More Raymond Carver

MALEVOLENT LIT PART I

We in the underground least of all should be blaming the victim when a fellow writer is abused by literary Overdogs. Ray Carver is a tragic figure and deserves our sympathy. He was an ambitious working class writer who was played for a fool; used as the class clown at writing programs then later turned into a Frankenstein monster or freak show attraction.

"Look at him! The Minimalist! Get yer tickets here, folks. Step right up! Behind this curtain, we have for you. . . ."

They tamed and mutilated him, then gave him to the public as if to say, "Here! This is what we can do to a writer."

Carver knew what'd been done to his work, and to him. He'd been psychologically lobotomized, as helpless as Winston Smith at the end of Orwell's masterpiece. Isn't this how so much of Ray Carver's work sounds to the reader? The stories were lobotomized. And so, trendy Overdog writers like Ann Beattie, Susan Minot, and Jay McInerney gloried in them.

It was subtle, what'd been done to Carver, as cruel in its way as any censorship devised by totalitarians. (Maybe because it came from literary totalitarians.) Ray Carver was censored and celebrated; celebrated BECAUSE he'd been censored in some kind of sick inside joke.

WRITERS CAN BE DANGEROUS. They're not wanted by the establishment if they've shown signs of too much independence. We see in the pages of lit journals and New Yorker magazines the domesticated pets of literature. Literature has lost its anarchy, its rebelliousness, and its excitement.

Safe pets all: editors, critics, poets and writers alike. Line them up in a row and that's what you'll find.

It'd always been a mystery to me why Raymond Carver was lauded as a great writer. He was a good one-- his longer stories like "Boxes" were pretty good-- but critically there was a wild overreaction to them. Something else was going on.

Blog Report

Check out "The John Wayne Factor" at
www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com
"Fantastic Detroit" is still ongoing at
www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com -- for those who want the flavor of Detroit.
Another writer checks in at the "Philly Lit Today" series at
www.phillyliterary.blogspot.com
And-- there are some key posts below this one on this blog, including "Gordon Lish Meets Tolstoy," and an Inside Tip for the publishing world.

Check it all out!

My Strategy

Let me state that I have nothing but regard for the ULA. How could I not? It was my creation. I wish it nothing but success. We remain on the same side, as far as I'm concerned. Our objectives, I'd hope, are the same.

My leaving should've surprised nobody. I stated it and discussed it on this blog and on the ULA's private forum. I generally say what I mean and mean what I say.

And really, it was past time for me to leave. Once I realized I'd lost the support of the ULA's #2 and #3, my departure was a done deal. After what transpired the last couple months within the team, there was no way I could remain. I'd certainly put in enough years on the project. No one should begrudge my wanting a change. Besides, no one was listening to me anyway! I needed a break from the ULA, and it needed a break from me.

REBELLION
As I stated in my 12/31 note on this blog, the Underground Literary Alliance is not the rebellion itself, only one vehicle for it. I intend to continue literary rebellion, in my own way, but it will be a rebellion of one.

CONSIDERATIONS
The ULA wasn't working for me personally as that rebellion-- which isn't to say that it can't work well for others. I hope it does. I'll take some reflected glow in its success. Too much of my time over the past several years was taken up by the demands and debates of the team. Further, the ULA was becoming too easy a target. I found myself with no mobility, was too easily pinned down within the ULA. The point I was making with my 12/31 post, for those who cared to see it, is that the literary rebellion can exist outside any house or group or name. There are advantages to a group-- which is why eight years ago I formed one. The disadvantage is anchoring that rebellion to an organization which can be isolated and attacked, as it's been attacked very strenuously from the outside and the inside.

As I was almost always the target of those attacks, I can best help the ULA by stepping away from it.

STRATEGY
Moving to Detroit gave me a different perspective on the literary game board-- an opportunity to devise a different strategy. The ULA strategy which had been in place was sounder than most believed-- as I'll explain in coming days-- but had been reduced to, in football terms, running the ball straight up the middle; directly into the opposing line. (For this I take full responsibility.) It would've worked with full execution, but committed execution of the plan we didn't have and never had.

For me, the break from the team has been liberating. I no longer feel tied down worrying about who I please or displease with my words or actions. The only person I need to satisfy is me. I'm free to draw on the entire range of my talents, which are substantial. I'm the best publicist (or propagandist) the underground has seen in a generation. No one in the lit world can generate strong arguments and sustain them like I can.

THE ASSUMED PLAN
I'm putting together my own propaganda machine, my own personal "army," if you will, of up to a dozen blogs. With no distractions I'll be able to maintain them and create a synergy of noise. The Idea: using Detroit and Philly as bases from which to move about the country. (I'll be pursuing in those towns only peace.) Endless options open up to me. Do I target Chicago, for instance: a major prize? I can appear at open mics throughout the country, eventually head west and hook-up with undergrounders from Portland to the Bay area.

BACK-UP
Meanwhile, there IS a "Project X" on my drawing board, and a pre-Project X to set it up. Whether I get to them will depend on my situation.

Gordon Lish Meets Tolstoy

(Note: Gordon Lish is the editor who mangled Ray Carver's writing. Lish is himself a prominently published writer; a major influence on the "hippest" writers of today. I imagined what would happen if Lish were assigned the task of editing classic novelists like Melville or Tolstoy.)

GORDON LISH MEETS TOLSTOY
"First, Lev, baby, boychik, we have to take out this messy historical business. It has to go. Nobody wants to read it! It's history! Does anyone like history? A clue: a short little brief whispered I won't say it loudly little tiny clue: 'Dry as dust.' Okay? Are we getting the picture, the image here, Mr. Count? Yes, yes, I know, you have all that time on your hands on your nice little estate when you're not chasing peasant girls, but we're talking serious business here, Count. We're talking literature! We're talking readers! Is a teenage girl Hannah Montana teenage fan girl in Ocean Barf California going to care one gazoodle about all this historical junk you've crammed into this too-long book? Napoleon? Please. He's got to go, and your characters are talking about Napoleon almost on the very first page! NOBODY cares about Napoleon! Are we understanding what we're talking about here Mr. Bigshot Russian Novelist? Is the light glimmering? GET RID OF IT! Yes, yes, Moscow is very important, yes, crucial, you say. But don't you know one soft-pedalled whispered hint about writing strategies? What did they teach you in writing class? Were you sleeping? Snoozing snoring through your moustaches? Here's what we do: 'And then Napoleon captured Moscow.' There. Okay? That's it. Presto magic solution. SOLVED. Lightbulb? It gets us directly to the important stuff, which is how Natasha feels about it. We'll get inside her perky little head and stay inside there and eliminate the cluttered furniture; the houses, armies, generals, battles, landscapes, families, bad relations, rowdy peasants-- ugh!-- drunken lieutenants: the entire sorry soggy mess.

"And all this philosophical garbage?!! You have me tearing my hair out here in frustration at what you've presented me here with this manuscript, Count, really."

BONUS: GORDON LISH MEETS MELVILLE
"A whale? A white whale???!"

Inside Tip

WE'LL see coming up whether the New York publishing world any longer contains even an ounce of brains; whether those N.Y. insiders-- Gawker or whoever-- who still read this blog know how to spot and jump on opportunity. After all, the Choire Sichas, Maud Newtons, and Elizabeth Spiers of the Magic Island are nothing if not opportunists, and I'm giving here, if not the scoop of a lifetime, the opportunity of 2008.

I've just received and read Philly writer Lawrence Richette's latest novel, Private Screenings, published through Xlibris. Richette has always been that rarest of beings today, a competent novelist, but now he's outdone himself and written a great one. Perhaps the stress of his recent life (Philly people know what I mean) has opened the floodgates on his talent and bumped it to another level. I don't know the why, wherefores, or whatevers. I just know his new book is a terrific read. It's the best novel of this decade. Yes, believe it. That it was published through Xlibris, that it had to be published through Xlibris, makes it a bigger story.

I'll be reviewing the book on more than one blog simultaneously in a few weeks-- which leaves others (agents, reviewers, publishers) time to get quickly in step with what's happening: the full emergence of a major American writer.

Today's Question

Who's the Tiger Woods of literature, past or present?

Done with It

For those who were wondering, or if there was doubt--

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: I'm officially through (have been) with the ULA as an Active Member. I've asked to be taken down from my positions of prominence on the ULA site.

The ULA was a quixotic project. When I created it I carried many ideals. Few remain.

I'm still a supporter-- for now-- which means, passively observing from the sidelines, like Achilles at his ships. For further statement see Achilles's speech near the beginning of The Iliad when he was withdrawing from that team.

For me, the ULA is in the past. I'm moving forward.

On Raymond Carver

FANS
Writers who are fans of Ray Carver should be most outraged at the way he was treated. No better argument can be given for the original ULA campaign, which was supposed to change the dynamic of writers as powerless supplicants subservient to the whims of all-powerful editors and publishers.

The Ray Carver story shows that editorial decisions change the nature of artworks-- decisions based on ideology masquerading as aesthetics; completing the job begun in writing programs of gutting the writer's mind and his work of content and context, leaving mere vague feelings, which is what happened with Carver's writing.

Today's Question

Is baseball pitcher Roger Clemens lying?

Now Up

"Fantastic Detroit": a great new essay at www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com

ALSO:
-"Best Movie" #8 at www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com
-News at www.phillyliterary.blogspot.com

The King Wenclas Lit-Blog Network

More CIA Fun Stuff

THE DROOLING braindead mavens of what passes today for literary culture need to view American literature within context. From 1950 to 1990 that context was the Cold War. The leading literary figures during that period, including George Plimpton but also Robert Silvers of New York Review of Books, Norman Podhoretz at Commentary, the "New York Intellectuals" at Partisan Review and New Criterion, were COLD WARRIORS. Study their friggin' history! Is everyone in literature today an ignorant zombie? Are you going to tell me their political ideology had NO influence on editorial policy?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The guy we should've interviewed was Mailer, before he passed on. Curious that a few months before his death he'd been giving his usual flatulent interviews to adoring boozhie audiences, then suddenly was gone. (Smothered by a pillow?) (Maybe his son cryogenically froze him a la Ted Williams. We can hope.)

Mailer was a good buddy of Plimpton's and likely knew the truth. He'd written a novel about the CIA-- I plan to read it-- and had a sequel planned before being talked out of it to do instead a crapsterpiece about Hitler.

I suspect the troll on the mountain will make a reappearance at my "Plutocracy USA" tale (www.literarymystery.blogspot.com). That is, if I'm not "accidentally" run over by a Detroit snowplow in the interim.
**********************************************************
(Note: This Friday, February 8, is the seven-year anniversary of the great debate at CBGB's-- specifically, CB's Gallery-- preppy editors of the Paris Review including Mr. Plimpton against the ULA. It was a real exchange of conflicting ideas-- one of the great moments of literary history.)

Today's Question

A SUPER TUESDAY PACZKI DAY QUESTION

Who will be the next President? (BONUS QUESTION: Who were you supporting?)

The King Wenclas Lit-Blog Network

Much happening worth checking out:

-A Lawrence Richette essay now up at
www.phillyliterary.blogspot.com

-A new essay of my own at
www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com

-Chapter Eight now up at
www.literarymystery.blogspot.com
(with a special fictional appearance by none other than "George Plimpton.")

-A great new essay about the Cass Corridor upcoming at
www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com

HERE at this location I'll be doing a series of posts on the topic, "Compromise and Ray Carver." This story is at the heart of what's wrong with American literature today. The question of when to compromise, and in what areas, should be of concern for every writer.

Request

Could someone notify us here if the NY Times runs an article on the Harold Humes/Peter Matthiessen issue, or if they have this week already? I suspect it will be of the cover-up variety.
Thanks.

On James Linville

My communications over the last few years with former Paris Review editor James Linville have strengthened my belief in the Richard Cummings article. Mr. Linville sometimes appears to border on the unstable. He has a penchant for sending out hysterical e-mails (such as those sent to me and to a couple ULAers this weekend). If the New York Times deals with him for any length of time they'll realize this also. (I suspect they already have.)

It's James Linville who seems to lack any semblance of common sense. He has no perspective toward who myself and the ULA are, and what was important and newsworthy in the story we posted, and why we posted it. It's Linville who has behaved, since the Matthiessen story broke, like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off; bombarding people with scattershot e-mails; not even getting the names and roles straight of the ULAers to whom he's been sending them.

THE CONTEXT
The ULA has posted its "Monday Reports" with a belief in Thomas Jefferson's famous motto: put all ideas on the table and the truth will win out.

The ULA is not the New York Times. We don't have an army of paid fact-checkers. What the Underground Literary Alliance has been, through its history, is a mere handful of rabble-rousing truth seekers who work shitty low-pay jobs and pursue lit activities during stray moments of free time.

Unlike James Linville, I don't have the means to fly back and forth across the oceans to pursue this odd detail or that one. In truth, it's not what the ULA has been about.

THE OFFER
I notified James Linville before we ran the Richard Cummings article in 2005. J.L. refused to publicly deny Cummings's contentions, would not confirm or deny the central premise (which presumably he already knew to be true), and couldn't give me, and has never given me, a straight answer about anything. From Linville all has been vagueness and obfuscation.

As the piece ran on our site, I offered James Linville the opportunity to give us his response. He could've denied the essay, politely or with outrage. Linville could've attacked a particle of it or all of it, in as many words as he cared to utilize. For almost three years that offer has been open AND CONTINUES TO BE OPEN to James Linville. He has never sought to take advantage of it.

CREDIBILITY
If I've formed a question about the credibility of anyone in this affair, it's James Linville himself. Throughout he's behaved in ways cryptic and mysterious, acting-- bizarrely enough-- AS IF he were a secret agent; after the Matthiessen revelation flying back and forth from England on a moment's whim; arranging sudden consultations with Paris Review editors; behaving toward Richard Cummings-- whose essay, opinionated and foolhardy or not, was an act of bravery-- in a manner akin to stalking. Likely Linville isn't a "secret agent," but he sure enjoys playing one.

THE PROPOSED MEETING
Linville forwarded to me copies of many e-mails he sent Cummings, in which Linville was trying to arrange a meeting, alone, with Cummings, during which he wanted to "ask him one question." What the important and mysterious question was, and why he couldn't ask Cummings via e-mail, was not revealed. The request for a meeting was interspersed with bullying insults, attempts at intimidation. I'm sure I still retain copies of those e-mails. Cummings would've been crazy to meet the man.

THE PARIS REVIEW
Throughout, The Paris Review, to my knowledge, has never denied one iota of the substance of the Cummings article. Their current editor, in fact, has acknowledged the key point, saying this was "common knowledge" among the TPR staff. (Matthiessen's connection with the CIA was surely NOT common knowledge among the reading public.)

Several months AFTER the ULA ran the Cummings piece, I met with a representative of The Paris Review, Jonathan Dee, who wanted to interview me for a supposed book on George Plimpton. We met for lunch at McHale's in New York City. During the entirety of our taped conversation, Mr. Dee never once mentioned the Cummings matter. I eventually broached the subject myself, in a light-hearted way. He said nothing, did not seem to want to discuss the issue, so I moved on. Obviously, there was no apparent animus at that time toward me from the magazine, and no eagerness to question me or the ULA about what we were doing or saying regarding the CIA. They had pronounced uninterest in the story. So has it remained.

Many, many questions of course remain.

Advisory

Note: The Paris Review/CIA matter has resurfaced in the person of James Linville, who supposedly is cooperating with the New York Times on a story on the matter.

I hope the New York Times gives myself (and the ULA, if they wish to be involved), proper TIME to respond to this matter before running anything-- and hope they contact us themselves. I trust they won't rush into print a hatchet job.

As for myself, I eagerly welcome ANY public discussion of this matter, and hope that all parties-- including the Paris Review-- are involved in such discussion. I'll take full responsibility for the ULA running the Cummings piece, if need be, as I arranged it.

The fact is that the piece was run in the interest of BRINGING THIS MATTER TO DAYLIGHT. Again, any public discussion of this is a good thing.

I'll have much more to say on the matter-- and now feel free to bring James Linville's actions to light-- such as the 100+ e-mails he sent me after Peter Matthiessen admitted CIA backing of the journal-- which, after all, was the central revelation of the Cummings piece the ULA ran as a "Monday Report."

Bring it on!

The Real Shakspere

This week I jumped into a discussion on another blog, Daniel Green's "Reading Experience," on the post "Publish or Perish.) (See www.noggs,typepad.com/the_reading_experience)

On matters of literature, Green is my ideological opposite. He has a selfish view of literature-- if he had his wish the art would belong to him alone. The idea of reaching the masses is anathema to him.

He's advocated the polite kind of
poetry reading
of gentle words
and stripped-down verse
no rhythmn of rumbling building energy
of shouted unpleasantries
that shake the listener's spine--
no rhyme or euphonious line--
Not poetry at all.

And so he's far distant from the long ago literary performer who was the inspiration for THIS blog, Will Shakespeare.

THE QUESTION was about Ray Carver, and whether the art belongs to the artist, or to the conglomerate system of literary bureaucrats and skyscraper offices that bought it.

It's strictly a question of control. Amazing to me is how writers like Daniel Green are so eager to cede control to the hierarchs.

The irony is that people today applaud themselves for their non-conformity, yet are the most conformist generation of the most regulated and conformist society in history.

This subservient attitude is bad for literature and art.

An eye-opener for me was when I researched the original documents regarding "Shakspere," to understand the actual person.

His mentality was 180 degrees opposite that of writers today. With his writing itself he was restricted by no one. (He couldn't go too far with ideas against the Crown, of course.)

This man-- he was only a man; a roustabout actor-- felt free, as writers today are NOT free, to play with words, grammar, spelling. He wasn't a product of the Academy. There were no dictionaries. No editors as we know them. He was as much, or more, an artist of verbal language as of the written kind. His words and grammar were often made up on the spot. (He was much like a couple clown actor street writers I know.) This character Shakspere would never, NEVER, fit into today's hyperregulated system of literature.

Literary people today want stylistic standardization because they're creatures of the precision and standardization of the Machine Age introduced with Industrial Capitalism. The artisan exchanged for the assembly line.

Do we really need the standardization of literature? Which means, of our minds?

Why?

Well, to be plugged into proper jobs in this institutional bureaucracy or that one, that's why.

But what has this to do with art?

WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH ART???

Sure, Shakespeare was a genius, we say now. Yea, sure.

But in a way he wasn't a genius at all.

He was a scrambling boozing shitting struggling-to-survive-and-have-fun-while-doing-it character. He had fun, and today, hearing his words, seeing his plays, we have fun also.

Were Blake and Van Gogh geniuses?

Or were they not eccentrics of original vision?

What fun is there in foillowing the crowd?

Better to break the rules, snub the regulators, the school marms, the high priests of culture to step eagerly into the unknown.

Nine: "The Guns of Navarone"

An old-fashioned popcorn movie with a sense of wonder about it.

Dismissed as a straightforward action-adventure, there's more going on in it.

The movie's wonderful prologue, which speaks of the "gods and demi-gods" of ancient Greece, reveals this conscious attempt to create a modern-day myth, yet no one noticed.

We're cast quickly into myth, as a team of heroes is formed during WWII and sent on a seemingly impossible mission to destroy monsters: two gigantic German guns which rain fire on all around them. Few movies have so played with the forces of nature, as the band of commandos survive a sea storm; climb unscaleable cliffs; journey through tunnels and across snow-covered mountains on the way to their goal, which once glimpsed at the outset stand close in the back of our minds until presented again with all their terrible power. At the end the surviving heroes are thrown back into the sea from whence they came, come full circle, memories playing in their heads of their comrades and experience.

This is a movie not about ridiculous fantasy, but about myth; the creation of myth. The fiery guns are fantastic but very real at the same time, which adds to their strength as symbols. We know while viewing the action that such adventures, such heroics, DID happen, in the recent past. Which makes the heroics great and believable. No goofy CGI monsters, buff narcissistic gym-rats, or camera-trick hobbits, sorry.

Note: crucially important for the impact of "Guns" is the musical score by Dmitri Tiomkin. Motion pictures are a combination of arts. I rate the value of music as an ingredient in film very highly-- which is why with at least five of these choices, the film music is among the best ever written. Which is the case with the next selection. . . .

p.s. The remaining eight selections will be presented at my newest blog,
www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com

New Blog

I have to briefly interrupt my "Best Movies" series to announce another new blog at www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com
which will eventually serve as a co-blog base for my upcoming projects, along with "Demi-Puppets" of course.

Next up at "Happy": "The Dream."

Number Ten: "Zorba the Greek"

I haven't seen this in many years, since I was in my twenties and viewed it at some art house revival. I can't say how it would hold up if I saw it again. For me it was life-changing. Its message is that life, like art, is exotic and an adventure and a mystery. One has to plunge into the experience. It's a cliche to say it, but we're all on our own personal Odysseys, as is the Alan Bates character, who arrives in Greece with his stack of books. Dominating the action is quixotic con artist Zorba, played by cinematic madman Anthony Quinn, who also appears, curiously enough, in the next selection; the most questionable choice of the ten.

The Ten Best Movies?

STARTING with my next post I'll give my selections for the ten best motion pictures of all time. I'll include some explanation of each one, so that by the time the last selection (#1) is given, the reader will have a sense of the criteria used when I made my choices. It's a subjective list but an objective one at the same time; as all art criticism has to be.

I treated movies as art and experience. I looked for films which exploited the possibilities of the art; understanding as I did what those possibilities are. Too much film criticism over the years has treated film as A.) a literary work; B.) a piece of furniture, whose importance lies in how it's pieced together.

I considered the movies chosen as they appear on the big screen-- how this particular art was meant to be displayed.

You'll see as the list is given that I avoided many (not all) of the obvious choices-- what would be the fun in that? Also because many of the obvious choices are wrong.

Many films almost made the cut. I would've loved to have included "GodfatherII," for instance; surely a masterpiece. The big screen reveals the incredible tapestry of its set pieces. (Who can forget the parade in Little Italy?) It was left off my list because it's too consciously a masterpiece. Its greatness is all on the screen. Despite the tragedy of Michael Corleone, the darkness is on the surface, without enough resonant depths which leave the viewer a different person; which cause him to judge not just Michael Corleone, but himself. Still, it's a masterpiece all the same.

But enough talk. Next up: Number Ten.

Coming Changes

MY BREAK from, if not with, the ULA is for real. At some point I'll evaluate where I stand. In the meantime I'm moving ahead with fresh projects. I'm motivated and advocating for radical literary change but will be applying a new strategy and new tactics. Stay posted on these moves here and on my other blogs--
www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com
www.phillyliterary.blogspot.com
www.literarymystery.blogspot.com--
with a Chicago blog on the drawing board and another exciting new blog yet to follow.

Literary Rebellion 2008

NEW LITERATURE like all new art can't be confined to institutions. The literary revolution underway is greater than conglomerates or MFA programs. Only by breaking out of the current system can one see literature for what it truly is: a great moving transcendent art.

Those inside the system are blind to what's happening. Their institutional walls mirror the aesthetic walls erected around their brains.

Can one live inside the walls and understand what happens outside them?

Can living art be catalogued and confined, quantified and put into a box?

One can't be revolutionary, an advocate of new literature, without breaking from the institutional walls of the old. Non-criticism of the status quo means you still are one with that status quo. You haven't broken with the present and so are unable to build a new future. Instead you're co-opted, subsumed, consumed by what is now-- the rigidly dead and decaying corpse of literature now. You're one with a corpse.

The Underground Literary Alliance is a vehicle for that which is literary and revolutionary. Nothing more.

To break with the present and become part of the new world of literature means embracing the historical break that has taken place-- a break in time, visible, which occurred on October 8, 2000; the onset of literary rebellion, of an upturned and renewed literary world.

The literary revolution can't be destroyed. It's an idea, an energy-- not a building or one person or group of persons. The flag has been planted. The break recorded. The call for new literature documented.

If the vehicle of the movement stalls and crashes, the movement continues anyway.

If the members of the cause are betrayed, or betray their own cause, yet the movement continues anyway.

The basis of the new movement is truth, honesty, integrity, independence, cooperation, commitment, desire for change and unflinching FEARLESSNESS in implementing that change in pursuit of revived literature-- literature not of dead words and borrowed postures but living art.

Merry Christmas?

REMEMBER the homeless person in the wheelchair I wrote about a couple months ago?

This morning I was walking through the burned-out outskirts of downtown Detroit on a bitterly cold day-- bitterly cold-- when I saw said person in wheelchair vanish inside a niche of an abandoned building; seeking shelter from the relentless wind. A quickly-moving bundled figure in a chair. There are parts of Detroit that would move Charles Dickens to tears of frustration for exceeding in tragedy anything he depicted.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Essay Awaited

Next up from the McSweeney's Gang: An apologia for record-setting baseball player Roger Clemens saying he may not actually be lying about his steroid use-- where's the definitive proof?-- and it's excusable anyway because everyone else is doing it! Success is All.

Ten Landmark Movies

Here's my list, in historical order, of ten movies which came with the "shock of the new"; whose impact was greater than we can experience today. They redefined the art of film in this country-- for good or ill.

1.) The Great Train Robbery.
2.) Birth of a Nation.
3.) The Jazz Singer.
4.) Citizen Kane.
5.) The Robe.
6.) Psycho.
7.) Goldfinger.
8.) Bonnie and Clyde.
9.) Star Wars.
10.) Pulp Fiction.

This is a prelude to my next movie list, which will be less obvious and will come with explanations: The Ten Best Movies of All Time.

Movies: "The Godfather"

Remember the plot?

The Don won't compromise his principles. The other families are angry and put a hit on him, while trying to destroy his organization from within. Betrayals are common.

It's almost a history of the Underground Literary Alliance.

Open Mic

I checked out a decent open mic last night at a place called Beaner's on Woodward in Royal Oak, about five miles from Detroit. A report upcoming next week on my new Detroit blog.

Notice

I've stepped down as Publicity Director of the ULA until further notice. I'll not give my labor for free to those who'll betray it.

I remain as a Supporting Member, as I support the ULA mission, the web site and most of the current membership, the Philly branch particularly.

Motivations

Coup Plotter #2:
He's a "can't we all just get along" kind of person, and presumably blames me for the dissension we've had in the team, people who've left, and so on. He doesn't realize that people leaving happens in any organization. I've seen more people come and leave in my present job than in seven years of the ULA. Conflicts will happen-- especially in an outfit whose mission is rebellion.

I've had time to think about the question of leadership-- when a leader is necessary. I've sought the ULA to have role models, not leaders.

Without leaders a group can operate ONLY in the spirit of cooperation-- which is not how Coup Plotter #1 has been operating.

Every revolution in history has had leaders-- which may mean in the final analysis nothing more than someone there to take the heat, which has been my role in my seven years as unofficial leader of the ULA. Someone out front to receive the inevitable brickbats. During this period I've tried several times to push someone else to the forefront. There were never any takers. It takes a certain kind of personality to take the responsibility and take the heat. A revolt-- even a literary revolt-- is going to generate heat. In many ways that's the point.

Have I riled people? Many many people. I have enemies all over the place. It comes with the territory-- with daring to make real change.

Revolutions have tried to move without leaders, or a series of leaders. The French Revolution failed because it had no overarching unifying force like a George Washington. Men like Danton and Robespierre took their turns but were swept aside by the conflicts and heat, the madness of those who could not keep their heads while making change and so lost them literally.

What dilemmas did someone like Robespierre face? He started as a man of peace and of utter integrity, then faced a choice between losing the revolution or compromising his ideals as the Revolution was assaulted from all sides; betrayed from within and attacked from outside. Easy enough for us to sneer at him from the outside, through the pages of history books, without understanding the choices he faced.

The same can probably be said for Castro in our own time. Yes, he's a monster, a ruthless dictator; hardly a saint. He's imprisoned many people. Why? Attacked from without and within-- he could either act or lose the revolution, what he'd created. One can agree or disagree with his cause but at the same time recognize that the moment he caves in to the U.S. and the monopolies that experiment is over. It will be dismantled, piece by piece, becoming swiftly enough what it was before he came on the scene-- a Disney amusement park for the corrupt and the monied.

I'm trying to prevent the ULA from being co-opted and destroyed. . . .

What kind of ULA will remain if the coup plotters succeed?

There will be no leaders, certainly; not a trace of a leader. no decision making. No actions done which create any waves. It will separate into fiefdoms feeding on the remains of the ULA's reputation. There will be no one to generate-- or take-- any heat, and so it will stagnate into just one more on-line place for conversation and back-slapping, while the two coup plotters recede safely into the background, satisfied there is no longer any noise.

The Coup

I knew it was coming, in some ways willed it to happen.

I had left Philadelphia to give the campaign and myself some breathing space-- to lower the ULA's profile and give us a chance to regroup.

Remember what happened? The opposite of what I'd expected. Interest in this rebellion from our rivals and enemies suddenly went up. They smelled weakness and blood. I was attacked on "Gawker," of all places, and by others on this blog, the first visible interest in it in months. I played with this. I was experiencing real personal difficulties after my move. I wrote about them here, as readers know. I decided, "Let the sharks come out, from outside and within. Let them reveal themselves." The ULA seemed up for grabs.

In fact I've received many e-mails from likely and unlikely sources. From the ever-egregious Ed Rants, a System stooge through-and-through, urging me to quit the battle. From a McSweeneyite contact back east trying to find out where I was, what I was up to, and when I'd be back. Even from a prominent magazine editor in New York, friend of one of our major foes, prodding the apparently-dead corpse.

A maneuver was coming-- I only needed to wait for it.

(Next: The WHY of the matter.)

Update

Apparently a coup of sorts has taken place within the ULA, which has left me with no say in the organization I created. Consider me under internal "house arrest" at the present time. (Whether I can reverse this remains to be seen.)

In the meantime I'll be practicing my spoken word presentation-- instead of always winging things-- in preparation for becoming a solo act!

Sidebar

This is how I feel:

As if we've defeated over the years a series of the world's most evil and clownish villians-- the Joker, the Penguin, Doc Octopus, the Mummy, etc.-- and suddenly the entire group of them is brought back at once in front of our eyes.

Or, picture a line-up of eight jack-in-the-boxes popping up at once at the same point in the ridiculous music, all with the same painted-on idiotic grin.

Those to whom this refers will know what I'm talking about. Pardon me if I try to put you back in your boxes.

ULA Opportunities

2008 will be a good year for the ULA because the entire game board is open to us. Right now, Chicago is an open city-- a huge prize without the obstacles we've faced in the east. We have a base of sorts in Chicago-- a few great members; a couple media contacts-- but we need to strengthen it. I'm well-positioned in Detroit to access both Cleveland (a ULA base) and the jewel waiting to be taken that is Chicago. This I'll be doing.
(p.s. There's a great "ULA Monday Report" by Chicago-area writer Adam Hardin at www.literaryrevolution.com Check it out.)

New Blog

Check it out at www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com

Challenges

I've never felt truly alive unless I'm facing a challenge. Back against the wall.

Too many writers-- zine people for instance-- allow themselves to become stuck in a mental box or niche, a cozy place from which they never progress. The years pass and they keep cranking out more issues of "Macaroni," #812. Which is fine if that's all you want.

To leave a mark your projects have to constantly mutate and grow, artistically. This is the task of the Underground Literary Alliance-- to keep our core attitude and message yet keep moving and changing. This is our challenge.

We have a great history but it's only that. New moves are required.

I look out from our tiny outpost of Truth and Integrity on the literary map and see us surrounded by opponents on all sides. Massed armies. Yet at the same time I see their weakness; paths through them to their cardboard fortresses standing like stage scenery within sight. I feel in some small way how Cortez nust've felt with his band of brigands in a golden city in an alien land, surrounded by a magnificent opposing army of many thousands yet knowing victory was his if he kept his head and met the awe-inspiring challenge.

Typical Lit Site

"The cat sits
in the rain
Fuck Matt Damon."
-by Glitzy

"Brilliant." -Trash Mouth
"Awesome!" -D.J.

"The dog
barking
barfs."
-by Trash Mouth

"Awesome." -Glitzy
"Brilliant!" -D.J.

"I am a baseball
player
baseball
baseball,
player."
-by D.J.

"I didn't know you wrote poetry!" -Glitzy
"Brilliant! Awesome!" -Trash Mouth

Underground

On the verge of dropping completely off the radar screen and vanishing into the muck of a beaten-down city I've become again what I used to be: a genuine underground writer.

The Good News

The good news is that the Underground Literary Alliance is alive and well. Overall 2007 was a successful year for us. 2008 will be better.

The Truth Tellers

IN A LAND where literary Overdogs from the monied classes glory in their own duplicity; where literary bureaucrats beneath them, who I call Demi-Puppets, live insulated in their sinecured offices amazingly obtuse about the realities of America while obsessed not with art but with grammatical trivialities and editorial control over writers-- the bland-faced living definition of mediocrities-- where newspapers even the "alternative" kind in cities like Detroit suffering from economic depression and financial collapse are printed with large glowing Happy Faces on their covers; in this societally-mad situation only writers in the underground as represented in the ULA and elsewhere will give you an inkling of WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING.

Why I Write

I write to change the culture. I believe in cultural revolution-- in writing as a vehicle to bring about change. Real change. Transformational change. I'm involved with the Underground Literary Alliance in order to change literature. Not just change literature-- transform it, from top to bottom. I believe literature can rescue this society but first we have to rescue literature.

I don't know why others write. They seem to be stuck in holding patterns, believing that if they write long enough something will magically drop from the sky for them. If they just keep writing someone will recognize them. But that's not life. You have to make the world recognize you-- have to grab it.

The time for change is now. Not some ill-defined unspecified never-mentioned time that will never arrive. The time is NOW.

Writing

What I ask from the world is the freedom to write. I left the last decent job I had at the end of 1999 because I couldn't write. It was an always-on-call seven-day-a-week seventy-hour workweek position which left me no energy or time or space in my mind to write. I couldn't write! I was burning out brain cells processing stupefyingly dull paperwork submitting government-specified according-to-regulation entries for shipper clients and I never could write. As I worked I had many things in the back of my mind I wanted to write about. I created the ULA the spectre or first idea of the ULA back there, back in the untouched segments of my brain I wasn't using. Back in the tiny hectic riverfront office where I spent all my time.

Now I work shitty jobs part-time which don't pay my bills but I have some freedom. I write every day. I should be writing novels, could write some good ones but that's too draining when you still have to work but at least I'm writing, something. Even this. I yet have a little freedom.

I'm like the character I created Alex Skarski who just wanted to play her guitar the right way, except I'm not a guitarist, I'm a writer.

A Manifesto of Writing

My manifesto: I believe in literature. I'm part of the cult of fanatic madness of reading and writing. I believe words can save people. They saved me. When I was working nights in a railroad yard in the Eighties a young man with no course in life I read the words of giants like Dickens and Hugo and Dumas and Tolstoy and they saved me. I opened books in a tower while waiting for trains and the universe expanded. It multiplied in front of me. The great books expanded my mind.

Other writers are my brothers and sisters, yea, truly. They understand-- some of them understand-- this fanatic creed we've adopted, this cult of reading and writing. Literature is a religion if it reaches down into your soul; if it expresses the soul of life you see around you; if it shapes and explains your world and gives voice to your yearnings, your thoughts, your existence, your meaning.

Mailer

My take on Norman Mailer is still up at the Literary Mystery blog, in Chapter Four. (He appears near the end of the chapter.)

It can be found at www.literarymystery.blogspot.com/2007/07/chapter-four.html

What's Wrong with This Picture?

All this fall at libraries around the country, the ALA (www.ala.org) had displays up about "Banned Books." One of the books depicted on the display poster was The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Clearly visible on the cover of the book as shown on the poster were the words, "Nine Months on New York Times Best Seller List."

About ULA Shows

I just saw this recent remark from Jackie Corley's blog (http://jackiecorley.wordriot.org/2007/09/07/oh-benevolent-dictator/ )

"I like the ULA. I don’t agree with them all the time, but I like them. I did a ULA reading a couple years ago in this anarchist bar in Philly and it was probably the best lit event I’ve ever been to. All the readers varied in their writing and performance styles and that’s not something you see at most readings. Like, there were slam poets mixed in with short story writers, guys who were so sucked into their words that they spat and shouted their lines and guys who read in a straight monotone. There were just all different types of people. It felt very spontaneous, a little bit lunatic asylum. It was great."

Now Up! "Part III"

The Conclusion of the short story "Bluebird" has finally been posted at www.ulapoetryandfiction.blogspot.com.

I wrote the story merely to prove a point but it turned into more than I bargained for.

"Bluebird" Part II

Now up at www.ulapoetryandfiction.blogspot.com

It might need a little tweaking. Remember, Part III yet to come.

Deleted Sentence

(Knocked out of Part II of my story "Bluebird.")

"Brent was like a survey of men's magazines: hair, cologne, suits, shirts, and ties; but nowhere to be seen a trace of an idea."

Now Up!-- "Bluebird" Part I

The first installment of my new fiction story, "Bluebird," is now up at:
http://www.ulapoetryandfiction.blogspot.com/
The other two sections will be posted in the next two weeks, as time allows.

It's the story of a rock band.

"Open, Sesame"

THE ACCEPTANCE by writers of the literary world's caste system is akin to the European masses who for generations blindly accepted the Divine Right of Kings. The aristocrats have everything and we have nothing because that's just the way it is. Their wealth, armies, and castles. . . .

The result is that, all literary bluebloods like Mr. Moody have to do is say the magic words, "Open, Sesame," and everything is handed to them.

Lo! the huge cover story in Bust magazine, copies strategically placed at chain store entrances, about rich Mayflower brat Miranda July.

The article, needless to say, is a complete unquestioning puff piece, full of gushy-gush golly gee isn't this great! kind of writing, the "journalist" too thrilled being in the presence of royalty to turn on her brain and think. If Miranda were wearing a dildo the Bust writer would've crawled under the table and tried to swallow it. I would not for one moment doubt this occurred.

Who are we to question the way the literary world operates? We lowly workers and peasants? This is the way things are done, time and again. That Miranda July hasn't a speck of talent-- no matter. All one has to do is compare her stupendously shallow New Yorker story "Roy Spivey" about sitting next to a celebrity during a plane flight with a story about a plane ride by a real writer, "Girl on a Plane" by Mary Gaitskill, to notice the stark, cavernous, distance-between-galaxies difference.

Who are we to judge? It's not as if such literary farces don't occur every day-- the well-backed movie version of Susan Minot's bland Valium-level Evening being stocked with every prominent actress in Hollywood from Meryl Streep on down.

The most amazing part of it all, simply astoundingly amazing, is that the delicate blueblood aristocrats accept the hype and accolades as their due without a smirk (which at least Dave Eggers has the sense to offer as he puts one over on the reading public.). Poor waifish rich girl Miranda rose immediately to the top of the heap because, well, I guess because she deserved to. Not a thought, not a momentarily flashed lightbulb, turns on in her brain to alert her that something's wrong with the picture. She stands before the flashbulbs of million-dollar hype as stupidly as Fluffy the blue-furred Persian at the local cat show.

Similarly, Rick Moody accepts grant money because I guess he needs it. Or could spend it. On a new car. Or a painting (wait, that's Franzen) or a trip to Europe or something.

The literary aristocrats are as unquestioning of the stratified nature of today's society and today's lit world as the unquestioning peasants, and so are at least as stupid. "Open, Sesame!"

THE CROOKED CASINO
This civilization, certainly the part of it concerned with literature, beyond the lies of its ideals and corrupted myths, is like a casino within which every game of chance is egregiously rigged.

For starters, have that $80,000 entrance fee ready or whatever it costs to obtain an MFA degree.

Somehow you make it inside the door along with the other suckers. You notice the colorful red-and-black roulette wheels are tilted. At the poker tables everyone knows one another-- except an empty chair strategically placed for the newly arrived rube: you. Can the dealer be trusted? I don't think so-- she resembles Maud Newton. In her distracted moments she seems to be listening via a receiver in her ear to instructions from above the floor.

The slot machines filling the room in endless rows, manned by thousands of MFA grads, never seem to payout. Oh, there's one. It gave back a handful of quarters.

What a joke of a place, you think. A waste of time and money. At least they have entertainment! You walk into a huge room to await the floor show. Out step Rick Moody and Miranda July in top hats and tails to do a little soft shoe. Their voices are weak and off-key. They stumble around, dropping their canes. Several stooge Bust and New Yorker magazine plants in the audience pretend to love it. Everyone else stares in bemusement, or incomprehension, stunned by the gall of it all. You notice half of the audience has left-- you're not far behind them.

Back among the slot machines, you blankly push money into one of them. Relief from the trauma of the comical truth. You notice Miranda July next to you on her break has decided to try one also. She pulls the lever once. A rush of noise: a tremendous payout. With no embarrassment she scoops the money into her top hat and winks at you.

"Open, Sesame," she says, then departs.

Eye Opener

INTERESTING to see over the past weeks the extent to which I'm reviled by much of the literary community. It's been just when I've been knocked down by life to one knee that characters have run out of the shadows to take shots at me: a poet; "Gawker" and his foppish NY acolytes; and a prominent member of the lit-blogger community. (On the previous post; others.) Funny that when I've been around to engage in debate they've had nothing to say, for the most part.

A curious phenomenon. The writer Fran Upman experienced something similar recently when going through personal difficulties and trying to step back from her blogging. Then-- then!-- do the carrion come into the daylight. In both cases, prematurely.

I'm generally blackballed. Lit-bloggers who apparently read this site won't deign to link to it. In their minds that'd give public recognition to its ideas. An entire organization exists whose prime motivating force seems to be resentment of me. You'd think I'm this great terrible threat to literature, controlling millions of dollars of resources, generating millions of dollars of false hype and publicity; awarding seven-figure advances to utter mediocrities or making decisions about what grant money is awarded to which writers. I've been built up in somebody's head to be a large and powerful entity.

Yet in reality, all I have is my voice. That's it. I own nothing in this world-- nothing beyond a duffel bag of clothing. (And thus, approach the John-the-Baptist ideal of a raggedy voice in the wilderness.) For the last few years I've been living out of that duffel bag.

What's happening?

First, I've been made aware by the armies of literary darkness that I'll be granted no quarter. The tiny outpost of outspokenness which the ULA represents, our insignificant band of literary rebels, is hemmed in on all sides, outnumbered exponentially by numerous evil legions. If the group quickly decouples itself from me, they'll be spared. I'm the sacrifice. Am I being hyperbolic? Only slightly! It's clear that once out of the ULA I'll be nothing more than a brief chapter of deleted history; shoved down the memory hole; banished because I've antagonized the powers-that-be. The literary nobles will grant amnesty to some (not many, I'd wager) but not to the chief instigator.

Second-- and in this case I'm not at all exaggerating-- what we see are manifestations of the intolerance of dissent which exists in the literary community. Can anyone doubt this? The problem which the blacklisters, or Gawker, or OW people, or Daniel Green have isn't with me-- I'm nobody with not a shred, not a microdot, of power-- but with this very blog you're reading. They'll be satisfied only when it's silenced-- not even then, because it's when I've begun posting less regularly that their distemper increases.

Read this blog's archives. What's its crimes? Nothing more-- nothing less-- than to expose literary corruption and engage writers with ideas; to inform, stir, motivate, or outrage. To cause people to think!

Such contrary activity can't be tolerated in this day and age.

aBOUT pHILADELPHIA

LET NO ONE DOUBT That Philadelphia is the home base of the Underground Literary Alliance-- and of myself. I've planted enough roots in Philly to ensure my ongoing presence.

HOWEVER, at the same time I'm operating more under the radar and with wider scope than previously.

There's nothing to hide about my strategy. Here it is:

A.) Philly will operate as a hub from which ULAers can radiate out, with excursions not just to New York City, but to other east coast cities and to points west: Boston; Baltimore; D.C.; Pittsburgh; Cleveland; Detroit; Chicago; Athens Georgia; Austin Texas; and beyond. Soon enough, the west coast. We can't allow ourselves to be cooped-up in one spot.

B.) My returns to Philadelphia from journeys will be with reinforcements and/or resources to strengthen our base and make us stronger viz-a-viz our competitors.

C.) I'm allowing for more sophisticated tactics from ULA opponents, who'll become more ruthless as our success proceeds. They're not beyond arranging attacks on themselves in attempts to discredit us. After all: what happened at Penn's World Cafe a while back. Alter-egos? Copycats? Something else??

Daniel Handler went out of his way to let me know he'll be in Philly in October for the McSweeneyite 215 Festival. I can be entrapped in nothing if I'm not in town. I won't be when whatever is set-up to occur goes down.

Abandoned City, Abandoned People

IN MY UNIQUELY CRAZED WAY I believe a writer isn't doing his job unless he's in a struggle for survival.

That seems to be anyway, accidentally or intentionally, how I've lived much of my life, jumping again and again from a tolerable situation into one less safe.

Fitting if I feel beaten down lately by circumstances-- not to mention maliciously mocked and attacked by Manhattan establishment fops and pseudo-underground stool pigeons alike. Fitting that I'm staying for the moment in the Beaten-Down City.

What a tragic place!-- a sad comedy whose streets scream with loss and pain. The City's downtown is very beautiful actually. The moving river is full of soul and beauty. Buildings surrounding the river gleam. All downtown lacks is people. The rest of the city is in ruins, the remains of half-a-century of boomtown industrial wealth followed by half-a-century of relentless failure.

There is much to write about here-- part of the reason I returned is to rediscover myself as a writer. I should start with my journey from Philly. First, though, a short image, because it strongly affected me.

Every day I pass through once-glamorous Grand Circus Park on the way to my new job-- how temporary a job I can't say. At night I walk again through the park on my way back to where I'm staying. During the day the weather is sunny; the west side of the park's semi-circle, where the fountain is, is surrounded by loitering street people, the discarded residue of society. One afternoon a bundled up figure in a wheelchair-- man or woman; probably woman-- had parked itself against the fountain. A single brown hand from the multi-hued rags extended itself into the coolness of the rippling urban fountain, on this hot September day. I sat on the rim of the walkway which surrounds the fountain, building my energy and courage to face trying to prove myself at a new workplace with strange-to-me people. This old dog hasn't been completely up to speed. I sat for thirty minutes, chilling, one could say, in the sun, until it was time to leave. All the while the brown hand in the fountain extending from a bundle of rags in a wheelchair remained. Young men smirked to themselves, old men slept, crackheads chortled and exclaimed, beggars walked past, the sun beat on us all, and the bundled up raggedy figure in the wheelchair by the side of the fountain remained.

Last night walking home in darkness, the city silent, deserted, with no Tigers baseball game to momentarily fill nearby streets, I noticed that activists had erected throughout the park, on the grass on both sides of Woodward Ave, small white tombstones to represent American dead military people from the ongoing permanent war in the Mideast. I paused to glance at some of the names before continuing.

The area around the fountain was empty now save for one solitary figure in a wheelchair, facing the rim-like barrier, back to fountain, head tilted, sleeping, inside its layers of rag-like clothing. What a life!

A forgotten soul. Somewhere people laughed, drank, ate, partied, among glowing lights, yet in the silent darkness of the once-glamorous but now seedy park the most forgotten person in the most forgotten city sat alone outside with no place to go, apart, sleeping. Alone in a deserted city containing miles of desolation. The image was heart-breaking. The conjunction of this civilization's realities shook me: the remembrance of dead, the ruins of a once-great American metropolis; the abandoned core, price paid for war, greed, and empire.

If I'm back here in this toughest of spots, hardest of cities, maybe it's for a reason: to serve as witness on stray occasions to this huge and terrible nation's real stories.

Tinfoil Hats

"The Central Intelligence Agency controls everyone of any importance in the major media."
-William Colby, former CIA Director.

Is this a thing of the past? Gee, I don't know-- what do you do with someone like Anderson Cooper, who not only is the son of recently deceased billionaire Gloria Vanderbilt, but interned with the CIA for two summers in a row while a student at Yale. Cooper decided against a career with the Agency (so he says), but has had a spectacular and interesting career-- including as a student at the University of Vietnam, where he went after Yale.

IS Anderson Cooper so talented that based simply on his own abilities he rose quickly at a young age to the very top of the heap of mass media, in his current role at CNN? Why are so many other "stars" of the conglomerates like John Stoessel, or Alexandra Pelosi (who served six years "in the trenches" at NBC before publishing a book) the offspring of very wealthy and connected individuals?

Many undergrounders don't want to know-- don't bother them with this information; disclosures about the true nature of the society in which they live; even about their own realm of literature. Things are okay as is, according to some of them; they're content to remain impoverished and unknown, while the Overdogs own and control, well, everything.

aBOUT nEW yORK

RECENTLY I went to New York City for the day on personal business. What I saw different from eight months prior: further fast-paced gentrification. The city has become too expensive for all but the affluent. Even many barmaids are on trust funds. Stop in any saloon or cafe across the city and you'll encounter only gentry. Of the once-gritty Bowery around CBGB's there's not a trace. The character of the area has been destroyed.

Literary scene? There is no literary scene. There's not one bar in the entire island of seven million people of Manhattan where patrons talk about books and literature. (There are several spots where the business of publishing is the topic of conversation.) There are no humbly compelling dives where a Jack London (or Steve Kostecke) carrying a duffel bag, cocky grin on his face, would be liable to walk through the door and tell you he's a writer. (All "writers" in this city are poseurs and wannabes.)

New York can't in any stretch of the imagination be called a literary city. Other than a few staid events at chain bookstores, there are few literary happenings. The two major "alternative" papers, Village Voice and New York Press, on the day I was there, contained no information about poetry open mics. These two papers anyway are thin ghosts of what they were even six years ago.

Boom town New York, flooding with money and rich people, is destroying its roots. No more will there be an East Village haven for bohemians. Struggling writers and artists could never survive in the once great cultural city. No O. Henry or Bob Dylan are possible. Future just-arrived Madonnas will find no flea-bag hotels to stay at, because even the flea bag hotels are pricey.

Underground artists need look for another neighborhood in another city as focal point. The question is where that will be.

Gone Underground

Hints about where I'm going ("parts unknown") and what I'm up to will appear here, or more likely, eventually, on the Literary Mystery blog.

Note: The ULA PO Box is temporarily suspended.

Have a happy Labor Day everyone.

More Joseph Conrad

NOSTROMO

This novel of Conrad's could be a depiction of the United States now with its castes and exploitive monopolists. Of New York City, multi-colored and segregated with vast differences between rich and poor, most of all.

The book is from the point-of-view of the educated blancos, aka the oligarchs. The narrative is with them as they shoot rifles from windows at revolutionaries in the streets below. To them, the rest of the population of their country is an unthinking mass; an indecipherable mob.

The young blancos may be cynically ironic dilettantes like Martin Decoud, or narcissistically ambitious careerists like the newly arrived British engineers. What unites them is their inability to see anyone outside their privileged circles.

What protects them is the layer of white workers insulating the oligarchy from the underclass; most particularly, the Italian boss of the stevedores Nostromo. By the end of the novel this admirable hero realizes he's been used; that in saving the wealthy but weak aristocrats, squelching the uprising against them, he's destroyed himself.

The ULA has encountered modern-day Nostromos who in fighting against us have really fought against themselves. They obtained from the oligarchs of the literary establishment as a result only crumbs. (Should I name them?) We've also seen divisive stratagems used against us, by duplicitous slumming oligarchs, as they're used against the rebels in the book. Their goal: to push all thought of literary revolution out of the heads of underground writers-- to have them absurdly renounce rebellion!-- keeping them compliant and powerless members of a little-seen herd. Literary peasants with no seat at the tableof literature; unacknowledged and unheard.

I wonder: how do today's literary oligarchs, grouped around elite "silver mine" power centers like PEN or the conglomerates-- making pronouncements of cluelessness at their clubby parties and salons-- view themselves? Does a Francine Prose have a trace of self-knowledge? What do they see when they read Conrad's book?

On Success

It's been a tough month for writers. . . .

I was thinking of the possible reasons a person would write.
--To influence the society and culture;
--To plant a flag of difference to influence future generations;
--To create work which moves or stirs readers-- which is the same thing as my first reason;
--To create lasting art.

Nowhere on my list is money, career, or positions of importance: current barometers of success.

I've long ago learned to live without money. On the few occasions I've had some I got rid of it as quickly as possible, as if it were a disease I had to flush out of my system. Material possessions for the most part aren't my thing.

It'd be nice to have a measure of security. I wish for it often, and complain to myself that most of the time I exist on a week to week basis. Yet if I had security, I might likely chuck it over on a whim for new risk, new adventure, as I did when I left a respectable job in Detroit to come east to foment literary rebellion.

I've oversold the ULA to some extent, through necessity, giving many downtrodden writers hope. Hope!-- that without which no artist can live; hope which has yet to be fulfilled. I'm well aware of my failures. Yet I know the current system is rotten through and through, in slow, irresistible collapse. When I study the possibilities, up, down, and sideways, I see no other option for American literature than the ideas, energy, and writing of the Underground Literary Alliance.

For myself, the one possession in this world I retain is my artistic integrity. This I won't give up. I kept it through tougher times than these; it'd be silly to get rid of it now.

Can Literature Be Taught?

This morning I read "The Secret Sharer" by Joseph Conrad.

I'd read it once before, in my early 20's when taking a college English course, but I hadn't gotten anything out of the tale then but the hammered obvious point about the "double" or "doppleganger."

Reading it then was for me a waste. I was too young, too inexperienced in reading and life, to understand it. The story is very subtle. I didn't appreciate or see its subtleties, its depths, its hard-won experiences.

It's the worst kind of story to teach and discuss. Far better to discuss Jack London, who paints his tales with broader sweeps of noisy color. Better to discuss other of Conrad's tales. "Typhoon," which acts on a more concrete level, with a simpler, yet admirable, lead character, would be more apt a story for young readers, who need that captain's model, to talk about.

"The Secret Sharer" is taught because it allows windbag profs to pontificate about the mysterious "doppleganger," turning young students away from literature in the process; many, forever.

Reading has to be a joy, not a duty. The reader can't be told the meaning of the story-- he has to find the meaning himself.
* * * * * * * * *
The present educational system for higher education works fine for fields requiring intense and rigid discipline where answers are wrong or right-- mathematics for instance. Set up the classroom boot camp and have your charges jump over hurdles of quadratic equations, weeding out those not able to stay in line and keep up with the pack.

For a field like literature this style of learning is a disaster.

When you make the student dependent upon the professor for a grade in order to progress, a superior overlooking inferiors, you've brought into play all the intangibles of a dependency relationship, whose key action quickly becomes manipulation of the superior. Like workers manipulating a boss or slaves manipulating a master, the career-ambitious students learn not about the meaning of literature-- how to connect the words of Joseph Conrad with the currents of their own souls. Instead, the students read the professor!, studying his unconscious expressions and tics, his giveaway poker tells, to know what he believes and what he wants. They then give him what he wants.

The Achievers progress by recycling the expected concepts. In this case, "the double" or "the doppleganger." Aha! The student "gets" it. He's learned the story-- but what has he learned about it? He's learned what his professor learned, what his professor's professor learned. The liquid depths of the story remain untouched.

The imaginative student who comes up with a novel, off-the-wall view of what he's read will be treated like a moron. "You didn't get it," the pony-tailed preppy student next to him will say with disgust, while the phlegmatic professor pouring coffee into his system to recuperate from last night's drunken binge tavern meeting with a coed will grunt phlegmatically in the affirmative. The student didn't "get" it. He must be a dunce. No wonder he enjoys Jack London and comic books.

The truly independent student will silently observe these proceedings with scorn from the back row.
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One thing I'm happy about with the ULA is that we "elders" of the group have connected with some of the best new writers out there. Here in Philly, I would take Eric Broomfield as a bet for future artistic greatness a thousand times over the local young Achievers obtaining conformist jobs in the local machine. Not only is "Jelly Boy the Clown" open to experience and the world-- has plunged himself into it in no less a fashion than did a young Joseph Conrad-- he comes to writing with no rules or inputted concepts. No barriers operate around his head. The Achievers in town, by contrast, are intellectually stunted. They've never discovered their own meaning of poems and stories. They've been taught what to think instead.
* * * * * * * * *
On this reading of "The Secret Sharer" I quickly saw that the key relationship the new captain has isn't with the fugitive hiding in his cabin, but with his first and second mates, who are watching his every move. His takeover of the ship is the story. The device of the "double" merely helps offset this. More, there are aspects to the story, of language and form, which connect with the reader in ways which can't be expressed. Conrad touches notes which approach the true meaning of art.

Literature can't be taught. All the instructor can do, at most, is leave the student an open path. Then, through reading, the student finds the meaning, his own meaning, for himself.

Rather than classrooms I would have silent reading rooms with widely spaced armchairs, so the student can read-- whatever he wants, but read. Reading is the only way to learn what literature is about.

Death of an Apparatchik

This is the truth: the established literary world is so corrupt, so immersed in the sewage of cronyism, cheating, lying, and hypocrisy, that I could post here every day on the subject and not come close to relating all of it.

An Insider's Insider killed himself this week, director, at a small college in New England, of a nest of literary corruption; a mentality of System success at all costs.

This man was at the center of one of the most disgraceful literary happenings of recent years. In 1995, at a summer writing conference at his college, he pulled stamped, sealed, posted mail out of faculty mailboxes and publicly destroyed it. The envelopes contained a zeen which outlined the then-incestuous relationship between the Advanced Writing Programs (AWP) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The issue described the musical chair process between the two organizations, in which the givers of grant money would the next year become the receivers, accepting funds from those who the previous year had been recipients. A nauseating story, but well documented. Made clear was the how and why workshop poetry and fiction had achieved such overwhelming dominance in the tiny literary world.

The zeen publisher had contacted the now-dead writer about the matter, asking for an explanation or a response, not receiving one, before the issue was created and mailed. He heard about what happened later, from three separate individuals; one a student, the other two well-known writers teaching at the conference (one of whom was outraged, the other amused). Many of the most prominent names in the business, renowned writers and editors, were present when the destruction of the copies occurred

What recourse did the zeen writer have? He was an insignificant nobody who likely would never be heard from again. That he could be so ruthlessly censored was thought unimportant.

For more details about this you could obtain two issues of my New Philistine zeen which covered the affair-- #28 and #36 (if my memory serves me). Remaining copies must still be out there. With the subject of the issues now ingloriously dead, perhaps they have some value, and could be found on E-bay.

The dead writer, beyond his actions, is a perfect example of everything wrong with status quo literature. A celebrated poet, he wrote what could hardly be called poetry at all, as there's no poetry-- no music-- to any of it. It's bland, usually self-involved, prose.

The dead writer achieved his positions and celebrated status in the literary system because he was adept at gaming it-- and knew this. Among his poems were several which expressed the contradictions he felt; which addressed the subject of how to attain awards and success. I'm sure he was conflicted by what he did at the 1995 summer writing conference.

I think he's an object lesson for his friends of how not to conduct oneself. For a writer, a real writer, nothing is more important than honesty and integrity. It's the writer's job in this society to speak the truth. One can't pretend to do so and at the same time live a lie, buried in misdeeds like a stained Dorian Gray portrait-- and not have the contradictions run through every part of your being, your reputation, and your art.

Ko-Opting Kerouac

A funny quote is found in the fantastically ridiculous new book, Why Kerouac Matters by John Leland.

"The writer and critic David Gates, describing his ambivalent love affair with the Beats, noted recently that their influence can be found almost everywhere today except in contemporary literature. 'Among novelists,' Gates wrote, 'Kerouac and Burroughs may be honored as role models of American cussedness, as familiar spirits, as Promethean innovators, as visionaries who lived on enviably intimate terms with their imaginations. But relatively few people actually want to write like either of them, and few of those few will have their words taken seriously by whatever's left of the literary establishment. A 21-year-old applying to a writing program is as ill-advised to cite Jack Kerouac as an influence as O. Henry or H.P. Lovecraft.'"

Wow. No wonder I've never fit in with today's approved lit scene. O. Henry and Kerouac were among my strongest influences. I also read much Lovecraft.

David Gates is a bonded member of today's literary establishment, so when he expresses its closed-shop ideology, he knows what he's talking about.
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John Leland is a self-designated authority on "hip." His thesis is that because of Kerouac, the Organization Man can imagine himself as outsider rebel (read: John Leland), while remaining an Organization Man. Leland equates Kerouac's work ethic as a writer with working as a dehumanized cog in a gigantic conglomerate, not seeing the crucial difference. The debate isn't work versus no-work, but the different paths of a DIY self-starter working creatively for himself, or a tied-down obedient robot. Leland argues for the literary stamping plant sustained by conformity with society through family. What the attractions of this "family," this conformity with the rat-race machine, IS Leland never says.

It's presented as joyless safety. He's prodding the reader to join the herd; like the steady prodding of pod people in the better versions of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." With the plodding of his shallowly reasoned and unexceptionally written book, John Leland resembles one of those pod persons.

Leland's book reaches a culmination of duplicity when he discusses Allen Ginsberg's victory in the famous obscenity trial. Leland sees this as the victory of the individualistic Beat ethos; a victory against conformity.

Yet the Gates quote illustrates that it was no victory at all. The world is more conformist than it ever was. The literary establishment declares the battle won-- and since it's won, there's no need to fight it; no need for underground writers now. Kerouac and his friends were enough, thank you. By declaring the fight over, the John Lelands of today's media scene can impose total conformity on today's literary culture-- albeit conformity with a hip goattee on its chin and trendy boozhie tattoo on its arm.
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POSTSCRIPT
Ignored by the expropriators of culture is the key truth that the American Machine didn't change as a result of the Beats. In fact, if anything, in following years the Machine changed for the worse, becoming larger, more intrusive, more monolithic. The black underclass today is in much worse condition than it was fifty years ago. The white working class is in much worse shape. The top levels of society, on the other hand, are vastly more affluent, more protected, more out-of-touch with American realities than ever before. They've truly become aristocrats.

John Leland and other mandarin commentators like Ann Douglas-- certified as authorities on underground culture by establishment institutions but not by the underground itself-- HAVE to ignore American reality lest they discredit the storyline of their books: that the various segments of American society have merged; there are no differences, no divisions; no chasms; we're all one big happy lobotomized family. How untrue! One need only walk through North Philly, and step into its schools, then tour the U of Penn "Green Zone" two miles away, to see how little the classes today have in common.

Ann Douglas, incidentally, who was on stage with the Overdogs at Columbia's Miller Hall during our 2006 Howl Protest, has written with "Terrible Honesty" about the "truth instinct" in writers. She's spoken about writers driven to expose corrupting forces.

Yet Ann Douglas shows no Terrible Honesty about literature today; does not apply the truth instinct to writers now-- nor applaud those who use it. She shows no concern about sharing a stage with corrupt writers, and has no curiosity about the current literary underground, of how it's different from, or similar to, the Beat movement. She and her privileged colleagues would rather see cultural genocide-- all trace of literary dissent and difference in THIS era wiped out. After all, they have the Beats. They wear the historical icons like the skins of slaughtered animals: once glorious to look at but now safely dead.

Friedman on PBS

THE MAN IN YELLOW

I caught Thomas Friedman on the Charlie Rose Show last night. He was dressed in a bright yellow suit, and his head bobbed up and down like that of a bobble-head doll, while his hands gesticulated wildly. He reminded me of a "Music Man" style con man.

This is the man who has won three Pulitzer Prizes, is one of the media establishment's top boys. Friedman was originally a forceful cheerleader for the Iraq War, one of the most vociferous-- but now he says that maybe we'll have to lose the war, and leave Iraq divided-- keeping American bases in the north of course.

This kind of charlatan is used to having things turn out his way, however they turn out. Well, maybe he should apologize for being wrong, he now says, but he really wasn't wrong, and he won't apologize, as he buries the question and the fossilized questioner in layers of con-man blather.

Iran is the problem now, the Expert says. A big problem. "They're obstructing us," in the Mideast, he says. Obstructing US. (Us? We?) As he says this I wonder exactly who Friedman is talking about. This Imperialist kind of forgets that this isn't our part of our globe-- that our behavior there runs counter to the ideas of the Founding Fathers, which have conveniently been scrapped. (Our behavior there has bankrupted our country. Many thanks to the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner.) Friedman doesn't seem to remember that our Revolutionary War was fought against Empire-- it was fought so that we not be an Empire. In this context, the un-American context of Friedman and his like, their behavior, might be said to be traitorous.

If the Man in the Yellow Suit is the best the media establishment can come up with, then they are truly doomed. Every con-man statement which comes out of his con-man mouth discredits him. What about the environment, Mr. Friedman? What have you, the Authority, have to say about that?

The "flat earth" expert tells us he consulted men who run utilities on the matter. Men who run utilities! Those who maintain and profit, greatly, from our flawed energy set-up. Does Friedman consult with upstart entrepreneurs putting new ideas to work? Of course not! He goes straight to the men at the top. The Monopolists. As sure a way to get a snapshot of the past hasn't been invented. Friedman does indeed believe in a flat earth.

If this were 100 years ago, Friedman wouldn't be looking for Henry Ford in Detroit working with bicyle parts in a tiny workshop at the back of his house. He'd be consulting horse and buggy manufacturers. I think the Man in the Yellow Suit deserves another Pulitzer for his performance.

CIA and Wiki

An article by John Borland on www.wired.com on 8/14/07 states that the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, has been editing wikipedia entries. What does this mean? At the least, that this organization is still cognizant of what's happening in the society and the culture.

Grammar Nerd Gatekeepers

AN EXAMPLE of the kind of young journalist being recruited as gatekeeper of the status quo literary world is self-described "grammar nerd" Elizabeth Fox, a book reviewer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In a 8/11 article in the newspaper, Fox snippily complains about "abuse of the English language" caused by writers who dare show linguistic creativity on the Internet.

Bizarrely enough, she then uses William Shakespeare, of all people, as an example of proper English.

Elizabeth Fox is an example of the bourgeois prism I've discussed. She views the past through her own situation and her own anal standards, which are the System's standards.

In reality, Shakespeare was the antithesis of a grammar nerd. He lived during the changeover in England from oral to written culture. Today he'd be called semi-literate. An actor, Will's words were created to be spoken aloud. Written texts were devised solely as a tool for the players; their saving an afterthought.

Extant documents, those which did survive the years, show an individual unconcerned with proper spelling or proper grammar. He made up scores of words found in no dictionary because there were no dictionaries. His audience grasped their meaning because of their relation to other words, and their context and placement in sentences. The man is notorious today among befuddled historians for the creative ways "Shakspere" spelled even his own name.

What does this mean?

It means that maybe-- just possibly-- the path toward greatness in literature lies in NOT being ruthlessly tied down, restricted amd constricted, bound with chains, gagged and put into a language prison cell box, as advocated in this overly-regulated age by utterly brainwashed System advocates like Ms. Fox.

Maybe it's better instead to have the freedom to be creative in all things literary. To use wordplay at readings, or use creative spelling to give new meaning to old words, as do ULAers Frank Walsh and Bill Blackolive. Maybe it's better to focus first on truth and emotion, passion and explosiveness, while letting the constipated rules fall to the background, as does James Nowlan, a ULA novelist.

We're at our own historical dividing line: Whether literature is going to be stuck, unmoving, in the drying cement of status quo thought-- or instead, burst forth with new freedom and energy, with the kind of excitement that Marlowe and Shakespeare once generated, and if done right, today, can attract to the poetry of language hordes of new fans.

Brooke Astor

WHAT'S WRONG WITH AMERICA

Much is being made in media obituaries about Brroke Astor's "philanthropy" in spreading around $200 million to fellow New Yorkers over the years.

The question is not just whether that money went mainly to the projects of other wealthy Manhattanites-- but what Brooke, a person who likely never worked a day in her life, was doing with such immense wealth to start with.

Bourgeois Prisms

The biggest mistake many observers and opponents of the ULA make is to view it, and view me, through prisms which give them a distorted sense of reality. They view us in terms of their own situation-- as Michael Signorelli does from the perspective of the huge monopoly which employs him. Because things are equaled on the playing field of the Internet, he believes they're equal in the playing field of life. This breeds the idea, as exhibited on the radio show I was recently on, that the ULA, an organization without resources, could somehow restrict the opportunity of a Jeffrey Eugenides, who's had every opportunity.

Another prism is used by bourgeois writers who like what we're doing, then see the group according to what they think a writers group SHOULD be like, or according to what they want us to be, based on their own needs.

The ULA is a radical lit group originally meant to consist of literary activists with a DIY mentality. This meant from the start those writers who'd already burnt their bridges to the mainstream; who'd already abandoned all hope of status quo literary success; who were for the most part totally alienated by this society and its culture; who for the most part had already lost everything and had nothing left to lose. The lowest of the low. Among writers, the hardest core of the hard core.

When we've swayed from these principles we've been burned.

The ULA isn't for everybody. Those who've joined and fit in have earned their colors. They've fit in with the pack of rabid dogs which is this team. There are no writers in America like us, which is our strength.

40th Street Fair

I had fun yesterday at the 40th Street Summer Series. Read as part of our set, along with Mark Baird of Idiom Poets, Mark Sonnenfeld, Jellyboy the Clown, and Mr. Walsh, who M/C'd our part of it. Also a mysterious street poet named Ed Slook, who I'll be profiling in an upcoming post, because he's quite a genuine character. Matt Broomfield ably backed the lot of us with imaginative mixing and music.

Manning the ULA's zeen and book table, I had the chance to speak to many interesting folks, including a mysterious publisher with a briefcase; a woman with a zeen called "The Humble Housewife"; and others including several young artists, most striking among them Kim of Bakas Artysta. Plus several unnamed writers who stopped by. I hope to hear from one and all.

Yes, much of the audience for the affair was kind of boozhie, but the real undergrounders made our appearance entirely worthwhile.

Ego in Writers

I've often gotten the feeling, since the ULA was started almost seven years ago, that I'm supposed to apologize for having a healthy ego-- a good opinion of myself as a thinker and a writer.

Yet if I didn't have a strong ego-- even a trace of arrogance-- I would've been crushed by this society, and by the circumstances of life, long ago.

Unlike those in other endeavors-- sports, or business-- writers aren't supposed to have strong egos. At best they should be self-loving but haplessly confused stumblebum successes on the order of Jonathan Franzen. But too much ego is out. Throw yourself on a cross as a martyr for the world like Dave Eggers, but stifle that ego, at least in public.

No, in the literary realm, ego and arrogance are reserved for the gatekeepers; minimally-talented editors and reviewers who erect barriers of snobbery and dismiss all who don't approach them with humble mien and appropriate groveling. It's the way the entire system has been set up. Somehow, because of their positions as literary apparatchiks, cogs in an enormous machine, they somehow believe THEY are the more valuable commodity.

One more reason why the present apparatus of literature must be changed.

Fools

I've had an interesting exchange on the "Cruelest Month" Harper-Collins lit-blog (www.cruelestmonth.com) about poet John Ashbery. Interesting is how the moderator of the blog, Michael Signorelli, worries that I might make a fool of myself with what I say about literature today.

His concern shows his lack of knowledge about the roots of language, ideas, and culture.

"The Fool" of course is the first card in the Tarot deck. It represents the seeker, the artist: the individual open to the world and experience, yet uncorrupted by human machinations. (Dostoevsky's "The Idiot," Prince Myshkin, is a variant of this type.) Throughout history there has been the "Holy Fool." In medieval times intelligent poets played fools for barbarian kings. "Fool" is an honorable name, from the perspective of the artist.

The larger point about John Ashbery is that he's a symbol of the established literary world's inability to change over the course of half-a-century. No art form survives by remaining static-- yet this is exactly what the Michael Signorellis of the world advocate. They're closed-- hostile even-- to criticism of their dusty plaster gods.

To further announce Ashbery's mediocre body of work, especially in the face of a dawning underground revival, would be as if newspapers were proclaiming the greatness of Al Jolson in the face of the rock revolution beginning in 1955. Hopelessly, pathetically out-of-date.

(It's like McCartney on sale at Starbucks-- a sign of stagnation in more than literary culture today.)

Our media mandarins are trapped in a time warp, and seem unable to move away. Our world of culture today is like a bad science fiction movie. It's actually the moment of calm before the deluge-- before a Katrina cultural hurricane.

REPETITION
Signorelli attacks me for being an egotist, because I try to find available avenues to get word out about my writing. Unlike Ashbery, I don't have access to a profusion of mouthpieces proclaiming to the world what I'm doing. I'm well aware of my limitations as a poet (my colleague Frank Walsh for instance is way better, as are a few other undergrounders I could name)-- yet I also think, if a quack like Ashbery is being proclaimed far and wide, for five decades, there should be room for me also.

The repetition I use in my poem, cited on the Cruelest Month blog, seems to have thrown posters Michael and "John"-- yet is easily defended.

Repetition has been a mainstay of art over the centuries-- the key is to find the right mix, which I'm imperfectly groping toward.

Done right, you get the perfection of a Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which repeats a simple musical motif again and again, with amazing results.

In another art, take a look at the way the lighting of a cigarette is done in the movie "Double Indemnity." The final time, because of the context, the simple action takes on power and meaning.

Song, a strong relative to poetry, uses the refrain to hammer home an artistic point.

But, for the brainwashed, like those who manage the media monopolies, anything done outside their narrow parameters is dangerous.

ULA in West Philly

The ULA will have a table at the 40th Street Summer Series at 40th and Walnut, outside, this Saturday August 11th, 2 to 7 pm. There will be performances from Frank Walsh and others. Members of the Idiom Poets are scheduled to join us. I'll be there from 3 pm on, so stop by to see us.

ULAers

ULAers
Originally uploaded by King Wenclas

At Germ Books reading, July 2007.

The Writer's Motivation?

The chief motivation for System writers ostensibly remains greed: career and money.

The irony is that all follow the standard literary path, which takes them in the opposite direction of their goal. They'll pay $50,000 or more to accept extremely low odds of making it as a writer; to become one of 40,000+ similarly labelled with said degree. I suspect the badge itself-- "MFA"-- for most of this number is the real motivation. This certifies the person as a "writer" and allows him or her a kind of respectable, if useless, attainment.

For others, undergrounders particularly, the writing itself is the goal: the expression and construction of authentic art.

The ULA campaign offers an added bonus to the independently-minded writer-- the opportunity to make literary history, as we've done with our protests, our actions, our never before seen in-your-face excitement. (The status quo is reduced to presenting weak substitutes like the Dishwasher guy.)

Most non-underground writers are embedded in the literary past. Embedded-- incapable of breaking out of their artistic assumptions and prejudices. Even when they write about literary rebels of the past, it's in a thoroughly dry, academic way, their ANALysis coming through the prism of their politically-correct institutional brainwashing.

The Underground Literary Alliance offers literature as an adventure and a challenge. With us, the writer isn't one of 40,000+ trained and certified automatons, but a rebel engaged in the battle of ideas. We're guerrillas and prophets, a band of upstarts, vanguard of literary change.

Our fearlessness is our greatest strength. There is nothing appealing about an endless parade of artistic apparatchiks. Someday this nation's literature may devolve into an Age of Sheep. We're here to say: That time has not yet arrived! Exciting days remain.

Where's Bohemia?

The question is whether a real bohemia is even possible today.

The first requirement is a tight neighborhood, as existed in Greenwich Village once upon a time, or in Paris in the 1920s.

I'd guess that classic bohemias were mixes of lower class and idle rich, or radical rich. Without the low rent aspect there's no authenticity, no edge.

How many American urban neighborhoods are full of vibrant life yet affordable at the same time? (Detroit's Cass Corridor in the 1990s.)

The Hydrogen Jukebox has created a scene in West Philly-- but West Philly is too sprawling, the writers here scattered all over the place. South Philly might be tighter; Fishtown more working class, with more real bohemian freedom.

Most interesting urban neighborhoods have been taken over by the gentry-- hyper-conformist rat-race yuppies who are if anything anti-bohemians. Rents and prices exclude all but the Clean and Saved.

Bourgeois conformity has spread into most segments of the upper class (even ultra-rich guys like Tom Beller and Rick Moody obtained writing degrees) and swept through the lower middle class from whose ranks come many MFA writer-wannabes. True artistic and social rebels are a minority of a minority.

Also, few writers today except those of means will travel to be part of a scene-- as many writers like Hemingway, Robert McAlmon, Kay Boyle, and so many others moved to Paris to create the Lost Generation.

Sorry, but one can't have a community of writers through the Internet, which is a collection of disembodied voices without the exciting interaction of physical reality. At best it's a bloodless, enervated, unsatisfactory substitute.

Those who pose today as literary bohemians are in fact anti-bohemians. Take MediaBistro, a walking contradiction; an impossibility-- a mock-bohemian scene constructed around career and conformity. Their reality is anti-bohemia (as they're so thoroughly anti-ULA). Only the pose of difference remains-- and as everyone inside the System adopts the pose, any trace of difference from acceptable life and culture has thoroughly vanished. All that's left is consumerist advertising.

New Posts

A couple new posts by me are up on two ULA blogs; unfinished posts and likely not to be finished for awhile, because, as Lee Marvin says to Angie Dickinson in "The Killers": "Lady, I just don't have the time."

Check them out anyway at www.ulareview.blogspot.com and www.ulapoetryandfiction.blogspot.com. (More reviews from me upcoming, when I can write them.)