Back in Detroit

Yes, for the time being I’m back in the Motor City, Detroit proper, the most dysfunctional big city in America but also the most affordable.

I was bounced from a generous living condition in South Philadelphia, and was not able to come up with anything similar. In truth, rents are skyrocketing in Philly—up by 50% I’d guess over the last few years—in part because of the influx of hipsters, that rabid infestation which has turned Brooklyn into a playground for the hip bourgeoisie. Members of the detestable species are now looking elsewhere. With their arrival the cost of everything—rents, beer, hamburgers—rises as they impose their lifestyle on businesses eager to make money. With this comes a rise in regulation and order, which can be good or bad depending on your viewpoint. The result, however you slice it, is to turn urban neighborhoods into facsimiles of suburbs.

As for Detroit. Ah, Detroit! “Detroit is coming back!” I’ve heard this mantra for decades now. Over the years the contradictions only become more profound. I intend to address some of them while I’m in town. Anyway, I’m happy to see the same ruins that I wrote about four years ago. The hulk of the Michigan Central train station is Detroit’s Colosseum, a reminder of past glory. (See my story “Jezebel” in my ebook Ten Pop Stories.) The empty house I used as a model for “The Zeen Writer” (see my ebook Mood Detroit) still stands where it stood. The Civil War-era armory I used in the ebook Crime City USA remains boarded. Missing are necessary businesses, like downtown’s only (? I’ll have to scout around) dollar store, now closed, as well as the place where I once bought my phone cards. Downtown—not to mention the rest of the city—is a place of well-protected and expensive Potemkin Village bourgeois centerpieces scattered amid a broken landscape. Everything surrounding downtown is a virtual No Man’s Land. Saturday morning I walked up to the isolated spots of life and business which pass as “Midtown” to the clueless. Rootless desperate-looking men loitered everywhere. My regret was I carried not even a knife. Been in Philly too long!

The trade-off is that any hipsters here have to be a very different kind of hipster. I’ve heard tales of young artists and writers, like pioneers, daring to live in this town. If you ARE a writer or artist, a true one, you probably should be nowhere else. Here in Detroit is the real story of America. The societal chasms, papered-over elsewhere, are here nakedly visible. The city reeks of the authentic. Living becomes a greater challenge. Opportunity, because of the depressed condition of life, seems to appear. Here is a landscape to be renewed or reinvented—or at least captured. Painted. Here in Detroit is more desperation, more pain, more heartache, more heart, and more soul.

I’ll have much more to talk about, including about those forbidden subjects, class and race—categories which in this town in too many ways are interchangeable, or appear as if they are.

Cold War Literary System

ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN LITERARY APPARATUS

When one reads accounts of the treatment of writers in the old Soviet Union, such as Giovanni Grazzini’s Solzhenitsyn, one sees strong parallels to the way dissenting or nonconforming writers are treated in the United States now. There’s the same divide between Approved and Unapproved writers; the same bureaucratically based intelligentsia condemning writers behind the scenes, silently denying those writers access to the system, including publicity or media attention, while circulating distortions and calumnies against them, as happened to the writers of the Underground Literary Alliance, without those writers able to present their side except in obscure samizdat fashion—as I do through posts on this blog.

The apparatus is shaky, as the Soviet apparatus was shaky. Mainstream journals, newspapers, and magazines, through which the literature of our time is announced and its ideas and names allowed to circulate, face increased popular indifference and plummeting circulation. But it remains a powerful apparatus, its members recruited from the New Class; such membership bestowing largesse and credibility. The apparatus retains the power to make, or banish, individual writers or groups of writers.

The system also pushes forward its approved models of a proper writer. Sholokhov, notably, in the first instance. A Jonathan Lethem or Lorrie Moore in the U.S. today. Within the bounds of the particular system, what’s certain is that the proper model will be appropriately safe.

Revealing to me was discovering Sholokhov’s three choices regarding Solzhenitsyn; his stated three ways to handle the man: as 1.) A madman; 2.) not a writer; 3.) an anti-Soviet slanderer.

Substituting “System” for “Soviet,” these are the three ways the current U.S. literary system depicted writers of the Underground Literary Alliance.

ORIGINS

Sixty years ago two giant opposing systems, centered around the Soviet Union, in one instance, and the United States, in the other, waged an intense ideological war. The Cold War was a fight of ideas and ideologies. On the literary plain, the Soviet Union embraced Stalinist-style Socialist Realism. The liberal capitalist world, through the actions of men like George Plimpton and Robert Silvers, countered with a literature of the opposite; what could be called Irrelevant Postmodernism. Writers were encouraged to focus on the personal, the trivial, or the nonsensical. (The French author Robbe-Grillet was maybe the ultimate expression of this viewpoint.)

Pushed aside in the United States was that literary form which had dominated American letters for the previous fifty years: populism. As the Soviet Union’s ideological contortions narrowed and damaged Russian literature, the very same thing happened to American literature. That different kinds of writing were excluded only showed the two systems to be mirror images. As, of course, the opposing military complexes were built in opposition to, but were similar to, the Other.

One can study the education and career of the conforming working class American writer Raymond Carver to see how every shred of populism and activism was wrung from his mind and his work, leaving a compliant, beaten-down shell.

The problem, from an American standpoint, is that the Soviet Union and its moldy bureaucratic systems and decayed ideologies collapsed—but our literary system continued on, to this very day, more repressive of counter-ideologies, nonconformity, and dissent as ever. 

THE FUTURE?

Those Approved literary groups who try to break from their restrictive box face unresolvable contradictions. The elite (Ivy League-spawned) journal n+1, for instance, claims to want a return to populist American art. But its very intellectual foundations—Partisan Review and New York Review of Books major influences—are with the organs of past American liberal/neoconservative Cold Warriors. Their postmodernism philosophy in all its aspects, premises, jargon, and aesthetics, stems from the anti-populist camp.

Election Follies Returns

-- with a brand new chapter, "Big Convention Blowout!" Take a look.

www.electionfollies.blogspot.com

Ivy League Breaks Quota!

In fact, the Ivy league exceeded its quota in literature many decades ago—yet we the American public still get novels written by this nation’s most favored sons and daughters crammed down our throats, out of all proportion to any possible interest in them. One of the latest is Penelope by Rebecca Harrington, a Harvard grad writing about—surprise!—Harvard. The book has been well hyped. Harrington deserves, I guess, every advantage. (See the music student in my recent e-novel, The Tower.)

What we have in America, particularly in the approved literary world, is a caste system, with the Ivy League securely at the top of the pile.

For background, check out this jokey article from last year by George Will:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/crash_course_on_college_craziness_tHl1iPUppDgk6wvAdrKQLO

Even conservative icon Will is able to admit, “It has been well observed that America’s least diverse classes are SAT prep classes.”

Ivy League grads themselves, of course, are invariably liberals who argue for democracy and change—while every fact of their privileged lives argues against their statements.

Attitudes Toward Literary Power

What accounts for the overwhelming conformity of today’s approved literary world? What are the motivations behind the obedience of the literary herd?

They’re varied. Some writers, such as Ed Champion, know the official literary system is thoroughly corrupt, but these writers are personally afflicted with an invertebrate condition which prevents them from going very far in speaking out. They’re spineless jellyfish.

Another category is that of ambitious opportunists, who simply don’t care about character and principles. The necessary pose is all. If American lit became dominated by populists, they’d become populists—and would be sure to network with, and accommodate themselves to, the new major players. Think of the Rod Steiger character in the David Lean movie “Doctor Zhivago.” Maud Newton comes quickly to mind—and Mr. Bissell. Perhaps Eggers himself is like this. After all, when he began McSweeneys he went after the Insider crowd; the Moodys and Minots.

GROUPTHINK

The vast bulk of the established literary herd, however, are True Believers in the current system. Through the totality of their reading and literary education, they’ve never been exposed to anything contrary to the status quo. They’ve been trained to look down on anything else. One sees this not just with McSweeneyites themselves, but also at McSweeneys-affiliated web sites like The Rumpus, or tacit allies like HTML Giant. At no place in these realms, at any time, do you see a word of contradiction. No moments of questioning the current literary system and how it works, or their own art. Least of all the style of literary art that they all unquestioningly accept. Read Rumpus blog posts of their crew of wannabes and you see minds which never for a moment have stepped outside the conformist hipster “Urban Haute Literary Bourgeoisie” bubble.

If you’re not thinking independently, if you’re not questioning your world, are you even truly a writer? But not, instead, an unthinking regurgitating machine cog?

The Underground Literary Alliance was accused of many things. Those who were actually in the outfit know that dissent and debate among ourselves was constant. We offered a wide variety of viewpoints; ranged the gamut of extreme Left to extreme Right, and even our aesthetic ideas were never of a piece.

THE ORWELLIANS

When you examine an outfit like McSweeneys you see, by contrast, an organization which in significant ways is straight out of George Orwell’s 1984. Care to dispute that statement? Anyone?

1.) First and most fundamental is the underlying philosophy of postmodernism, which, as did the totalitarians of the 20th century—spawned by the same intellectual influences—disbelieves in notions of truth. Truth, ultimately, is what power says it is.

2.) Related to this is the view toward history. History exists to be rewritten and distorted. We see this in the reprint of the mendacious Tom Bissell essay against the ULA. Curious additions were made portraying Dave Eggers as having been an authentic zinester. These additions surely didn’t come from Bissell himself. By the way, how hard do you think Eggers had to work to obtain them?

3.) Key in spotting the Orwellian nature of McSweeneyites and similar literary groups, such as HTML Giant, is reading the convolutions of their writings. The postmodern style is designed to destroy understanding and meaning. Clarity in thought and expression isn’t wanted. The literary works—see literary god David Foster Wallace’s final novel, for instance—are everything that Orwell in his essays and his fiction warned against.

4.) False democracy. I’ve well documented the phoniness of today’s Insider literary crowd. They pay lip service to “the 99%,” but their actions, their desperation to receive the proper approval and credentials, their accumulations of money, position, and power, reveal the opposite. Or as Orwell said in his fable Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

There remain literary dissidents outside the walls of the Inside literary crowd. I’ve yet to find one dissenter inside the hierarchical, well-controlled castle—at least, not one questioning, dissenting soul brave enough to publicly (or privately?) speak up. Talking back to power is a concept not practiced there, or known.

Breaking Ranks

American literature won’t renew itself until system writers and journalists themselves gain backbones and begin speaking out about corruption within the rotten structure.

They need to reveal compromises made by writers in order to gain publication, in their integrity and their art. They need to disavow a clubby and elitist network that nurtures, publicizes, and protects a well-connected clique. They need to insist on character, honesty, and transparency within the literary realm. No more a Dave Eggers and his kind protected from questions and scrutiny, an unhealthy situation for any cultural activity.

Who’ll break ranks? Who’ll step forward? Who’ll speak out?

American literature needs independence and dissent if it’s to engage the bulk of the American population.

Power Used Against the Powerless

THE ARROGANCE OF LITERARY POWER

McSweeneys Books shouldn’t have included the smear essay against the Underground Literary Alliance in Tom Bissell’s Magic Hours. What was the point? Bissell wasn’t attacking and slurring the powerful, but the powerless—an organization which was already broken; many of whose writers are broken. This enabled various literary people in outlets as diverse as the New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, and Guernica magazine to take ill-informed shots at the ULA and its writers. That they did so was revealing—showing that the liberal pose of these people is just that: a pose. McSweeneys included.

The truth of the matter is that McSweeneys IS the One Percent. Dave Eggers IS the One Percent. Vendela Vida IS the One Percent. Many of their good friends, Rick Moody, Daniel Handler, and many others, ARE the One Percent. These are writers of privilege—in some cases, extreme privilege—who are out of touch with the struggles of the bulk of the American populace. No doubt many of them this moment are vacationing at their summer resorts.

What did they attack in the Underground Literary Alliance—in 2003 and again in 2012? They attacked the ONLY American writers group which has never kowtowed to the One Percent, is not dominated or owned or paid by the One Percent, has no connections whatsoever to the One Percent. An organization which was founded to stand up for the underdog, against power. You’d have a hard time saying these things about any other writers group—including the most “liberal” of them, PEN among them, which in reality are little more than playthings for the very One Percent they pretend to stand against. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

History will judge the truth of the matter.

To the Public Editor, New York Times

(The text of an email letter I sent yesterday.)
*********************************

To the Public Editor, New York Times.
  
Here's one for you. In a review in the Sunday Book Review on May 4th of this year, Garth Risk Hallberg labeled the writers of the currently inactive Underground Literary Alliance as "unpublishable." I've sent Mr. Hallberg three emails asking him to explain exactly why he considers us-- all of us (by association every writer who was in the outfit)-- to be unpublishable. It strikes me as a blanket slur. I have not received a response.

The ULA was an organization that I in particular am associated with. As I explain in a post at a blog, here--

http://kingwenclas.blogspot.com/2012/08/unpublishables.html

I don't consider myself to be a bad writer. In fact I have enough evidence and credits to show I'm not a bad writer. Many former ULA writers could say the same. If we're "unpublishable," it's for reasons other than the quality of our writing.

Unfortunately, that's not the impression given by Hallberg's casual use of the slur, as if it were an accepted fact. This is how readers will take it. Because the New York Times Book Review is read by nearly everyone in the book business, is hugely influential in the literary world, if we weren't "unpublishable" before the review, we certainly are now.

Have we been damaged? I think so. The ULA Press is still selling books by several of the ULA's writers. I myself  am trying to sell four ebooks of my writing. Perpetuating a false stereotype, as Hallberg has done, is detrimental to that endeavor.

We ourselves in the ULA always operated with total transparency. We never failed to document and justify our criticisms of the literary system. We made ourselves open to questions and discussion, including in person. Would that our critics had ever done likewise!

I believe that the minimum we're required from the New York Times is a public retraction and apology. Lacking that, then a reasoned justification for the slur-- and the opportunity to respond to it.

I look forward to hearing from someone at the Times.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Karl Wenclas

****************************
(I received a quick response from someone there, who promised to forward my letter to the Book Review editor. Which, I guess, is like having a serial killer adjudicate his own case. But let's see what happens.)

"Unpublishables"?

THE TREATMENT OF U.S. LITERARY DISSENT

The occasion of the publication of the Tom Bissell book of essays, Magic Hours, lifted the ban of any public mention of the Underground Literary Alliance (ULA) just long enough for establishment apparatchiks to take gratuitous shots at the now-inactive dissident literary group.

The lowest blow came from Garth Risk Hallberg in the still-widely circulated, and hugely influential, New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/magic-hours-essays-by-tom-bissell.html?pagewanted=all 

Garth Hallberg called the ULA a group of "unpublishables."

This came in a discussion of Tom Bissell's essay on the Underground Literary Alliance, which Hallberg called in his review "Bissell's best piece of writing about writing." Garth Hallberg also talks of Bissell's "discovery that the 'inside literary world' as such no longer exists."

I find this a curious statement, in that when the ULA criticized the "inside literary world" we found that it very much exists, as the members of that world closed ranks to blackball us. Whether deliberately or instinctively-- like members of a bee hive-- they acted as a unit to stop all mention of us, everywhere, in print, online, on blogs; anyplace the Approved raised their heads. It was as if a switch were touched.

An example of the bee hive might be the fact that no one from said hive-- not even fairly marginal wannabes-- will publicly debate this question. They're certainly welcome to do so here. For that they'd have to disobey the on-off switch. They'd have to pull themselves from the marionette strings attached to their minds, their pens, and their keyboards.

UNPUBLISHABLES?

What, in Garth Risk Hallberg's eyes, makes the writers of the Underground Literary Alliance unpublishable? I don't think he'll tell us. After his Bissell review appeared, I sent Hallberg two emails asking him this very question, as well as pointing him to my series of posts taking apart "diligent researcher" Tom Bissell's essay on the Underground Literary Alliance. (See my four "Believer" posts to the left, under "Fun Stuff.") I never received a reply from Mr. Hallberg.

Maybe I'm too insignificant to deserve a response. Yet if I can receive no respect from members of the "inside literary world," then what level of respect do outsider writers who've not received my past attention; who've never been players on any level; hope to receive from them?

Possibly Garth Risk Hallberg is simply unable to reply, has no answer, or is unwilling to engage in the kind of free and open discussion one would think would exist in a free and openly transparent literary world.

WRITING QUALITY

The ULA's writers couldn't be unpublishable due to the quality of our writing. All one has to do is go to a chain bookstore and peruse shelves and shelves of trash fiction of various genres ("Fantasy" the worst) of no quality whatsoever. I could provide numerous examples and quote from them. Do I need to?

Maybe the ULA's writers were and are unpublishable because our populist writings couldn't find a market. This is curious reasoning, in that more than a few Insider writers known to circulate at Manhattan cocktail parties, or who have highly placed friends, from Jon-Jon Goulian to Ben Marcus, find publication and lavish press attention even though their books-- as Marcus himself will admit-- aren't at all marketable. Books which, despite the many positive reviews, register few sales. This statement, ironically enough, applies to Tom Bissell's widely reviewed Magic Hours.

The ULA's writers sought to find a populist middle ground between tepid literary writing, at one pole, and junk pop fiction cranked out by the Big Six at the other. We attempted to present a variety of authors, from Wred Fright to Wild Bill Blackolive to Steve Kostecke, whose writing is fun but also uniquely distinctive-- writing from outside the cookie cutter-- and which is also, occasionally, meaningful and relevant. We offered the true sound of America now.

As for myself, you'd think that I showed enough literary cred over the years to not be automatically "unpublishable." You could see my North American Review essays from the 90's, such as this one-- www.jstor.org/stable/25125837-- when I showed I could play the literary game. Unavailable is a much better NAR essay-- my "Denisovich"-- about Detroit and about class in America that found print only because of a daring NAR editor, Robley Wilson Jr.

LITERARY DISSIDENTS

Garth Risk Hallberg is in one sense correct. The ULA's writers are indeed unpublishable. We became unpublishable because we questioned the Insider literary game, and revealed corruption about several of its major players. The way we were and are treated has similarities to the treatment of literary dissidents in the defunct Soviet Union. No, we weren't sent to labor camps, but then, only the most brazen of Russian dissident writers found that fate. Most were simply shut out of access to the literary system. American writers are subject to other forces. This isn't a society, as the Soviet Union was, where writers are provided with funding and a house-- as Solzhenitsyn was provided. Writers who are at the bottom of society to begin with, as several of the ULA's writers were and remain, are subject to the brutalities of unhinged economic forces. For some, the writing life is a struggle to survive. Over the last few years a few of the ULA's writers haven't survived.

If you read histories of the Soviet literary world (see Giovanni Grazzini's book on Solzhenitsyn), you'll find that literary dissidents faced the same dismissive attitude from Insider apparatchiks there as the ULA faced from literary apparatchiks here-- including being classified as, and called, "unpublishables."

I welcome a response.

Demi-Puppet of the Millennium?

THE DEMI-PUPPET AWARDS

At some point before the end of the year I hope to announce a series of demi-puppet awards. Right now I'm still assessing who best qualifies for what.

TOP AWARD

The Demi-Puppet of the Millennium will be that literary "journalist" who best embodies everything gone wrong with the profession. Such as: refusing to look into literary corruption, or helping to cover up exposures of corruption; protecting establishment approved writers, or writing unquestioning fawning suck-up pieces of same; and so on.

DEMI-PUPPET NOVELIST

The novelist who's received awards and attention most out-of-proportion to achievement and ability. Now, if you think Jonathan Franzen has this category locked up, you're wrong. For instance, what about Jon-Jon Goulian, who received a $700,000 advance for a novel absolutely no one wanted to read?

But there are very many candidates in this category.

DEMI-PUPPET APPARATCHIK

The Big Six publishing world bureaucrat who exemplifies the System's clueless money wasting; who's most responsible for American lit's lack of relevance and excitement. For instance-- who is Goulian's publisher? Agent? But it could take me months to scrutinize the many candidates. By then, the entire top-heavy edifice may have collapsed in a heap.

I'll have other categories and candidates as I think of them. Keep reading.

Plagiarism? What’s Plagiarism?

From my distant position outside official literary culture and approved media, I hear talk of a journalist, Fareed Zakaria, exposed as engaging in plagiarism.

Plagiarism? What’s plagiarism? Wasn’t that declared an obsolete concept by establishment literary darling Jonathan Lethem several years ago in Harper’s magazine? Were not strenuous efforts made to silence a writer—myself—discussing blatant examples of same engaged in by another system-approved writer (fellow member of the same clique as Lethem as a matter of fact); to quickly shut down all debate of the matter—and debate was shut down, thanks to the efforts of tools of the status quo like Maud Newton. Forgive me for naming names, I know that’s not done in Approved literary society, but I’d like to get straight the system-enforced idea of whether or not there remains such a concept or thing as that previously known by the name plagiarism?!

I was told, as I was being simultaneously banned from all discussion and excluded by all mention in polite literary society everywhere, that such a ridiculous idea as “plagiarism” was now obsolete; the new approach had been mandated by literary Power, by the friends of the very same individual who seemed to me clearly in black-and-white words side-by-side to have engaged in the behavior now forbidden to be mentioned but once known under the outlaw word plagiarism.

Plagiarism! The Great Jonathan Lethem (he has a MacArthur grant proving his greatness or at least his feckless obedience) mocked the very idea of plagiarism in his renowned unprincipled essay in Harper’s magazine while the claque of his Insider peers chortled at his convolutions of words and arguments of sophistry with glee. Now suddenly I hear again that banned word plagiarism! From the very media system that had apparently banned it! I realize that it was not banned after all, only in the instance of the literary community, the one instance which I and the ULA the dreaded Underground Literary Alliance had sought to make moralistic ethical noise about—the instance involving the unscrupulous unnamed friend of power, Friend of Eggers (another banned phrase), which often enough amounts to the very same thing.

Good Guy or Bad Guy?

THE TRUTH ABOUT DAVE EGGERS?

After looking at the literary machine and a few of its players, we come to the question: What’s the truth about Dave Eggers? Is he in fact the image he portrays? Or is there a more ruthless side to him, a la the character Fake Face in my ebook novella Crime City USA?

Saint or Cynical Operator?

I’ll say up front that as a past leader of the now mothballed Underground Literary Alliance (ULA), I’m not objective about the matter. But, unlike almost anyone else, I have nothing to lose, and so I’m free to speculate.

The answer to the question comes down to whether Eggers believes his own presentation. Has he swallowed his own bullshit? If he has, it would explain his anger at critics. It’d be natural that he’d become hostile toward anyone who gets in the way of his sainthood.

On the other hand, the way he sets up and manipulates charities, and thereby his flawless image, could indicate the other possibility. His famed “Heartbreaking” “Staggering Genius” memoir for example was psychologically manipulative; hugely effective with those naive bourgie writers immediately younger than himself. Anyone older than Eggers was immune to the narcissistic presentation—unless they lived in a bubble all their life.

Was the manipulation—which continues to this day, obviously—instinctive, or part of a conscious plan? This is important in knowing how shrewd he is. Maybe he really is a naive good guy who out of pure instincts has accidentally fallen into his empire. If true, this would be limiting. It would show him to be as strictly limited in intelligence and smarts as his narrowly focused acolytes.

MCSWEENEYITES

Whether Dave Eggers is innocent good guy, evil bad guy, or a jammed-together psychotic hybrid of both possibilities, determines his attitude toward both colleagues and congregants. The Saint would feed on their worship and adulation. The Operator would have nothing but contempt for their gullibility and sheep-like behavior. I’d have to think that even the Saint would begin to question their unquestioning obedience. Who could possibly respect the stream of blindly sycophantic reviews—see Pico Iyer—which compare The Dave, marginalized but powerful cult leader, with the likes of Hemingway?

What do we make of the title of the gang’s current flagship, The Believer? Is that how the cult leaders see the magazine’s standard reader? Is it a tongue-in-cheek and very cynical mocking of the cult; the game?

PEERS

While it’d be difficult for anyone who can see the world clearly to respect those who believe the p.r., Eggers’s colleagues are a different matter. Let’s take them in stages.

Jonathan Lethem and Ben Marcus. The gang’s front men “intellectuals,” a notion which, for anyone who’s actually read them and tried to decipher their “ideas,” is comical. They’re stooges propped up by today’s cronyistic literary system. They survive strictly on cronyism and a manipulated media. Moreover, the largesse, unlike that given to Eggers, is not of their own making. Do you think Eggers respects these guys? Really? I think Eggers knows that in a debate, say, with myself, the two stooges would be ripped into pieces. He’d have to know it, if he has the sense he appears to have.

Daniel Handler. Lemony Snicket’s attacks upon myself and this blog, using the name “Jimmy Grace,” including his crank emails and phony mail, were ridiculously childish. There’s a reason his friends recommended he become a children’s author. It’s clearly the way his mind operates. Despite how much money Handler has accumulated—no doubt more than Eggers—he remains secondary in any relationship with The Dave. Thuggish, simplistic, not very bright but with childlike malice, a one-dimensional thinker: Handler is easily manipulated. One sees him as an overgrown kid. “Hey guys! Let’s torture some cats! Let’s get our magnifying glasses and burn up some bees! Let’s throw rocks at Mr. Parker’s dog! No?” Handler frowns because the gang won’t go along with his own ideas. But Dave can certainly think of one or two things which will make his half-witted friend happy.

Hiram F. “Rick” Moody III. Moody is a different matter. Before Eggers came along, Rick Moody was the coming young establishment writer. He’s proved his adeptness at gaming the literary system. It took Eggers to take such machinations and shell games to another level. Eggers has to respect Moody, without seeing him as his equal. Dave Eggers has done things bigger and better. He also knows that Rick, who comes from Big Money on both sides of the family, has had an easier path. Moody doesn’t have Eggers’s will or energy. Like Handler, Rick Moody has fit naturally into a secondary position in the McSweeney’s operation. He offers, due to his passive personality, not a shred of a threat. Don’t think for a moment that people aren’t like animals—like a pack of dogs. Within his gang, Dave is the Big Dog and can only be the Big Dog. His associates are instinctively accommodating.

Vendela Vida. The Dave’s wife and closest colleague. I can’t say I know much about her. Only what I’ve heard. She seems to be ambitious, with a powerful ego. Whether or not The Dave is in fact very ruthless, she’s said to be. Perhaps Vendela is the “bad guy” side to his personality?

RIVALS

As I stated in the post previous to this one, only one literary figure has faced up to Dave Eggers and gotten away with it. (We in the ULA didn’t.) Eggers has since done nothing to remedy the situation, which is telling.

This causes us to wonder about his ultimate survival in the literary game.

I believe his prospects are better than those of many. With his emphasis on nonprofits, Eggers has built his empire to survive the loss of Big Publishing and Big Media. The future is bright, if he survives long enough to see it. It’s within the present shaky literary system that one questions his prospects, based on his old-fashioned gang leader personality. The system draws ever more toward consensus and integration, in reaction to the ebook chaos outside the establishment castle. Witness the Commisar-like arguments of Insider lit figures such as Leon Wieseltier issuing panicked screeds against individual economic behavior and the liberating freedom of ebooks.

Despite the stage scenery which justifies the fundraising, Dave Eggers appears to be apolitical and non-ideological. His recent actions bolster this viewpoint—including the Gunter Grass controversy. Particularly in his Saint side, he’s more interested in the cult of self—while other powerful figures on the literary scene are interested in power for the sake of power. Like him, they may want a benevolent “liberal” dictatorship overseeing literature, but they want a dictatorship of the machine. Could Eggers blend in as a low-profile cog in the larger operation? Not likely.

In temperament, Dave Eggers is Dutch Schultz, not Lucky Luciano. The consolidating, paranoid machine allows him his territory—for now.

The Monolith

THE LITERARY NOMENKLATURA

Timothy Garton Ash’s book Solidarity: The Polish Revolution is interesting for a number of reasons, not least that his look at Poland’s Soviet-style bureaucracy in the 1980s reminds me of today’s literary establishment in the United States. An extreme statement? Not really—not when you look thoroughly into things. Most interesting in Ash’s history is the “moderate” functionary Rakowski, who managed at the time to be all things to all people.

The U.S. literary world has a power elite. All divisions within that power elite—good luck finding any—are differences of tactics only. All sides have an underlying philosophy—postmodernism—whether tacit or acknowledged. All segments have one overarching principle: power. The belief in their power within the system and the need to hang on to that power. Everything else is secondary.

WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT?

Would you believe that at one time, ten or twelve years ago, there existed journalists who criticized Dave Eggers and the Mcsweeney’s Gang? A few of them dared to ask questions at the Dave’s readings, and faced his hostility. There were evident signs, then, that he was a fierce control freak. There occurred even one or two controversies. This is all ancient history. Today no journalist dares take Eggers or his gang on. Those who did ten years ago were banished or destroyed. I can think of only one individual who butt heads with him and survived—the person had his own power base; support from an important part of the power elite. Even he though, these last six or so years, has been quiet on the topic. Once you’re ensconced within the system you don’t make waves.

No journalists will examine the McSweeney’s operation—though there are very many “journalists” on the order of Katie Ryder writing puff pieces about the gang’s authors. No real coverage—though there is much more to look at now than there was back in the day. For instance, the many relationships between McSweeney’s and Big Six publishing, or the proliferating profusion of McSweeney non-profits collecting funds and awards, establishing relationships with local governments, the overall effect of which is a massive, and very positive, p.r. campaign.

The problem is that within the literary machine, there’s no such thing as an independent journalist or writer. Every one of them is a Rakowski, with abject loyalty to the literary “party” which controls everything. To the machine.

Is Maud Newton, for instance, an independent journalist? In her hundred-thousands of words about the lit world, on her blog, or for outlets as prestigious as the New York Times, has she ever said anything significantly critical about the McSweeney’s gang? Maud was in fact one of their early acolytes. What I know of her is that she was instrumental in shutting down a debate about an uncomfortable aspect of the writing career of one Tom Bissell. The arguments used at the time to defend him were pure sophistry. Then the walls of protection about the matter came down entirely. Those who’d attempted to be open-minded about the matter (I never pretended to be) were silenced.

Or Bissell himself? He poses as an independent journalist. But of course, concerning literature and how it operates in this country, he’s not, and could never be. He wrote what was supposed to be a takedown of the Underground Literary Alliance (ULA), though he knew nothing about us and made little effort to learn about us. Why has he never examined, say, the McSweeney’s operation—a subject about which he knows a thousand times more than he did the ULA? An operation which is, after all, a vastly more significant target than we ever were.

Bissell could never write such an essay. He’s been published by McSweeney’s, and his recent book of essays is published by them. He remains what he was when he wrote the ULA essay: a functionary. Even were he not, he couldn’t say anything. The last ex-McSweeneyite who said anything critical about Dave Eggers—one of the gang’s early writers—in a national magazine, within a week issued a public apology. The effect of power and leverage. No writer who wants a career within the machine can afford to take on one of the machine’s major, and most ruthless, players.

The result, as I often say, is a literary world of no dissent; a world of conformity.

COMPETITION?

Is there competition within the machine, between the major players?

There’s a lot less than you’d think. For instance, the two most influential, and trendiest, literary journals in the country are the Brooklyn-based n+1, and in San Francisco, the current McSweeney’s flagship, The Believer. The two journals should be competing against each other aggressively. Coke versus Pepsi. If they were subject to market forces they would be—and the literary scene would be much livelier. Instead, a tacit truce exists between them. This is because they’re not subject to market forces. Both entities are tax shelters, which depend for their existence and their success on patronage from monied people. They may even both approach, for that patronage, that sponsorship, the very same people. What’s certain is that neither of them can afford to alienate any segment of the monied elite. Neither can afford to disturb literature’s power elite, which floats along most smoothly, like an old-style Eastern European dictatorship, in a sea of consensus, with no room for dissent or disagreement.

Inside or Outside?

Here's another example of puff piece journalism, by Garth Risk Hallberg, in this instance at the most powerful flagship of them all:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/magic-hours-essays-by-tom-bissell.html?pagewanted=all

What can we say about the review, and where it appears, and so about Bissell and Hallberg themselves? (Or how the review is written?) Are these two writers Insiders or Outsiders? What do you think?

Are they not fully Insiders-- as Inside the literary power system as one can possibly get? Can we speculate that said book wouldn't have been reviewed-- and the review wouldn't have been so positive-- if the book weren't published by McSweeney's? When's the last time a writer or journalist took on the McSweeney's empire? What was the result?

Garth Hallberg of course is sympathetic to Bissell's book out of natural inclination. They're both members of America's intellectual "New Class." Their attitudes are similar, or they wouldn't be where they are. Their viewpoints are acceptable to the literary and media status quo. Hallberg is also at least subliminally aware of how power works in the literary world. He's making his way inside the system. One doesn't rise within the apparatus by questioning it.

We have in literature today not intellectuals, but bureaucrats.

(I invite either Garth Hallberg or Tom Bissell to comment. But you see, they can't. That's not allowed.)

Puff Piece Journalism

THE PROBLEM with the coverage of American literature by the establishment media is that both the writers given coverage and those "journalists" who cover them have the same mindset. The result isn't journalism, but unquestioning sycophancy. This was evident in coverage of the recent Tom Bissell book of essays. (I cover the accuracy of one of the essays in a series of posts linked to the left, under "Fun Stuff.") The reviewers at esteemed places like the L.A. Times and the New York Times questioned nothing. Hardly a peep was raised about Bissell's past controversies. The subject's own viewpoint-- Bissell's-- was accepted without question. This isn't journalism, but something else. it's important for what it signifies about the accepted literary world.

This was true even in the so-called "Leftist" journal Guernica magazine. Note the interview with Bissell by young "journalist" Katie Ryder.

http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/tom-bissell-solitude-at-the-fault-line-of-literary-culture/

Journalist? Is Katie Ryder the future of journalism? She swallows the Tom Bissell presentation of his work and himself wholly. Not one tough question is asked of him. Not even a mildly dissenting question.

What's really happening is that Bissell, Ryder, and the editors at Guernica are all members of the intellectual nomenklatura in the U.S. They make their way by going along with status quo power. Despite the presentations they make, the postures, not one aspect of literature and the literary world is questioned. Blind acceptance.

After some lobbying, Guernica did post two comments of mine critical of the interview. Two later comments were never posted. I suppose they went too far. Free speech? Open debate? A level playing field? These ideals don't exist anywhere in today's literary world-- which is why we find only conformity, accompanied by a stagnant art form.

Dream On, Sorkin

AARON SORKIN AND THE MEDIA ELITE

I’ve never seen the show, but I’ve read much of late about the Aaron Sorkin penned “The Newsroom,” which gets a ton of positive publicity from the mandarins of established media. Apparently the show has a Cronkite/Rather/Brokaw-style news anchor pontificating to the mass audience from high above. One can see why the elite loves it. Their dream is a continuation of cultural, intellectual, and political business-as-usual, with a select group of “New Class” authorities telling the rest of us how to think and what to believe. It’s the old-fashioned vertical structure which is swiftly vanishing, not just in the world of television, but the realm of literature also. The news anchor played by Jeff Daniels may be the status quo with a happy face slapped onto it, but it’s still the status quo. Aristocracy more than democracy. The elite believe they can have a warm-and-fuzzy aristocracy; a benevolent intellectual dictatorship. They’re scamming one another and they’re scamming us. They’re against the always-elusive 1%, they say, but they’re never against themselves.

The same attitude, of course, dominates the established literary scene. A “New Class” nomenklatura centered in a handful of intellectual flagships like New York Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books believe they, the authorities, can continue to determine the direction of literature, and decide who are the nation’s important writers. Their choices of late have been increasingly moldy and irrelevant. (See my recent remarks regarding Ben Marcus.) There can be no peace with this crowd. They’ll never willingly give up a scintilla of their position, their monopoly of thought, their lofty privilege.

As for myself, I’m in with the mob, down with the masses, eking out an existence on the streets, but hope to someday be back with a new rebel army to wipe the mandarins and their crumbly aristocratic castles off the map. That is, if market forces don’t level their world first.

Brains without Morals

Shocking! A New Yorker magazine writer caught making up quotes! An establishment writer without ethics or scruples! When has that ever happened before?

It's interesting that Jonah Lehrer is a neuroscientist. Not a good last few weeks for neuroscientists. Perhaps we should consider taking scientists off their pedestal.

Bureaucracy and the Left

FOR MANY YEARS I wondered why the so-called Leftist media in this country, centered most vociferously around publications like The Nation and Harpers, as well as flagships like The New Yorker, Slate, and Salon, never looked or acted very much the way Leftists would be expected to look and act. Their staffs are invariably from affluent backgrounds, and educated at elite institutions; bastions of privilege. Their cultural choices are always of refined gentrified taste and the causes they most care about involve individualistic bourgeois self-indulgence. No one in their ranks is authentically working class, and the working class for them, when not an afterthought, is simply a declared excuse to increase their own power.

Their solutions for every issue involve the creation or expansion of bureaucracy somewhere, with the attendant increased power of bureaucrats.

What exactly is “Left” about this? The leading Leftist theorists from the past century, from Lenin and Trotsky to Georg Lukacs, disdained bureaucracy. The bureaucratic state as we know it was the creation of Bismarck. The most successful builder of state capitalism was the well-known Soviet dictator known as Joseph Stalin. This is the model U.S. media “Leftists” ask us to follow. They’re proponents of a vertical, hierarchical structure. “Power to the people” is the last thing they want.

If such media-member ideologues aren’t really Leftist, then what are they? Based on their similarity to advocates of state bureaucracy last century, on the Right and the Left, one can legitimately describe such folks as totalitarian, albeit one of the milder versions.

This explains, as nothing else explains, their hostility last decade to the working class upstarts of the Underground Literary Alliance. We called for the leveling of hierarchies; for art from the populace upward, not imposed from above. We advocated horizontal participation in culture. This was as anathema to the apparatchiks of U.S. establishment media, as the horizontalists of Solidarity in Poland circa 1981 were to the political bureaucrats controlling their society then. There’s not much difference between the two examples of immovable out-of-touch power.

The struggle of mankind always is the battle of people against power.

David Graeber and Debt

The young activist who recommended David Graeber’s new book about the evolution of money, Debt, to me exulted that the Graeber book “demolishes the gold standard.”

Uh, no, it doesn’t. Not even in the long middle section of the historical work, within which David Graeber builds a strong case in support of his thesis, piling on endless obscure historical example after example to show that gold is and has been merely a symbol. In fact, a myth; a creation out of thin air, used by the powerful to strengthen their positions and status. You believe it’s an overwhelming case, even though you have no way of checking its accuracy, short of spending thousands of hours in a university library researching Graeber’s examples. Then you close the book and walk outside, and realize there’s no conceivable way gold will lose its value. In the pages of a book, maybe, but not in the real world. Gold is valued for good reasons—beauty and scarcity among them. Or it might simply be that sometimes, ideas and myths become reality.

The fact is that libertarian theorists would agree with Graeber’s opening section, arguing the case against debt—how it exploits the world—100%. They’d likely agree 90% with Graeber’s concluding section—certainly from Nixon circa 1971 onward. Even the idea of a “Jubilee” I heard twenty-some years ago from libertarians.

However evil gold may have been over the millennia, it’s not as evil as fiat money. Nixon’s move disconnecting our money from gold enabled the United States to become a vastly more imperialist nation, as Graeber describes. It was done to pay for an unpopular overseas war—Vietnam—without the bill coming due. The bill was put off until tomorrow, and maybe tomorrow, for Vietnam and other adventures, has come. Compare this with the way World War Two was financed—with the government and celebrities selling war bonds to the public. If the public didn’t support the war, America couldn’t have fought it.

A return to gold-backed currency (not gold currency itself), if not the ultimate solution to America’s debt problem, would be a step in the right direction. More, it’s doable—a simple return, first, to the way the economy operated 40-plus years ago. No one’s come up with a better solution.

There’s great irony in the fact that the continual proposed solution of the Left is to build up centralized power. To strengthen, even more, the power of the all-powerful state. So much is their animus toward the market and the idea of the market. Yet centralization isn’t freedom. Bureaucracy isn’t democracy. Hierarchy doesn’t equal equality.

The market may or may not be strictly “natural,” but it’s inescapable in the mass society, industrial world we’ve lived in the past few centuries. There’s no way to abolish it. Experiments to do so have been made—with disastrous consequences. The Bolsheviks, after all, intended to make gold a worthless commodity. They outlawed the market. When studying alternatives, one has to research these mad attempts. (I’ve been reading the excellent Timothy Garton Ash examination of Solidarity; what he calls “The Polish Revolution.” The Ash book gives added—and more recent—historical depth to the Graeber work.) One can’t wish reality away, no matter how many well-intentioned Oxford professors insist we must.

Graeber’s Debt is throughout a fascinating work. His depiction of the ruthlessness and unsteady situation, and psychology, of conquistadores like Cortes, for example, is first-rate. We see a Donald Trump, often on the verge of bankruptcy, in a different light. That the “gambler” or entrepreneur is necessary to capitalism, David Graeber fully acknowledges.

The disappointing aspect of David Graeber’s Debt is that he proposes no solution. (Other than his tantalizing mention of a Jubilee—the renouncement of all debt.) David Graeber well outlines the problem, but fails to examine alternatives. Perhaps in a follow-up book. Surely he knows—as the rest of the Left does not know—that increasing the role and scope of the state is no answer. Not when the very thing he abhors—monopoly capitalism—is the creation of the state. Corporations themselves couldn’t exist without government legalizing them and protecting them.

There is, maybe, a flicker of a solution there. As the Right, via the libertarian wing of the Tea Party, offers a philosophy of decentralization, the horizontalization of economy and politics, so should the Left. Bureaucracy is not democracy. Democracy can happen only from the people upward—not from the state down behaving as both god and crown.

The Literary Joe Paterno?

Here are some quotes from Philadelphia sports writer and radio host Angelo Cataldi, printed yesterday in the Philly edition of the Metro newspaper:

"Joe Paterno created that environment with pure, unadulterated bullying. . . . It's why he snapped at the most benign questions from timid reporters for the last 20 years of his tenure."

"What is happening now-- the sanctions, the protests, the national disgrace-- is long-overdue payback for years of obnoxious behavior cloaked in cranky charm. Paterno thought he could get away with anything in the domain that he ruled. And for a very long time, he did. But there is a limit even to this kind of hero worship."

What do you think? Unquestioning hero worship? Are there any powerful persons in the literary world who resemble these descriptions?

Examine those puff pieces carefully.

Malcolm Gladwell’s Next Book

New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell is working on a new book that will supposedly examine the fight of “David and Goliath,” according to articles like this one:

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/07/malcolm-gladwell-to-study-underdogoverlord-dynamics-in-%E2%80%9Cdavid-and-goliath%E2%80%9D

Will Malcolm Gladwell examine the quixotic attempt of the Underground Literary Alliance to upend the established literary world? Or does that cut too close to home? After all, he writes for an establishment mouthpiece, The New Yorker, and is published by Little, Brown and Company, owned by one of the big book conglomerates. We’ll find out how independent Mr. Gladwell truly is.

The Shaky Empire

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

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

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

What are their ideas?

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

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

What of the Emperor himself, Mr. Eggers?

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

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

Intellectually Stunted?

There's something about a monolithic system that deadens the brains of the apparatchiks inside the system, as if they're never asked to think, much less question. What's required of them to have success instead is to accept and obey.

No one among their ranks questions the system and the products of the system. When someone outside the system questions it, or them, they're not sure how to behave. Real debate? They've not been prepared for the possibility. Told everything, they've not been told about that. To hear criticism of the conformist bureaucratic system is an unfamiliar experience. It's not done and as far as they know has never been done.

Attempting, then, to engage the questioner would be a step too far, of which they're not capable.

The irony is that the blindly following system people have positions at universities, which are supposed to be bastions of free thought and opposing ideas, the clash of ideas, but represent instead conformity and monothink.

Or: Free American literature! Buy American Pop Lit books.

Two Kinds of Short Stories

I have a post up at one of my other blogs that questions a literary magazine editor's "Ten Best" short stories list. His list is made up of, not so curiously, all literary stories. See

http://americanpoplit.blogspot.com/2012/07/best-short-stories.html

Michael Nye's list exemplifies the narrow MFA mentality.

There are two kinds of short stories: pop stories and literary stories. The objectives of the two types are vastly different. For the first type, the objective is to entertain and move a general audience. For the other, to impress a hypothetical or real college professor.

For too long, literary stories have had things all their own way, lauded by critics and academia, while the pop short story has been scorned, ignored, denied. It's no accident that during this period, the position of the short story in American culture has steadily declined.

With the rise of indie ebooks, the situation between the two kinds of stories may be changing.

Are all the many college professors and MFA grads-- numbering in the hundreds of thousands-- capable of defending their style of writing? Any of them? That remains to be seen. I sent an email "heads-up" to Missouri Review about my post, inviting comments, receiving to date none. Perhaps others invested in System Lit might weigh in. I invite them to. What literature needs more than anything else is real discussion and debate about its modes, standards, and intellectual monopolies.

Pyramids of Power

CULTURES OF CORRUPTION

Louis Freeh in his report of the Jerry Sandusky affair spoke of a "pyramid of power" and the fear of power which extended from top to bottom at Penn State University. The fear to speak up or break ranks. To take on the powerful. This same mindset extends through other fields, including the established literary realm. Exposures of corruption are swept aside. Loyalty to the system is monolithic. The behavior reflects a herd mentality.

The Underground Literary Alliance exposed corruption throughout its brief history. How did the system react? Did it not embrace and protect the miscreants-- for instance, those who gamed the arts grants system? Isn't the system even more monolithic today? There's an incredible reluctance to speak up to the powerful within American literature and publishing. Those who do are ostracized. The reluctance comes from those who are supposed to be writers-- the voice of bravery and freedom. Where is that voice? Where are there any-- any-- signs of literary democracy? The literary system today is an old-fashioned moribund apparat like Soviet-dominated Eastern European countries circa 1975.

Well, there is one other completely outspoken  blog like this one. I recently stumbled into it. "How Publishing Is Rigged." I have a link to it on the side of this page. The author of the blog wisely doesn't give his name.

Classism Is Like Racism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Real Crazy Carl Robinson

The Audience, a photo by King Wenclas on Flickr.

Here's a photo of the real Crazy Carl Robinson captured several years ago in Philadelphia when he was at the height of his popularity. With the recent interview by Wred Fright, Crazy Carl is poised for a comeback. (If I remember correctly, after this photo was snapped we moved to one of Philly's local drinking establishments to celebrate yet another successful literary event..)

This Is Not Crazy Carl!

14690006, a photo by King Wenclas on Flickr.

Contrary to rumor, this isn't a photo of underground writer Crazy Carl Robinson doing a literary reading in Philadelphia. I can't say exactly who the character in the photo is, but he bears a strong resemblance to someone who got into, er, hot water lately for throwing people into swimming pools! (Something Crazy Carl wouldn't do.)

Excluding the Alternative

If we had a fair and honest media in this country, journalists would be eager to look into the shutting out of the Underground Literary Alliance by the mainstream literary world. The ULA’s ideas came from outside the literary monolith. They represented an alternative both to the “business-as-usual” cronyistic way of operating, and to the one-size-fits-all antiquated literary writing style of system produced and supported writers. A healthy, confident system welcomes alternatives. Not in this instance.

Important Writer Interview

WHILE I wait for the established literary scene to either reform itself or collapse, I also look for literary news outside the castle. Here's a good one-- a Wred Fright interview with noted underground author Crazy Carl Robinson, who's a great entertainer and writer. Check it out!

http://www.wredfright.com/2012/07/interview-with-author-crazy-carl.html

Profiles in Uncourage

HOW WOULD THEY REACT?

IS THERE ONE HONEST WRITER IN THE ESTABLISHED LITERARY WORLD?

How would the established literary community react if the defunct Underground Literary Alliance web site was not only up, with its “Monday Report” looks at literary misdeeds again available to read—but began as well to publish new essays targeting literary corruption? Would many in the standard lit world applaud? Would any of them? Or would not they continue their 100% stonewalling, putting blindfolds over their eyes, plugs in their ears, and gags in their mouths to follow the mandated line of “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil”? I can’t say I’ve encountered one person in their ranks—not one!—who has a shred of intellectual courage involving their own field. It’s forever go-along-to-get-along. This includes the self-proclaimed Leftists among them, who all seem to be graduates of places like Brown, Harvard, and Oxford, and are just as careful to blackball the idea and history of the ULA as is anyone else.

Letter to n+1

ADVENTURES OF A BLACKBALLED WRITER

The trendy Brooklyn-based lit group n+1  made a post at their site which I agreed with--
http://nplusonemag.com/death-by-degrees

On June 20 I emailed them a friendly note:

To the Editors, n+1,
 I love the essay about credentialism now up on your site. I agree with it 100%. The question has to be asked of n+1, though, regarding American literature: When do you put your principles into action??
  I have a populist e-novel I'm trying to market, written by an authentically populist, uncredentialed writer-- myself-- in a populist style, with the subject of protest, and one of the novel's themes being the divide between elitists and populists in this country, including on the Left.
  I could send you a free copy. Would you read it?
  ***************************************
  This is a sore subject for me of late, with the reappearance of the Tom Bissell/Believer hatchet job on the Underground Literary Alliance, a lit group which was the very animal one would think you'd have publicly supported. Namely, a collection of populist, uncredentialed, mainly lower class writers. Legitimate heirs of the London, Norris, Dreiser, Farrell, Steinbeck et.al. stream of American literature.
  The credentialed literary elite distorted our message and tarred our populist writing styles.
When Bissell accused us of "classocide," no one among your credentialed elite came to our defense. Yet classocide is exactly what happened to the ULA. We were living on the margins, most of us, before the recession. The economic downturn destroyed us. Literally, physically, in every way.
  You can't have it both ways. You can't claim to want populism, yet at the same time cling to a refined version of literature whose very emphasis of style is A.) on the solipsistic self, not the outer world; B.) on trivialities of style-- "literary" descriptions of bourgeois furniture, say-- that are markers of a bureaucratic mindset (emphasis on the trivial) that comes from a bureaucratic, credentialed system for producing writers and literature.
  It was your own Chad Harbach, after all, who erroneously claimed "We're all MFA's now." What "we," paleface?
  To the credentialed elite, writers who are outside the system of credentials don't exist.
  Anyway, kudos to the unnamed one of your editors who wrote the piece. Good job.
  -Karl Wenclas

Needless to say, I received no response. Will they print my letter? Don 't hold your breath!

Still, I'm giving the literary elite every opportunity to live up to their own principles.  (They could, of course, respond on this blog.)

Another Country

THINK if this were another country, like China, and a handful of dissident writers bucked what they saw as an overly bureaucratic and cronyistic literary system which produced stale and lifeless bureaucratic art. In, er, China. The well-credentialed literary bureaucrats, those who benefit in some way from the system, if only through seeing their work into disseminated print, naturally would see the dissidents as no-talent cranks and complainers worthy of contempt. How dare the dissidents not play by the same rules other writers play by? How dare they complain? Making noise and dissenting from the established system is a betrayal of the national literature itself! So the way system apparatchiks would view it. The literary dissidents would be ostracized.

This, in a country like China. It could never happen in a country like the USA. Could it?

Ways the ULA Was Right

What was the actual record of the Underground Literary Alliance?

**********

2001: ULA supports populist writers.

2011: Sectors of established literature acknowledge it's time to return to populist writing.

**********

2001: In activist fashion ULA attacks class privilege and economic inequality.

2011: In activist fashion, Occupy Wall Street attacks class privilege and economic inequality.

**********

2003: In January at Housing Works, ULA members ask for a discussion of looming Iraq War, and are asked to leave.

2003-2011: Iraq War a costly fiasco.

**********

2001-2007: ULA criticizes "Big Six" publishers as monopolistic, inefficient, and top heavy.

2012: "Big Six" looks increasingly shaky.

**********

2005 and 2007: ULA covers Paris Review/CIA story.

2012: Salon.com covers Paris Review/CIA story.

**********

2001-2007: ULA criticizes taxpayer grants to rich writers while populist writers live on the margins.

2008-2009: In the face of a severe recession and widespread hostility to its activist message, the Underground Literary Alliance disintegrates.

**********

During its brief and tumultuous lifespan, the Underground Literary Alliance was on the right side of issues and the right side of history.

Isn't it time for the literary world to stop blackballing the ULA's writers?

Do They Ever Tell the Truth?

I was looking up reviews of the Ben Marcus novel The Flame Alphabet. I found an interesting review from 1/29/12 by Boris Kachka of New York magazine.

http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/ben-marcus-2012-2/

Kachka’s review comes from an alternate universe.

Kachka’s review title describes oft-published Marcus as from the “School of Hard Knocks." The review itself pegs Ben Marcus as “a deliberately obscure novelist who likes to fling Molotov cocktails at the literary Establishment.”

Yet it’d be hard to find anyone who’s more a bred and bonded member of the literary Establishment than Ben Marcus. His mother, Jane Marcus, is an English professor at CUNY and a notable feminist critic. Ben Marcus himself is a professor at prestigious Columbia University in New York, and the former chair of the esteemed Columbia writing program. His novel The Flame Alphabet is published by Alfred Knopf, part of the Random House publishing empire.

How obscure is the book? In addition to the Boris Kachka review, The Flame Alphabet has received reviews in The New York Times, The L.A. Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Seattle Times, Bookforum, Booklist, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, The Millions, and many other places. Almost a Who’s Who of establishment media.

Ben Marcus has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, Paris Review, Time, Rolling Stone, McSweeney’s, among other publications, and has received grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment of the Arts. Marcus’s wife, Heidi Julavits, is herself a well-hyped novelist, and also an editor at The Believer.

A person with these kind of connections and credentials sits at the very center of today’s literary Establishment. What Boris Kachka said, then, in his New York magazine review of The Flame Alphabet was plainly false. As false as anything could be false. Why did Kachka say it?

The Boris Kachka portrayal of Ben Marcus fits someone’s false narrative. It’s likely that Kachka perpetuates the narrative because Ben Marcus wields real power in the clubby world of establishment literature—a world of pandering and dishonesty.

Populism or Postmodernism?

Here’s the opinion of philosopher Georg Lukacs, writing mid-20th century:

“Great realism, therefore, perishes in the era of decay. And besides the overtly apologetic anti-realism and pseudo-realism of the literature promoted by the reactionary bourgeoisie, we have a long train of tendencies that try in a very ‘radical’ and ‘avant-garde’ fashion to liquidate the very foundations of realism.”

Lukacs was for “the unity of democratic tradition in social life and realist tradition in art; the consequence of this unity being a constant striving to give art a popular character, and an unseparable connection with the great problems of national life.”

He could’ve been talking about the situation of American literature today.

What Happened to the Epoch Times?

Why is the Chinese dissident newspaper Epoch Times no longer available in Philadelphia? It seems to have been replaced on the streets of the city by ChinaDaily, a creature of the Chinese government. This bears some looking into.

Emily Temple’s Other List

MORE ABOUT FLAVORWIRE’S BOOK AUTHORITY

As we’ve seen at a previous post, Flavorwire’s books person has rejected most of the giants of American and world literature. What remains? What’s approved?

We get more than a clue in Temple’s 12/30/11 list of “Most Anticipated Books of 2012.” The contents of the list are, for the most part, sadly predictable, encompassing the standard narrow New York hipster world view:

http://www.flavorwire.com/245506/flavorpills-most-anticipated-books-of-2012?all=1

Not an accident that the first book listed is the execrably dull novel The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. Columbia University prof Marcus, married to a Believer magazine editor, is one of the best-connected writers on the U.S. literary scene. Do we have a clue where Flavorwire, they of the roomy and amply furnished Manhattan office, is coming from? Do we now know why Emily Temple trampled ereaders and ebook writers?

The clincher on the list is the inclusion of Marilynne Robinson, who not only is the director of the University of Iowa writing program, she’s authored a stultifying essay collection oriented toward the bureaucratic writer mindset. One of the essays in the book practically screams, “Keep the funding coming!” These are people whose total existence depends on the system, and their place within it. Connections are all. They have to be, because the writing of these literary apparatchiks enthralls no one.

Others selected to be hyped by Flavorwire include MFAer Amelia Gray, MFAer Adam Levin, MFAer extraordinaire Michael Chabon, and Nell Freudenberger, who was first published in The New Yorker at age 25 and has been further hyped by same as a leading up-and-comer. The safe and approved.

Oh, there might be a ringer or two on the list, notably Roberto Bolano, who was adopted by the U.S. literary establishment once he was safely dead! Cachet for the literary gentry by appropriation and association.

Think France 1789, with a salon full of well-dressed aristocrats celebrating the irrelevance of their exclusive little realm. The new world of ebooks is the approaching deluge.

The Pop Lit Era?

See my post at another blog, here:
http://americanpoplit.blogspot.com/2012/06/has-pop-era-in-literature-already-begun.html

A Bizarre Not-Reading List

Check out this strange list by Emily Temple of Flavorwire of books and/or authors which make a person "undateable":

http://www.flavorwire.com/299828/these-are-the-books-that-make-you-totally-undateable?all=1

Several of the authors listed are among my all-time favorites. (Uh, not Tao Lin.) The reasoning for eliminating them is often skewed. (Liking Ayn Rand, then discovering her politics aren't acceptable-- as if that has anything to do with the quality of the writing. Can we say, "Closed mind"?) Not only that, but try to envision the personality of the individual who would NOT like the books of the authors on the list. Not masculine, not serious, not open to other viewpoints, no nostalgia, no quirks, etc. etc. etc. Would the person have any personality at all? Or not be a mannequin? Is that what Emily Temple and friends want? I suspect she and they are just a tad uptight, and so the question then becomes: Who would want to date them? (Those of such a restrictive and narrow viewpoint would likely create bloodless and uninteresting writing themselves. No risk involved.)

Just my inflation-adjusted 0.8 cents worth.

(For balls-to-the-wall, not-uptight, over-the-top fiction read THE TOWER by King Wenclas, available via Nook or Kindle. Likely too strong for the Flavorpill crowd.)

Book Critic Alert

To all book critics out there, a new book review site is looking for qualified reviewers. See
http://idreambooks.com/

I've obtained the secret password to the site, and am passing it on here, per request: "discover_books"

It looks like an informative site, so whether you're a book critic or not, check it out.

Power and Cover-Ups

If the Jerry Sandusky case tells us anything, it’s about the nature of institutions to close ranks around corrupt individuals or uncomfortable topics. Can’t this be said about the literary world, where those who uncover corruption, not those who perpetuate it, are the ones tarred and feathered?

Is Publishing Rigged?

Here’s an interesting website which explores some of the same themes I have over the years:

http://howpublishingisrigged.com

Big Publishing can be attacked on three counts:

1.) The Economic Argument, which Amazon and cheap ebooks are making in devastating fashion.

2.) The Artistic Argument—the idea that the literature the Big Six promote isn’t in fact very good.

3.) The Moral Argument—the argument that the current literary system is irredeemably corrupt.

The Divide

I’ve been mulling over a recent quote from trendy writer George Saunders, which I saw on the Guernica magazine web site.

George Saunders, talking about fiction writers: “The essential thing is having a talent for having talent.”

Saunders seems to be saying that what’s important isn’t being genuine, but being as un-genuine as possible. This sums up the entire postmodern literary philosophy. For such writers, writing is a con, a game. Which leads us to the ultimate expression of the philosophy: John Hodgman.

It’s a decayed, insular, and corrupt scene. No wonder those inside the scene fear those who seek to change it. They know they’re Potemkin writers operating on borrowed time.

New Political Blog

POLITICAL SATIRE

Read my new blog novel, Election Follies 2012, available right here:

www.electionfollies.blogspot.com

Chapters up include "John Edwards Discovers Honesty," "Panic in Camp Obama," and "Humanizing Mitt," with much more to follow. Only the best coverage of the absurdity of our political system!

Implications of the Philly Phanatic Lawsuit

Journalists covering the Phanatic swimming pool scandal (the famed mascot’s penchant for tossing people into swimming pools)--

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/14/tagblogsfindlawcom2012-injured-idUS185073366620120614

have yet to fully address the implications and possible outcomes of the suit. If alleged victim Suzanne Pierce (spelled Peirce in some accounts) wins the lawsuit, she could potentially take possession of the out-of-control creature. What would result?

I have visions of Ms. Pierce keeping the Phanatic chained in her basement, brought out for menial tasks such as serving guests, while wearing an apron, at cocktail parties in the Pierce/Peirce residence.

Possibly the Phanatic will be forced to perform at Little League games of the Pierce/Peirce son, if she has a son. Maybe the Phanatic would be put to work landscaping the Pierce/Peirce lawns. If so, there are dangers involved. Spurred by a nostalgic memory of his days in Citizens Bank park, the creature might use the opportunity to turn the Pierce/Peirce backyard into a small-scale baseball diamond! Ms. Pierce/Peirce would presumably not be happy with such an antic.

There is, then, the ultimate possibility that Ms. Pierce/Peirce would kick the dumb animal into the street to fend for himself. He’d end up in Center City Philadelphia along with the legions of other homeless. What skills, after all, does the Phillie/Philly Phanatic have other than being a goofball? Visualize the poor creature panhandling on street corners, faded red upturned Phillies baseball cap set on the sidewalk in front of him, waving his arms around wildly as he pleads for any change tossed into the hat. If the team still isn’t winning games, the donations to the fuzzy green guy might be few in number. This is a fate that everyone in the Philadelphia area should seek to avoid.

HELP SAVE THE PHILLY PHANATIC!

Big Publishing as Moral Icon?

This is how establishment commentators are presenting things, in the wake of Amazon and cheap ebooks. But it's not credible. The Big Six have been cranking out garbage for decades, from top to bottom. From unreadable irrational postmodern nonsense at the top, to very readable irrational nonsensical fantasy at the bottom. There's no middle. What's been lost is American literature itself. With no populist lit, connected to the real lives of the common people, there's no relevant literature. It's why the scorning of the Underground Literary Alliance, and what it represented, was in the long run a bad move. Those in power cut off a way for American literature to renew itself.

"Are Cheap Ebooks Bad for Readers?"

So asks The New Yorker in their promo for the Ken Auletta piece--
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2012/06/25/120625on_audio_amazon

Are inexpensive products ever bad for consumers? Or do they not offer greater choice and an expanded market?

The days of gatekeepers manning a top-heavy, hyperexpensive publishing establishment are over.

(My new The Tower e-novel is a faster, more explosive and more relevant reading experience than anything put out by ICM's precious literary authors. Read it and find out.)

More Lit Establishment Panic

The New Yorker has posted an excerpt from a Ken Auletta essay deploring the rise of indy ebooks, with Amazon playing role of bad guy in his scenario.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/25/120625fa_fact_auletta

It should be noted that Auletta's wife is Amanda "Binky" Urban of ICM, an agency whiuch makes a fortune as middle-man for big publishing. He's not exactly objective. But then, no one in that world is.

No Opposition

The chief problem with the established literary scene is that it’s like a country with only one political party. There’s no opposition. No one to investigate and speak up about corruption, cronyism, monopoly, and other abuses. Coverage of establishment writers by establishment organs of publicity end up being puff pieces. No one ever—ever—looks behind the curtain.

The Underground Literary Alliance provided such opposition for a few years, before it was shut out and shut down. Other attempts to oppose the status quo mindset are required—for the health of literature itself. This involves breaking the “I’m okay, you’re okay,” “Everything is wonderful” mentality about current lit.

Pleasing the Client

Why have I belabored the point about the changes to Tom Bissell’s essay on the ULA? Because the changes give the game away about how the literary system in this country actually operates. Rather than being “one of our finest essayists,” as commentators have called him, in reality Bissell is a propagandist for the system. For the status quo. For whoever’s employing him—in this case for The Believer, for both original essay and essay collection. The task becomes giving the client what the client wants. In this instance and in other instances Tom Bissell did this, and he did it well.

This is an area seldom talked about, which in itself is curious. Writers are voluble, but they’re not voluble about that. Yet system writers well know how the game works. They’re masters at playing the game; at finessing the bureaucracy.

I have limited knowledge in this area, but I have some. I wrote a review in 2000 of a book by J.T. Leroy for a major publication because no one else would give the editors at the time what they wanted—which was, a positive piece; seeing as Leroy was a protege of one of the individuals involved. I liked the gritty subject of Leroy’s book, but even I hedged in my piece—so that small changes to my review by the editors had to be made. This is a minor, minor instance. For me it was telling. It exemplifies more than it tells.

The entire literary system operates like a bureaucracy. Literary agents and editors behave like bureaucrats. The system has an overarching mentality. The job of bureaucrats is to enforce the mentality; the will of the system. Those who make it into the system become obsessively loyal to the system, as Bissell and others of his kind are loyal to it. They’re ambitious writers. Those who gave Bissell’s book puff piece reviews no doubt believed what they said. Their job is to convince readers. This involves first convincing themselves. Their job also, whether they’re writing a review for the New York Times or for a system oriented literary web site, is to “please the client.”

Winning Ideas

CREDIBILITY
I mention in my interview with Dr. Wred Fright (see below) that the Underground Literary Alliance had winning ideas. That was certainly the case. It's why Tom Bissell made changes to his republished essay on us, changes to make it appear that Dave Eggers was once a zinester. But only in the most limited sense was he. From the start he was, as he remains, a rich guy buying himself into a scene. He never had the street cred of other west coast writers of the same time like Aaron Cometbus, or Doug Holland of "Pathetic Life." There's no way to change this. The Believer crowd does a lot of hipster posing. They'll have more credibility when they stop trying to wipe out genuine DIY writers, and instead accept them as legitimate participants in today's literary scene.

(The term "DIY" has been much abused of late. I'm reminded of the failed in-house project of the Murdoch publishing conglomerate HarperCollins, the one called HarperStudio. The clueless publishing pods part of the project were advertising themselves as "DIY." Which seems to have been stretching inauthenticity as far as it can be stretched, putting even The Dave to shame.)

Frightful Interview

An interview I did with underground personality Wred Fright, who is an entertaining writer but also something of a heartland scholar, is now up here:

http://www.wredfright.com/2012/06/peasants-are-getting-sonnets-interview.html

Check it out!

Speaking Up

Time demonstrates again and again the relevance and importance of the history of the Underground Literary Alliance. But it means nothing if former ULAers don't speak up about that terrific legacy. We had and still have winning populist arguments. We showed a true and authentic path for American literature. We were right on the issues. Let's not forget any of this.

Ahead of the Curve

THE ULA ONCE AGAIN PROVEN RELEVANT

I note the Joel Whitney article in Salon.com regarding the CIA/Paris Review connection. His article has been further addressed by the likes of Jennifer Schuessler at the New York Times Arts Beat blog, by Alex Halperin on twitter, and others. Golly gee, where was this kind of coverage when the Underground Literary Alliance addressed the issue in 2005 and 2007?? We took a lot of heat over the matter, were supported by no one in the established literary world, and were effectively blackballed. Yet, as with our populist protests, precursors to both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, we were far ahead of the zeitgeist.

This once again shows that more important than what's said in American culture, is who's saying it-- whether or not you're one of the Approved. Truth is a secondary concern.

Franzen's Farther Away

In browsing through Jonathan Franzen's new book of essays, Farther Away, it's occurred to me how different my way of thinking is from his. Utterly different ways of viewing literature. Different world views, even though we're from the same generation and even, roughly, the same part of the country.

Franzen's view is extremely interior. Which is why he enjoys writers of the personal and the interior like Alice Munro and David Foster Wallace. I find both of them virtually unreadable. Franzen will discuss society and the world, as he does-- not too well in my opinion-- in Freedom. But he views the outer world through the prism of the domestic and the interior.
This is the same way he views himself as a writer, and by extension other writers. I see Jonathan Franzen and other system writers as hamsters kept in a cage. They never question the cage itself. I'm not sure they see it. They don't see themselves as writers within the context of society. Everything for them is a given.

An example of this is the attitude toward David Foster Wallace. He's not seen as a product of our mad postmodern society. It's accepted that he was depressed, just because he was, and he didn't take his meds and if we have problems we should all take our meds and we never for a minute look at society; we don't glimpse at the cage. But DFW was mentally stressed and maybe we could possibly perhaps very gently ask why he was mentally stressed. Could it possibly have anything to do with how far he plunged himself into mass electronic media? His television viewing, as evidenced by some of his early essays, was so mammoth and intense it could be called legendary. He not only watched the nonstop stream of video garbage, he studied the garbage minutely. Hundreds and thousands of hours of it. All of that went into his brain. At the same time he was creating massive amounts of intense self-absorbed writing. Try reading one of his endless instant-by-instant novels and think about the hyper-aware brain creating it. A brain on fire. Can we think his writer lifestyle had no effect? I recently completed a much smaller novel, one not consumed in self and minutia, and yet found myself at night unable to sleep as the pieces of narrative and sentences circulated again and again through my brain. Why have so many writers self-medicated? David Foster Wallace was a creature of society and can be understood only within the context of society and lifestyle and within postmodern philosophy-- which I consider unsatisfying madness-- and through the postmodern style of thinking and writing. From Jonathan Franzen we get none of this.

The larger question is whether Franzen's own style of thinking and writing-- or Alice Munro's-- is the path down which contemporary American literature should be heading.

Other Thoughts

YET ANOTHER ASIDE

I finally listened to the Bat Segundo interview with Tom Bissell. I have to give Ed Champion a grudging nod for pressing that cut-rate Eggers wannabe on the ULA and the current stagnant literary scene, which the Underground Literary Alliance unsuccessfully sought to change. The interview was interesting to me for a couple of reasons.

I noted Bissell’s innate superiority complex. He actually believes he was doing us a favor by trashing us in the essay—and maybe he was, because the prevalent view was to give us no notice whatsoever. Most of that crowd would rather have kicked us into the gutter. Tom Bissell by contrast threw us a few pennies-- “here, you peasants”—and thought he was being generous. Forget all the distortions in the essay, Tom. “Classocide.” We should be thanking you. Do I exaggerate? Slightly—but notice that the tone is to treat us as the Other-- “from that social milieu”—and not in any way approaching equals. His phrasing accepts, contrary to his misleading essay, the hierarchical power relationships that do exist in the literary world, of which Ed seeks to give his audience a glimpse. Tom Bissell states that I’d be impossible “to negotiate with,” because I’d “never be satisfied,” whatever that means. That I’d expect to be treated not as a hat-in-hand beggar, but an equal? That’s not how that world operates. “Negotiate.”

Bissell goes on to claim that one could “negotiate” with others of “that” milieu. Yet no one negotiated with the ULA after I broke with the team. An alternative outsiders group was created by former ULAers expecting to be accepted by the lit scene with open arms, once they were free of evil me. Boy, were they disappointed. They’re still waiting for their negotiation, I think. At least four individual ULA writers left the ULA in hopes of cutting a deal. There’s no point in naming them. They’re quite sad stories. Their rewards/payoffs were ridiculously minor. One of them was allowed to place a fawning essay on an insider website. Another is the token poor guy someplace. That kind of thing.

Tom Bissell and Ed Champion at least implicitly recognize that the world consists of leverage and power, where terms do need to be negotiated. The premise of the ULA recognized this—that only by creating leverage, by applying pressure, would we be allowed any kind of a voice. It’s the way of the world. The altruistic empathy of characters like the Dave and his various low-priced Bissell knockoffs is a pose for the gullible, nothing else.

p.s. A small correction to the interview. George Plimpton didn’t invite the ULA to an event. We invited him—to debate us at CBGB’s in New York City. To his credit, the establishment literary warrior showed up. Unlike all others of his breed, George Plimpton was fearless. He and his preppy staff were badly out of their depth, of course. Like throwing well-groomed poodles in with pit bulls. The Underground Literary Alliance then was the most exciting lit group on the planet. After the debate George and I, as respective leaders of our teams, had a polite chat over beers, while the old dog’s eyes popped-out at the see-through dress of our at-the-time zeen babe. George and I had an interesting talk, in which he probed my commitment to the ULA’s ideas. Not quite the way it’s portrayed. There were other dynamics going on. The real story is more interesting than a third-hand hearsay version. 

Have a good day!

ULA Return?

Anytime the Underground Literary Alliance becomes a topic of conversation anyplace, thoughts of restoring the outfit begin among remnants of the membership. The question is what any new version  would look like; how much it would hew to the original version, and how far it would be a break from the past. As for myself, at this moment in time there's only one aspect of the ULA campaign I'd be interested in keeping, namely hanging out in bars. (An appropriate thought this first day of Philly Beer Week. I don't drink like I used to, but I sometimes still like thinking about it.)