in New York, which I didn't know about. I'd invited n+1 to participate in our April reading. I received not even an e-mail announcement-- standard procedure-- about theirs.
Can we surmise they didn't want the Underground Literary Alliance anywhere near their event? Never mind as participants-- that'd be unthinkable for such snobs (associating with us in any way would be highly embarrassing to their intellectual reps). They didn't want us even in the audience!
They forfeit the opportunity to gain attention for their journal in the interest of protecting their fragile sense of specialness. Maintain a hermetically-sealed capsule around themselves allowing no contrary opinions to intrude, and maybe they really are heirs to the "New York Intellectuals," as they pretend.
Their May reading made not a sound.
Who was there? Did Stefan Beck show up? Any diversity of ideas? Anyone not from their narrow intellectual test-tube world? No. Their guests were Caleb Crain and Vivian Gornick. The public symposium was no doubt as thrilling as the printed one-- which means, not at all. Strike Two.
Strike Three was declining to publish my letter because it was critical of their journal.
"The Best"? At what? Hiding?
Geniuses unto themselves. Quite a joke.
The Best?
The "Best" isn't afraid of conflicting ideas, as n+1 clearly is. They've shrunk from engagement again and again.
Early in the year, after n+1 was trashed by Stefan Beck in New Criterion, I offered to stage and promote a debate between the two parties. All they'd have to do is show up. Stefan Beck was open to the idea. Gessen never gave me an answer, beyond a condition that Beck-- the initiator of the dispute-- not be part of it! Strike One.
On May 1st I exchanged e-mails with Gessen, pointing out the noise we'd made with our "Howl" protest, holding open the possibility of joint action. His answer was disingenuous, not mentioning a public discussion they'd already set for May 16th at The Kitchen in New York, which I didn't know about. I'd invited n+1 to participate in our April reading. I received not even an e-mail announcement-- standard procedure-- about theirs.
Can we surmise they didn't want the Underground Literary Alliance anywhere near their event? Never mind as participants-- that'd be unthinkable for such snobs (associating with us in any way would be highly embarrassing to their intellectual reps). They didn't want us even in the audience!
They forfeit the opportunity to gain attention for their journal in the interest of protecting their fragile sense of specialness. Maintain a hermetically-sealed capsule around themselves allowing no contrary opinions to intrude, and maybe they really are heirs to the "New York Intellectuals," as they pretend.
Their May reading made not a sound.
Who was there? Did Stefan Beck show up? Any diversity of ideas? Anyone not from their narrow intellectual test-tube world? No. Their guests were Caleb Crain and Vivian Gornick. The public symposium was no doubt as thrilling as the printed one-- which means, not at all. Strike Two.
Strike Three was declining to publish my letter because it was critical of their journal.
"The Best"? At what? Hiding?
Geniuses unto themselves. Quite a joke.
Other Fronts
When I saw Jelly Boy the Clown in West Philly ten days ago, he mentioned starting a Phillip Lopate Fan Club. After all, no one better represents the angry reaction to the ULA presence than Phil-- denouncing Jack Kerouac (and us) from the Miller Hall stage like a stupid big attack dog while his handler looked on proudly.
Maybe ULA Webmaster Patrick Simonelli can add this feature, "Sign Up for the PHILLIP LOPATE FAN CLUB!" as a way to express our thanks. (Special Phillip Lopate puppets are on the way.)
Maybe ULA Webmaster Patrick Simonelli can add this feature, "Sign Up for the PHILLIP LOPATE FAN CLUB!" as a way to express our thanks. (Special Phillip Lopate puppets are on the way.)
Monday, June 19, 2006
Demographics: Facts About America
25% of whites and 50% of minorities don't graduate high school. 75% of adults don't have four-year college degrees. Over 90% don't have advanced degrees. (Over 99% don't attend Ivy League colleges.) When these facts are considered, even the ULA might be somewhat elitist-- though far less than today's lit world as a whole, which is focused on a few percent of the populace.
Literature belongs to everyone. The ULA's ultimate goal is to appeal to the public at large. The building blocks we're putting in place, "Miss ULA," Whino the Cat, Jelly Boy the Clown and all, will allow us to do so.
For Keith Gessen to think there is anything inaccurate about my letter to n+1 shows the totality of his and his friends' cluelessness about their own society and about themselves. I wonder if he's read his own essay.
Gessen writes articles about Soviet-era samizdat for snob journal The New Yorker, yet is willfully ignorant of samizdat in America. Nowhere is it mentioned anywhere, by anyone, in n+1's Symposium. Gessen has no knowledge of the many thousands of zeensters who exist throughout America; of rough-hewn journal writers like Wild Bill Blackolive, Ammi Emergency, and Urban Hermitt who write not out of concerns over career or social status but because they have to. In his essay Gessen discusses publishing with the given that the conglomerates are the only choice. Writers outside this world don't exist, are "total fakers" unworthy of notice.
Gessen's objection isn't with me-- but with himself. Keith: Take it up with the guy who wrote your essay! Confront him on his inaccurate statements, his concerns with "social position" and the like. HE said he didn't know any writers waiting tables. I didn't say it.
I'm not here to play the game of "I'm Okay, You're Okay" by validating your feel-good-about-yourself liberalism. Because you have a few Lefty articles in your issue doesn't give you a free pass about your main topic. Your Symposium, the attitudes expressed by you and your colleagues, and by lit folks you admire like Jon Franzen and James Wood, well show you're an embedded part of the literary status quo; part of the elitist nature of literary culture, every bit as much as the precious black-tie characters at New Criterion. They're just more up-front about it, is all.
Literature belongs to everyone. The ULA's ultimate goal is to appeal to the public at large. The building blocks we're putting in place, "Miss ULA," Whino the Cat, Jelly Boy the Clown and all, will allow us to do so.
For Keith Gessen to think there is anything inaccurate about my letter to n+1 shows the totality of his and his friends' cluelessness about their own society and about themselves. I wonder if he's read his own essay.
Gessen writes articles about Soviet-era samizdat for snob journal The New Yorker, yet is willfully ignorant of samizdat in America. Nowhere is it mentioned anywhere, by anyone, in n+1's Symposium. Gessen has no knowledge of the many thousands of zeensters who exist throughout America; of rough-hewn journal writers like Wild Bill Blackolive, Ammi Emergency, and Urban Hermitt who write not out of concerns over career or social status but because they have to. In his essay Gessen discusses publishing with the given that the conglomerates are the only choice. Writers outside this world don't exist, are "total fakers" unworthy of notice.
Gessen's objection isn't with me-- but with himself. Keith: Take it up with the guy who wrote your essay! Confront him on his inaccurate statements, his concerns with "social position" and the like. HE said he didn't know any writers waiting tables. I didn't say it.
I'm not here to play the game of "I'm Okay, You're Okay" by validating your feel-good-about-yourself liberalism. Because you have a few Lefty articles in your issue doesn't give you a free pass about your main topic. Your Symposium, the attitudes expressed by you and your colleagues, and by lit folks you admire like Jon Franzen and James Wood, well show you're an embedded part of the literary status quo; part of the elitist nature of literary culture, every bit as much as the precious black-tie characters at New Criterion. They're just more up-front about it, is all.
Friday, June 16, 2006
More About n+1
Is n+1 worth the time I'm devoting to it? Frankly, no. These stooges live in an intellectual bubble-- arrived on the scene with a splash of publicity and have allowed their momentum to slow. Unlike the ULA, they don't have the born energy to reverse it.
Their big hope with issue #4 is an essay by Philip Connors. Forget the symposium, "American Writing Today," an instant snoozer. Even the editors hope to forget it. They've now posted big signs around the Connors essay, with large black arrows pointing at it: "Look at This Instead!"
Yes, the Connors essay is the best thing in the issue. I'm reluctant to criticize it, because it contains a chunk of strong 9-11 reportage near the end, but the rest is mediocre.
Connors doctors an article in order to be employed at the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper he loathes. He stays three years around people he intensely dislikes-- apparently collecting material for an expose. The resulting expose is mostly embarrassing, the kind of thing once done better by Jay McInerney, punctuated by two highlights: 1.) Evil Editor Bob Bartley changes "pipe dream" back to "pipedream." 2.) Connors and Bartley share an elevator ride. "I was going to ask this. I was going to ask that. I didn't ask anything." (Literary people love writing about missed moments.)
(I found the piece unsettling because the Underground Literary Alliance had in its ranks for a short time a person who secretly loathed us and everything we're doing. Whatever you do, be genuine. If Connors was himself fraudulent, how can one take his scathing remarks seriously?)
His great revelation: That the WSJ editorial page is the WSJ editorial page. It's pro-Capitalist (pro-Monopolist) and ultra-conservative. Shocking!
Dog bites man.
More relevant would be an article on how and why the liberal-"Left" has fallen into lock-step with the notorious Wall Street Journal editorial page on the subject of uncontrolled immigration. (Memo to Thomas Frank: Sometimes people in red states like Kansas do vote their economic interests.)
*********************************************
Another Gessen complaint is that I included his magazine's Letters section in my own letter's purview. Sorry-- but throughout n+1's short history, James Wood and Jonathan Franzen have been the editors' touchstones of literary intelligence and relevance, mentioned by them again and again. Their exchange in #4 SHOULD be a highlight of the issue. That it's not is an example of how establishment literature carries only the facade of life and relevance. They're pretenders; cardboard imitations. No energy is there.
Another letter I quote from, from Columbia professor Jenny Davidson-- whose remarks go into the issue unchallenged-- argues that the lit journal is too narrow and elitist. The example she gives, of school principals and such, is intended as a way for n+1's editors to broaden their focus. That I quote it as an example of the furthest reaches of this crowd's narrow limits is well-justified.
That Gessen tries to direct and control the kind of letters which go into the journal further shows that I was right to include them in my fairly tame remarks. After all-- they made it into the issue, didn't they? My letter didn't. Oh well.
Their big hope with issue #4 is an essay by Philip Connors. Forget the symposium, "American Writing Today," an instant snoozer. Even the editors hope to forget it. They've now posted big signs around the Connors essay, with large black arrows pointing at it: "Look at This Instead!"
Yes, the Connors essay is the best thing in the issue. I'm reluctant to criticize it, because it contains a chunk of strong 9-11 reportage near the end, but the rest is mediocre.
Connors doctors an article in order to be employed at the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper he loathes. He stays three years around people he intensely dislikes-- apparently collecting material for an expose. The resulting expose is mostly embarrassing, the kind of thing once done better by Jay McInerney, punctuated by two highlights: 1.) Evil Editor Bob Bartley changes "pipe dream" back to "pipedream." 2.) Connors and Bartley share an elevator ride. "I was going to ask this. I was going to ask that. I didn't ask anything." (Literary people love writing about missed moments.)
(I found the piece unsettling because the Underground Literary Alliance had in its ranks for a short time a person who secretly loathed us and everything we're doing. Whatever you do, be genuine. If Connors was himself fraudulent, how can one take his scathing remarks seriously?)
His great revelation: That the WSJ editorial page is the WSJ editorial page. It's pro-Capitalist (pro-Monopolist) and ultra-conservative. Shocking!
Dog bites man.
More relevant would be an article on how and why the liberal-"Left" has fallen into lock-step with the notorious Wall Street Journal editorial page on the subject of uncontrolled immigration. (Memo to Thomas Frank: Sometimes people in red states like Kansas do vote their economic interests.)
*********************************************
Another Gessen complaint is that I included his magazine's Letters section in my own letter's purview. Sorry-- but throughout n+1's short history, James Wood and Jonathan Franzen have been the editors' touchstones of literary intelligence and relevance, mentioned by them again and again. Their exchange in #4 SHOULD be a highlight of the issue. That it's not is an example of how establishment literature carries only the facade of life and relevance. They're pretenders; cardboard imitations. No energy is there.
Another letter I quote from, from Columbia professor Jenny Davidson-- whose remarks go into the issue unchallenged-- argues that the lit journal is too narrow and elitist. The example she gives, of school principals and such, is intended as a way for n+1's editors to broaden their focus. That I quote it as an example of the furthest reaches of this crowd's narrow limits is well-justified.
That Gessen tries to direct and control the kind of letters which go into the journal further shows that I was right to include them in my fairly tame remarks. After all-- they made it into the issue, didn't they? My letter didn't. Oh well.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
The Letter n+1 Refuses to Publish
(Text of letter sent May 21st, 2006 to the editors of literary journal n+1.)
To the Editors,
Keith Gessen in #4: "Practically no writer exists now who does not intersect at some point with the university system. . . ."
Nice to know I and my colleagues don't exist! He's dismissed an entire class of writers, and with them, the majority of his own society. Writing isn't something everyone in a democratic society should engage in, don't you know. It's reserved for a special class of citizens who know how to write (and read) properly-- in the prescribed way.
A few vague nods toward populism are scattered about the essays and letters. Otherwise the symposium and much of the issue is a long moan about the decline in "literary studies," in "reading comprehension" and reading. The contributors know they need to reach somebody other than themselves, "someone's well-educated mother" (emphasis on "well"), "a lawyer or a high school principal or a financial journalist"-- which broadens their target to 2% of the populace. The status of literature has declined in the culture-- all admit it-- yet to remedy the problem they take baby steps.
The title of the opening feature, "The Intellectual Situation," proclaims these people "intellectuals." They've paid big money to gain that word and won't give it up! They embrace that designation, that difference, and as long as they do they marginalize themselves. About the larger society and how to reach it they remain clueless.
An image pops into my head of one of those hybrid French museums in which the contemporary is planted hopefully amid the walls of classicism. A large plexiglass box hangs suspended from the ceiling of the old museum. Inside the box, holding wineglasses, stand today's literary caretakers. The conversation is filled with standard academic jargon: "derive" this and "derive' that; derived specificity derived from the arbitrariness derived from the inutility of "an inverted vitalist." (Throw in some "genetic mysticism" and a few "imprimaturs" while you're at it.)
The buzz among the people suspended in the box is at a polite murmur. Look! There's Vivian Gornick repeating outmoded terms like "middlebrow" whose purpose is to reaffirm the literary hierarchy writers like her dwell in, above, er, the floor. And in the corner! James Wood and Jonathan Franzen, our culture's (supposed) Best Critic and Best Novelist, "mutual almost-admirers," are locked in debate-- almost. Museum patrons struggle to listen, expecting to hear words of energy and wit, of sharp-edged conflict or sparkling wisdom, finding instead the dullest such exchange, from two big names, ever.
Stephen Burt discusses the most lackluster sliver of a vibrant poetry scene. Gornick dismisses the notion of class while the museum admission fee becomes prohibitively expensive and the box she's in rises higher. Caleb Crain next to her wonders why the audience is moving away from them. "Where are they going?" he asks as the box is hauled up a few more inches.
Gerald Howard at the center of the group bemoans the conglomerates (of which he's part). He's "gloomy-hopeful" someone will find a way out of their plexiglass trap. He never asks, "Does anyone have a hammer?"
He's too preoccupied with the chatter. Meanwhile, outside the museum runs a stream, fed by underground springs, representing the life force of authentic culture. Franzen for one would like to reach this water, this renewal, but no one among the powdered crowd knows the way out of their box.
Sincerely,
King Wenclas
Underground Literary Alliance
To the Editors,
Keith Gessen in #4: "Practically no writer exists now who does not intersect at some point with the university system. . . ."
Nice to know I and my colleagues don't exist! He's dismissed an entire class of writers, and with them, the majority of his own society. Writing isn't something everyone in a democratic society should engage in, don't you know. It's reserved for a special class of citizens who know how to write (and read) properly-- in the prescribed way.
A few vague nods toward populism are scattered about the essays and letters. Otherwise the symposium and much of the issue is a long moan about the decline in "literary studies," in "reading comprehension" and reading. The contributors know they need to reach somebody other than themselves, "someone's well-educated mother" (emphasis on "well"), "a lawyer or a high school principal or a financial journalist"-- which broadens their target to 2% of the populace. The status of literature has declined in the culture-- all admit it-- yet to remedy the problem they take baby steps.
The title of the opening feature, "The Intellectual Situation," proclaims these people "intellectuals." They've paid big money to gain that word and won't give it up! They embrace that designation, that difference, and as long as they do they marginalize themselves. About the larger society and how to reach it they remain clueless.
An image pops into my head of one of those hybrid French museums in which the contemporary is planted hopefully amid the walls of classicism. A large plexiglass box hangs suspended from the ceiling of the old museum. Inside the box, holding wineglasses, stand today's literary caretakers. The conversation is filled with standard academic jargon: "derive" this and "derive' that; derived specificity derived from the arbitrariness derived from the inutility of "an inverted vitalist." (Throw in some "genetic mysticism" and a few "imprimaturs" while you're at it.)
The buzz among the people suspended in the box is at a polite murmur. Look! There's Vivian Gornick repeating outmoded terms like "middlebrow" whose purpose is to reaffirm the literary hierarchy writers like her dwell in, above, er, the floor. And in the corner! James Wood and Jonathan Franzen, our culture's (supposed) Best Critic and Best Novelist, "mutual almost-admirers," are locked in debate-- almost. Museum patrons struggle to listen, expecting to hear words of energy and wit, of sharp-edged conflict or sparkling wisdom, finding instead the dullest such exchange, from two big names, ever.
Stephen Burt discusses the most lackluster sliver of a vibrant poetry scene. Gornick dismisses the notion of class while the museum admission fee becomes prohibitively expensive and the box she's in rises higher. Caleb Crain next to her wonders why the audience is moving away from them. "Where are they going?" he asks as the box is hauled up a few more inches.
Gerald Howard at the center of the group bemoans the conglomerates (of which he's part). He's "gloomy-hopeful" someone will find a way out of their plexiglass trap. He never asks, "Does anyone have a hammer?"
He's too preoccupied with the chatter. Meanwhile, outside the museum runs a stream, fed by underground springs, representing the life force of authentic culture. Franzen for one would like to reach this water, this renewal, but no one among the powdered crowd knows the way out of their box.
Sincerely,
King Wenclas
Underground Literary Alliance
Monday, June 12, 2006
Intellectual Condescension or Cowardice from n+1?
Yesterday's post was actually written by me a couple weeks ago. Not everything I write makes it onto this blog. Many things I write for myself, as a way of figuring out the world.
I decided to post it after receiving an e-mail from n+1 editor Keith Gessen. In its condescension the e-mail was typical of the attitude of those at the center of today's literary world. He complained about a letter I'd sent the journal several weeks ago, in which I gave my opinion about some of the contents of the issue-- mainly a symposium about literature today, but I also included in the focus of my statements a few of the issue's letters, including an exchange between Jonathan Franzen and James Wood.
In his e-mail Gessen informed me he wouldn't be publishing my letter. He didn't like the idea that I hadn't addressed the entire issue-- an essay on global warming, for instance, which had nothing to do with literature; the kind of article included as a feel-good gesture, to say, "Look how concerned we are!"-- even though the essay included few if any real-world solutions, and would have nil impact on the problem of global warming regardless. n+1, after all, is a literary journal. Its impact is confined to the realm of literature. If I wish to address it, it will be on the subject of literature, where the interests of its editors, and the members of the Underground Literary Alliance, intersect. (If I want to get into a discussion about environmental issues I'll look elsewhere-- maybe writing to my congressman and Senators.)
Gessen, you see, wanted his journal addressed on HIS terms, not the reader's. I guess I didn't play by the rules. They went to so much trouble to set up the issue to make themselves appear so wonderful!-- constructing a well-ordered garden of ideas, and in true ULA fashion I trampled all over it.
Gessen spoke, in his e-mail, from the Olympian heights all his kind of lit-folk adopt-- even when they know little about anything beyond what was programmed into them in school. "You're better than that" etc etc, concluding with my letter, which criticized the issue, conveniently being shut out.
But Keith, this is 2006, not 1951. There are other outlets for my letter, and my ideas, including this blog. I'll post the letter here, and let the literary public judge its worth or cogency or irrelevance for themselves.
But do you really want me to address the rest of the issue as well? I can easily do so-- as I did in a couple paragraphs of my previous post. I'd rather stay on topic-- with the theme of the ULA campaign-- as I did in my letter to you.
I decided to post it after receiving an e-mail from n+1 editor Keith Gessen. In its condescension the e-mail was typical of the attitude of those at the center of today's literary world. He complained about a letter I'd sent the journal several weeks ago, in which I gave my opinion about some of the contents of the issue-- mainly a symposium about literature today, but I also included in the focus of my statements a few of the issue's letters, including an exchange between Jonathan Franzen and James Wood.
In his e-mail Gessen informed me he wouldn't be publishing my letter. He didn't like the idea that I hadn't addressed the entire issue-- an essay on global warming, for instance, which had nothing to do with literature; the kind of article included as a feel-good gesture, to say, "Look how concerned we are!"-- even though the essay included few if any real-world solutions, and would have nil impact on the problem of global warming regardless. n+1, after all, is a literary journal. Its impact is confined to the realm of literature. If I wish to address it, it will be on the subject of literature, where the interests of its editors, and the members of the Underground Literary Alliance, intersect. (If I want to get into a discussion about environmental issues I'll look elsewhere-- maybe writing to my congressman and Senators.)
Gessen, you see, wanted his journal addressed on HIS terms, not the reader's. I guess I didn't play by the rules. They went to so much trouble to set up the issue to make themselves appear so wonderful!-- constructing a well-ordered garden of ideas, and in true ULA fashion I trampled all over it.
Gessen spoke, in his e-mail, from the Olympian heights all his kind of lit-folk adopt-- even when they know little about anything beyond what was programmed into them in school. "You're better than that" etc etc, concluding with my letter, which criticized the issue, conveniently being shut out.
But Keith, this is 2006, not 1951. There are other outlets for my letter, and my ideas, including this blog. I'll post the letter here, and let the literary public judge its worth or cogency or irrelevance for themselves.
But do you really want me to address the rest of the issue as well? I can easily do so-- as I did in a couple paragraphs of my previous post. I'd rather stay on topic-- with the theme of the ULA campaign-- as I did in my letter to you.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Systems, Children, Knowledge, and Novels
(Or, the Continuing Education of You the Reader.)
LEVERAGE
I was in a discussion with someone who knocked the ULA's hectic public debate with George Plimpton's Paris Review in 2001. The person mocked PR as being irrelevant, saying they had a readership of seven!
Yes, but what seven? Plimpton didn't derive his power within American literature from number of copies of his lit-journal sold. If the seven readers were on the masthead and included the editors of large circulation mags like GQ and Esquire, and influential editors and publishers like Gary Fisketjon and Morgan Entrekin, then the influence of the modest lit-journal was multiplied ten thousand-fold. Its "seven" readers themselves controlled a readership in the millions. This was why Plimpton was a well-honored figure in lit circles; how he discovered and created well-hyped star after star-- opening the door to a million dollars worth of publicity for authors like Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, Susan Minot, and others.
The person I contended with in the discussion had no understanding of the concept of leverage. Like so many writers today, he has no comprehension of how the world works. American civilization is a gigantic machine. Leverage is a connection between several of its parts.
Leverage is a tiny holding company with a modest suite of offices in an unremarkable building in Delaware or New York. The tiny company is owned by an "old money" family which made its fortune a century ago or more and now maintains a low profile. The holding company itself owns a controlling interest in one of the major money center banks in New York; maybe in more than one of them. These banks in turn hold the debt of, and in effect own, several multinational corporations (or more than several); vast extents of farmland and rain forests from Iowa to Brazil; even a large chunk of the Federal Reserve banking system, a private entity which owns our currency and charges us interest for its use. Tremendous leverage-- all stemming from the modest offices of the tiny company at whose yearly board meeting elderly family members nibble peanuts while adjusting the volume on their hearing aids.
GOOD INTENTIONS AND IGNORANCE
In the new issue of n+1 is a staggerly childish proposal put forth by co-editor Mark Greif. He proposes a 100% tax on yearly incomes over $100,000. A laudable idea-- the kind of simplistic solution to America's problems which might be forwarded by a ten-year old.
The only real problem with Greif's idea is that it shows zero knowledge of how our economy works. Several among a score of criticisms of his notion:
-it'd be politically impossible;
-capital markets, lubricating oil within the machine, would stop their flow and the economy would grind to a halt;
-tax dodges would proliferate and the rich would quickly find a way around the tax, as they've always done;
-you'd need a totalitarian police state to enforce it.
Worst of all, Greif's proposal fails on its own terms. He puts it forward as a way to redistribute wealth (confusing income with wealth) when it would do nothing of the sort. It would, in fact, stratify our caste society more than it is now. The classes would be rigidly set in stone. The very wealthy don't need income. They're already rich. Their wealth increases from simple appreciation of assets-- the increase in value of their land, houses, art, antiques, furs, yachts, stables of horses, wine and comic book collections, classic cars, and so on and so on.
Shelves of books have been written about tax dodges and how the rich intentionally lose money to decrease their income. The point is that here we have a literary person writing about a subject of which he has no knowledge. None. Which doesn't matter in today's literary world. Good intentions are enough. Young Johnny has an idea! On the surface, a brilliant one. Pat him on the head and give him a lollipop.
In today's lit world, nonsense is spoken daily with utter seriousness, with the facade of knowledge, and no one says a word.
OTHER WRITERS
As I explained many times in New Philistine, I'm from a non-standard writing background, having bounced around a lot of my life. My first writing "job" was editing a local union newsletter. A couple years after that I found myself, bizarrely enough, writing an investment newsletter for a free-booting commodity trader. The late 80's was the heyday of independently produced investment newsletters. Many of the best of them-- my models-- appeared in a now-defunct newspaper based in Kansas called Consensus. The most noteworthy thing about the lone-wolf wannabe-entrepreneur newsletter editors was what good writers they were. Their opinions sparked with wit and sarcasm, bold insights and striking knowledge. To this day I can't read standard "literary" fare-- the lethargic mumblings of Jonathan Franzen; the condescending goofball gobbledygook adolescent arrogance of David Foster Wallace (his recent book of essays is awful) without becoming depressed at the contrast between society's lauded writers-- frauds for the most part-- and the clarity, verve, and real intelligence of a tiny subculture which for all I know is gone.
"BEST" NOVELS
Our era's most famous novelists, like John Updike, speak wisdom neither to Presidents or the populace. No sensible person would take their advice on anything. An Updike is more a curiosity you'd put in a corner, in his rocker, cover with a blanket, and allow the large-headed icon to babble away to his heart's content with rounded harmonious sentences of words which make no sense.
Literature today is a babbling ignored ignorant old man rocking away in a far corner of the room.
Forget the lists of "best" novels which regularly appear in mainstream publications, or on the syllabus lists of academics. The best American novel of the second half of the 20th century-- in fact, not myth-- is virtually unknown: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens. This is an objective statement. Cozzens was a conservative author I have no ulterior reason to applaud. By "best" novel I mean best written and best constructed; that which conveys the most knowledge of our American civilization, about how it operates and the people who run it, with unflinching truthfulness.
In its massiveness, it's not an easy read. It's not a book for children. I struggled with it for years. When I finished it I found it satisfying and enlightening. Cozzens is the novelist who best understood the American system-- the "Machine"-- the nascent American Empire whose actions and consequences we live with every moment.
Set on an air force base in World War II, the novel shows with scope and depth the workings of the gears of the Machine, with attendant bureaucracy, politics, racism, loyalty, egotism, glaring incompetence combined with amoral brilliance which is the story of American success. The story of America is the story of systems. We're the masters of systems. Our wars were won not by military genius but by the mass application of organization and logistics.
One can't understand America or any part of it, including its culture, without understanding its systems.
Guard of Honor is the most relevant novel I've read for understanding America NOW. Its youthfully swaggering flawed General Beal and his senior advisor-- a judge in civilian life who solves for his boss problem after problem; who covers up base fuck-up after fuck-up-- is reflected today in President Bush and his Vice President. Through learning the workings of the base one understands the workings of the minds of the two men. Rare is a novel which is as relevant sixty years after it was written as when it came out. In soberly depicting the personalities and attitudes, strengths and weaknesses of those who created American Empire, in revealing how the machine operates, it'll remain relevant for decades or centuries to come. Next to it, all the well-hyped novels by Roth, Updike, DeLillo, Pynchon, Oates and company were written by children. On Guard's final pages, with all problems temporarily resolved, monster airplane representing American technological strength vanishing into the sunset as General Beal and his artful handler watch, the reader sees suddenly that the novel's own construction, perfect in its wholeness of form, is a work of art; intelligent without being intellectual; plain, solid, masterful, stoic: quintessentially American.
LEVERAGE
I was in a discussion with someone who knocked the ULA's hectic public debate with George Plimpton's Paris Review in 2001. The person mocked PR as being irrelevant, saying they had a readership of seven!
Yes, but what seven? Plimpton didn't derive his power within American literature from number of copies of his lit-journal sold. If the seven readers were on the masthead and included the editors of large circulation mags like GQ and Esquire, and influential editors and publishers like Gary Fisketjon and Morgan Entrekin, then the influence of the modest lit-journal was multiplied ten thousand-fold. Its "seven" readers themselves controlled a readership in the millions. This was why Plimpton was a well-honored figure in lit circles; how he discovered and created well-hyped star after star-- opening the door to a million dollars worth of publicity for authors like Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, Susan Minot, and others.
The person I contended with in the discussion had no understanding of the concept of leverage. Like so many writers today, he has no comprehension of how the world works. American civilization is a gigantic machine. Leverage is a connection between several of its parts.
Leverage is a tiny holding company with a modest suite of offices in an unremarkable building in Delaware or New York. The tiny company is owned by an "old money" family which made its fortune a century ago or more and now maintains a low profile. The holding company itself owns a controlling interest in one of the major money center banks in New York; maybe in more than one of them. These banks in turn hold the debt of, and in effect own, several multinational corporations (or more than several); vast extents of farmland and rain forests from Iowa to Brazil; even a large chunk of the Federal Reserve banking system, a private entity which owns our currency and charges us interest for its use. Tremendous leverage-- all stemming from the modest offices of the tiny company at whose yearly board meeting elderly family members nibble peanuts while adjusting the volume on their hearing aids.
GOOD INTENTIONS AND IGNORANCE
In the new issue of n+1 is a staggerly childish proposal put forth by co-editor Mark Greif. He proposes a 100% tax on yearly incomes over $100,000. A laudable idea-- the kind of simplistic solution to America's problems which might be forwarded by a ten-year old.
The only real problem with Greif's idea is that it shows zero knowledge of how our economy works. Several among a score of criticisms of his notion:
-it'd be politically impossible;
-capital markets, lubricating oil within the machine, would stop their flow and the economy would grind to a halt;
-tax dodges would proliferate and the rich would quickly find a way around the tax, as they've always done;
-you'd need a totalitarian police state to enforce it.
Worst of all, Greif's proposal fails on its own terms. He puts it forward as a way to redistribute wealth (confusing income with wealth) when it would do nothing of the sort. It would, in fact, stratify our caste society more than it is now. The classes would be rigidly set in stone. The very wealthy don't need income. They're already rich. Their wealth increases from simple appreciation of assets-- the increase in value of their land, houses, art, antiques, furs, yachts, stables of horses, wine and comic book collections, classic cars, and so on and so on.
Shelves of books have been written about tax dodges and how the rich intentionally lose money to decrease their income. The point is that here we have a literary person writing about a subject of which he has no knowledge. None. Which doesn't matter in today's literary world. Good intentions are enough. Young Johnny has an idea! On the surface, a brilliant one. Pat him on the head and give him a lollipop.
In today's lit world, nonsense is spoken daily with utter seriousness, with the facade of knowledge, and no one says a word.
OTHER WRITERS
As I explained many times in New Philistine, I'm from a non-standard writing background, having bounced around a lot of my life. My first writing "job" was editing a local union newsletter. A couple years after that I found myself, bizarrely enough, writing an investment newsletter for a free-booting commodity trader. The late 80's was the heyday of independently produced investment newsletters. Many of the best of them-- my models-- appeared in a now-defunct newspaper based in Kansas called Consensus. The most noteworthy thing about the lone-wolf wannabe-entrepreneur newsletter editors was what good writers they were. Their opinions sparked with wit and sarcasm, bold insights and striking knowledge. To this day I can't read standard "literary" fare-- the lethargic mumblings of Jonathan Franzen; the condescending goofball gobbledygook adolescent arrogance of David Foster Wallace (his recent book of essays is awful) without becoming depressed at the contrast between society's lauded writers-- frauds for the most part-- and the clarity, verve, and real intelligence of a tiny subculture which for all I know is gone.
"BEST" NOVELS
Our era's most famous novelists, like John Updike, speak wisdom neither to Presidents or the populace. No sensible person would take their advice on anything. An Updike is more a curiosity you'd put in a corner, in his rocker, cover with a blanket, and allow the large-headed icon to babble away to his heart's content with rounded harmonious sentences of words which make no sense.
Literature today is a babbling ignored ignorant old man rocking away in a far corner of the room.
Forget the lists of "best" novels which regularly appear in mainstream publications, or on the syllabus lists of academics. The best American novel of the second half of the 20th century-- in fact, not myth-- is virtually unknown: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens. This is an objective statement. Cozzens was a conservative author I have no ulterior reason to applaud. By "best" novel I mean best written and best constructed; that which conveys the most knowledge of our American civilization, about how it operates and the people who run it, with unflinching truthfulness.
In its massiveness, it's not an easy read. It's not a book for children. I struggled with it for years. When I finished it I found it satisfying and enlightening. Cozzens is the novelist who best understood the American system-- the "Machine"-- the nascent American Empire whose actions and consequences we live with every moment.
Set on an air force base in World War II, the novel shows with scope and depth the workings of the gears of the Machine, with attendant bureaucracy, politics, racism, loyalty, egotism, glaring incompetence combined with amoral brilliance which is the story of American success. The story of America is the story of systems. We're the masters of systems. Our wars were won not by military genius but by the mass application of organization and logistics.
One can't understand America or any part of it, including its culture, without understanding its systems.
Guard of Honor is the most relevant novel I've read for understanding America NOW. Its youthfully swaggering flawed General Beal and his senior advisor-- a judge in civilian life who solves for his boss problem after problem; who covers up base fuck-up after fuck-up-- is reflected today in President Bush and his Vice President. Through learning the workings of the base one understands the workings of the minds of the two men. Rare is a novel which is as relevant sixty years after it was written as when it came out. In soberly depicting the personalities and attitudes, strengths and weaknesses of those who created American Empire, in revealing how the machine operates, it'll remain relevant for decades or centuries to come. Next to it, all the well-hyped novels by Roth, Updike, DeLillo, Pynchon, Oates and company were written by children. On Guard's final pages, with all problems temporarily resolved, monster airplane representing American technological strength vanishing into the sunset as General Beal and his artful handler watch, the reader sees suddenly that the novel's own construction, perfect in its wholeness of form, is a work of art; intelligent without being intellectual; plain, solid, masterful, stoic: quintessentially American.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
ULA Cleveland Summer Extravaganza Weekend
While we will continue making noise about the historic "Howl" protest, the ULA is also preparing for a big event in Cleveland in early July, organized by the ever-crazed Wred Fright.
Watch www.literaryrevolution.com for upcoming details.
Watch www.literaryrevolution.com for upcoming details.
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