Getting Out

OBLIGATIONS
I have two book reviews yet to post at my review blog-- www.blitzreview.blogspot.com-- Will do so asap.

BACKLOG
I have over a dozen ready posts for this and my other blogs (not counting LitMystery), and notes for a score more. How many, if any, I'll post; whether or not I'll save them for a possible future print-zeen, or File 13 them-- I don't know.

THE CAMPAIGN
Some people forget that I was recruited, chiefly by Doug B. and Steve K., to get back into lit at a time in '98-'99 when I was doing no writing at all. I determined then to return only to lead a campaign that was balls-to-the wall. I left a good-paying job and moved to Philly to get things going. I pursued the campaign as far as it would go, pulling undergrounders along as far as I could. Now I intend to pick up my life where I left off. I have a few loose ends to tie up first.

GOALS
The biggest misconception about myself was that I was an embittered writer out solely for himself, to get "published" in any way possible. That's the one thing I never pushed for, even within the ULA itself. My plans were always larger. To be published by the congloms for a token advance and a blowjob I can do without. I entered the campaign not as a writer, but as a salesman; a promoter. My motivations: to change literature from the standpoint of a reader, sure. I also saw tremendous business opportunity if the campaign to create a REAL, distinct alternative to moribund established lit was successful. The opportunity is still there.

STRATEGY
For the literary underground, a Big Media campaign was the only way out, and remains the only way out. Content niche-dwellers (OW etc.) aren't ready for prime time. They're intimidated by the larger world, and so are unwilling to leave their safety zones. That's not a criticism. It's a statement of fact.

VALUE
As is this statement: With my varied skills, including at ideas, showmanship, and p.r., from the start I was the most valuable piece of the puzzle. Others couldn't deal with this. What I badly, badly, badly needed to complement my skills was a genuine and willing "Zeen Elvis" personality or two to be at the forefront of the group.

P.R.
That my photo went out with our first big story was unfortunate-- but no one else was available for the photog, or, except for Mike J., to meet the journalist for the story. It's more clear now that no one else in the immediate group was ready for the attention and noise. (I received squawking about nearly every story we got. My actions, no matter how beneficial to the campaign, were never good enough. So be it.)

PERSONA
"Crazy King Wenclas"? I played my role well.

BETRAYALS
Discussion of saboteurs belongs in my fictional serial at
www.literarymystery.blogspot.com
I'll say here: I don't know what they gained. Maybe someday they'll tell me.

QUESTION
Are undergrounders, and the lit world, better off without my presence? I guess we'll find out!
(I'll do at least another post or two this summer before I sign off.)

No Peace

It's obvious that peace isn't possible for me with this blog's enemies. I'm supposed to keep this blog going just so long-time foe "Harland" can continue to take shots at me. At the same time I'm not to attack the person's identity directly, now that it's been admitted to me. I don't wish to anyway. The person is in a panic that I might leave and in a panic that I might stay; detests this blog but doesn't want it to go away. For me it's a no-win situation.

MONOMANIA
Monomania has come from "The Assassin," as fixated on destructive revenge as Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill" or Greg Peck in "The Bravados." As Stephen Boyd eventually tells Peck, "I'm tired of you dogging my trail!"

MYSTERY
The serial "Plutocracy USA has turned into a series of chases, quests, searches. We're getting into the heart of the tale. Chapters to come include "Soul of an Assassin," "I, Moby Dick," and "The Court of the Demi-Puppets." A new chapter or two will be up this week.
www.literarymystery.blogspot.com

Aftermath

WAGING PEACE?
Harland's plans for war with this blog were about as farsighted as the U.S. military's in 2003 for Iraq. After initial success-- then what? "Harland" is clueless.

What do I do now? Am I banished to a used car lot?

Fact is that without my writing and shit-disturbing I'm a very ordinary guy. I have a strong personality, but need ways to access it.

OCCUPATION?
I've yet to receive from "Harland" (May Barber) any coherent occupation policy about these blogs, which need direction fast as they're losing their audience. Shades of Don Rumsfeld! (Show "Rummy" the door, May.)

Why would I be okay with this? "Harland" has cut down myself and my writing. I offer the person the opportunity to do better. I'm calling the person's bluff. Besides, as Colin Powell told Bush Jr. about Iraq, "If you break it, you own it."

The King Wenclas insurgents are isolated on Literary Mystery (www.literarymystery.blogspot.com), their last stronghold.

OTHER INSURGENTS
DIY moderates like Brady are silent. The ULA's sole conservative, George, who has always been critical of the literary establishment (and of everyone else) has been purged for outspokenness. Rather than broadening, the movement has narrowed, for good or ill.

"LIBERATION"
In stages, the ULA has been liberated from my presence. The alleged dictator is gone; statues of evil King Wenclas toppling throughout the realm. Strangely, new ULA kingpin Jeff Potter has still asked me to get publicity, as if it's a matter of snapping my fingers and saying, "Abracadabra." (The last publicity I received, the Philly radio show, was both scorned and misused.) He's asked for new ideas. I can hardly offer new ideas when the ideas I've offered aren't followed.

CENTRAL AUTHORITY
With my toppling there is no central authority in the Rebellion. I kept things together for many years not through any institutional role, but the force of my personality.

With no central authority, and none proposed, we see the ULA breaking into fiefdoms in which one individual, with one area of the Rebellion (say, books) will hold absolute power. This goes against the cooperative spirit of the ULA's original vision. One can't ask for volunteered work without respecting the volunter's input. Maybe this set-up will work. Time will tell.

WHERE NOW?
Whither the cause? Where are the strategies? To ask me to continue to serve the Rebellion with a dozen knives in my back is unsound. Defeated? Certainly. Defeated twenty times over; smashed, stomped, pulverized from every direction in every way possible. I'm in the position everyone wants: sidelined. Hannibal of Carthage after Zama. Vercingtorix laying down his sword. Crazy Horse captured. A handcuffed and unlistened-to opponent of literary Empire.

New Chapter

Chapter Nineteen of "Plutocracy USA" is now up at

www.literarymystery.blogspot.com

We are introduced to a new character, Roody McDoody, who as you may remember used to post comments on this blog. . . .

FYI

Most of my public literary activities are suspended while I negotiate terms with the person who's defeated me. I trust the individual will be wise and generous. . . .

I suggest readers delve into this blog's archive, which has a ton of material.

I'll also be continuing the story at

http://www.literarymystery.blogspot.com/

Thanks.

Priorities

My, what a lot of posts to a guy who can't write, about a "conspiracy" which doesn't exist. It sure seems to me like an effort to derail what I'm doing. So be it. I've been fighting demi-puppets-- and "Harland"-- for seven years. There's no end to them. Invariably, they lack integrity and truthfulness-- no one more than Harland.

PEN
This organization is a house of cards. Points that can be brought up: how the bulk of money expended goes for salaries; the current Director making two-and-a-half times what the Director made ten years ago. (Did your wage or salary go up that much? Mine hasn't!) That their awards to writers consistently go to the affluent kind, famous or not-so-famous, who don't need the bucks. This from a "dissent" oriented organization. That there was dissent within PEN in the 90's over the organization's kowtowing to rich people. The dissenters lost the battle.

DIRTY TRICKS
These of course continue. (I'm still waiting for my blog to be freed up.) Latest are fake, badly written poems sent to some outfit called poetry.com under my name, with my real e-mail address but a fake Detroit snail address. The poems are a caricature of what I do. The question being, if there's no literary establishment, why some people are going to so much trouble to defend it.

MYSELF
Someone asked about my background. Yes, I focus on the class war in this country-- something I've been aware of since I was a kid. During high school my family lived on "the other side of the tracks"-- actually a newly built expressway. We'd moved into an area that had been vacant land until in the Fifties cheap 30 or 40-foot-lot houses were thrown up; where we lived had no school district so we had to attend a school miles away in a more affluent district. Myself and my siblings and our friends were the poorest kids in school. "There goes a Wenclas." We fought other students almost daily. The stories I could tell are endless. My factory worker father was sick most of the time-- I was working 38 hours a week in a restaurant, cooking beef rounds and washing pots, to pay my share in the house. In class the next morning I'd be sleeping in the back row, still emanating the beef smell which I could never seem to wash off, the other kids shaking their heads at me in disgust. Sometimes I never went home; both my parents had, er, drinking problems, which for many years, starting at sixteen, I inherited. The family battles in our tiny house were constant. Etc etc. Do you really want to hear this? I don't. It's something I'd rather forget-- but it did mold my attitudes; gave me a taste of the real world which further experiences reinforced.

THE HARLAND QUESTION
"Oh Goneril! You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face."
This is a talented person who has been holding a grudge against me for seven years. Justified? Probably in part. I wish the person would move on. The individual hasn't been answering my e-mails, so seems unwilling to address the real problems between us. I have no inclination to keep fighting this person.
p.s. Has it occurred to no one that Harland is a woman?

MY BLOGS
"Harland" in some sense is correct that the questions raised here, between the underground and the establishment, will ultimately be decided by THE WRITING. I'm willing to accept that challenge. I'll have a remark put up on my Happy Lit blog about this.

Given a choice, at this moment in time I'll take my Literary Mystery blog over this one. That's where my further opinions regarding Harland and the other detestable people of the literary world will be found. I have some very entertaining chapters to come-- including new characters like evil clown "Roody McDoody" and masked villain "The Assassin." I plan to have fun, and hope my remaining readers will also.

As for this blog, I've shut down comments-- I just don't have time for all the noise and attacks, sorry. Interpret it as you like. I have a backlog of half-a-dozen posts or so-- some fairly good-- which will go up when I get to it. The same for the Happy Lit blog. I have two or three reviews to post at my new review blog. Otherwise I'll be taking a well-deserved break from all except "Mystery" and "Detroit." (Oh yes, I am living here full-time, but will likely move on when I can, leaving no forwarding address. Detroit is a landscape of misery, a vortex of negativity which drains all who fall into its path.)

Later. . . .

Allied Media

I stopped by the Allied Media Conference on the Wayne campus in Detroit Saturday, where I sat for a bit with Mr. Potter and Yul Tolbert at the ULA table. The ULA books presented there looked great. (I like the blue cover of Steve Kostecke's Wasted Angels.) I formed several new observations about the alternative press and its possibilities from my visit; too many to write about now.

A shout-out to everyone I met there!

(For more about Detroit, see my new post at www.detroitliterary.blogspot.com)

(p.s. I should be able to stop by the Peter Markus reading at MOCAD this Thursday in Detroit, 7 p.m., if anyone wants to meet me in the flesh.)

About PEN

ASKING QUESTIONS
I'd say both PEN and Paris Review are protected assets, vulnerable spots on the literary Beast, based on the reaction generated when asking questions about them, which is all I've been doing. The barriers of disinformation and demi-puppets surrounding them may be too much for me to overcome.

In a related topic, it's amazing to me how individuals like "Roody McDoody" and "Harland" ("Guildenstern" and "The Assassin") can be turned into absolute tools of established literary power.

PEN
PEN in its various manifestations is hard to assail, because it does much good work. Since its founding its purpose has been to propagate liberal Anglo-American values (democracy; freedom) around the planet-- values I agree with. The questions are two. First, whether these values are being realized in our own society, or in PEN itself. I say no. The second question is about the world context within which PEN has operated: the spread of Anglo-American financial and military power which has always seemed to accompany Anglo-American values. In other words, the spread of Empire, which was NOT a value upon which the American republic was founded. We seem to have fully adopted the redcoat, "BBC liberal" ideology against which the American Revolution stood opposed.

IF the American ideal has been perverted, this is a question well worth investigating. Frenzied opposition to the question is mere blowing of smoke.

Irony

IT'S IRONIC that the self-proclaimed fans and defenders of the poster "Harland" are insistent the person be outed. To avoid this is why the individual vanished. Curious that I'm the one left protecting the person.

Take note, harland. Your anonymity was to protect against my presumed retribution against you. This assumption on your part was misguided. Attacking you isn't what I want, which to you should be obvious.

Resentments

ANOTHER of the criticisms sent my way for trying to change literature is that I'm simply resentful. But resentful of what? Foppish, marginally talented plutocrats? That's like saying the sans-culottes were resentful of Louis XVI. Well, hell yeah, I'm resentful of what some people are doing to the art.

The problem is a structural situation which denies some writers access, and gives others every privilege and backing based on their connections and background. The American way.
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THE IRONY is that I've faced tons of resentment among the underground. It's no secret that I'm the biggest name and most dynamic personality in the literary underground. Since the ULA began, this has bothered many petty little egos. Every time I've leveraged my rep to gain press, from 2001 through 2007, backbiting and backstabbing have followed. Some of the perplexing incidents have included a local zeenster boycott of a Benefit concert I staged and hosted in Chicago in 2003, to an insistence I not be invited to an underground poetry reading at Swarthmore College near Philly a few years ago. My biggest opponents have been welcome to read at any event I've promoted. The reverse has not been the case. The reaction to the Chicago Benefit was particularly small-minded. If my worst enemy on the planet was available, I'm sure that person would've shown up, because it was a worthy cause. But not the petty egoists.

And so I get it from both sides; from the blackballing and roadblocks of the literary establishment and their lit-blogger demi-puppets; and at the same time from the writers I've been trying to help.

What are all these knives in me, you ask, front and back? From writers! The all-holy defenders of free speech themselves.

Pyramids

The Lefty mag The Nation devotes its June 30 issue to the topic of "Plutocracy Reborn." Much of the discussion is intent on proving points I've already made. On page 18, in fact, is a drawing of a pyramid which could also have illustrated my June 5 post, "Amazement." If the editors of this periodical have been reading this blog, that's a welcome sign.

What The Nation needs to do now is to put its professed ideals into practice inside their magazine. Instead of always recruiting millionaire boozhie authors like Barbara Ehrenreich to speak FOR working people, they should consider the possibility that there are many real-not-fake working people who are also writers and able to speak for themselves. (In contradiction to Keith Gessen's infamous remark in n+1 a while back that there were no writers working as waitresses.) That's the essence of democracy.

The Nation could also begin reviewing books by outsider writers-- such as titles from the ULA Press, or by Leopold McGinnis and others; writers with new viewpoints and with no connections whatsoever to the current plutocracy.

Katrina and Company: The ball's in your court. Let's do it!

Punchbowls

ANSWERING A CRITIC

1.) MONOMANIA
My blogs in their diversity are hardly those of a monomaniac. In my words and my actions I don't limit myself to being "just" a writer.

I'd say instead that the literary world suffers from monomania. Its focus is strictly on the work, and within the work, the sentence, and beyond this, on the self, while I examine literature within the broader context of the machine which produces it, and the civilization within which that machine is placed. This complex nation is a conjunction of systems, giant wheels of machinery which the writer must negotiate. To think that the production and presentation of the art happens by random accident is naive.

2.) WRITER
My fiercest critic has insisted I'm not a writer. I don't know then what all these words are on my blogs! Numerology? Needlepoint? Whittling?

Something I've written perhaps has strenuously exercised this person with dislike. Maybe that's the idea.

3.) PUNCHBOWLS
That I'm a person who puts his head into punchbowls at parties-- it's said-- must show I'm a mere exhibitionist. Is this so? Why then was I not such a performer through most of my life? In truth I'm a modest, fairly private person. I seldom if ever narcissistically obsess over my childhood, for instance, as seems required for writers of the workshop "literary" variety. No memoirs about driving out west (I've driven out west) as advertisement for the self have been forthcoming from me. What then is really happening?

Could the ULA's "crashes" have been a planned tactic? A way for shut out writers to address literature's caretakers directly, face-to-face, in order to recapture, in a monopolistic society, our democratic rights and freedoms? It's a possibility.

Great New Chapter

A new chapter of the fictional "Plutocracy USA" is now up at

www.literarymystery.blogspot.com

I hope the delay was worth it!

Import

The PEN American Center in New York appears to be a protected organization. I base this on how swiftly my blog about them was shut down.

Why is this? What's going on?

Looking at their stated causes, their targets like China and Iran, one can speculate that the organization is an extension of neo-con foreign policy. PEN has no hesitation in becoming an instrument of foreign policy. An example of this is the recent award to an Iranian-born author whose wealthy family fled the country during the Iranian revolution. Is a signal being sent with this award? Possibly. This at a time when certain ideologues have presented a case for bombing or invading Iran.

WE CAN HYPOTHESIZE that someone is using PEN in this way. I have no evidence to support this. None. I'm speculating.

But think of it. A literary organization with a spotlessly liberal veneer, supported by major literary names, whose stated purpose and indeed actions are right and just. There ARE writers abused in countries not under the American umbrella. What a tool such an organization could make. What an ideal "cutting edge"; cultural and ideological missionaries for the soldiers and conglomerate salesmen to follow.

I don't know if this is the case. Nobody does. With the literary world we seem to be forever in the dark.

We DO know that American literary journals and organizations were used this way in the past. The Paris Review/CIA revelation was one example. It's because of the PRESENT situation that we need the full truth from the Paris Review about CIA involvement in their founding; how far and long it extended. We've received to this question: silence.

We'll never comprehend the present if we're not allowed to understand the past.

To the Monitors

As my "PEN" blog was so quickly cut down, before I had a chance even to announce it, I have to speculate that someone is monitoring my on-line actions-- for reasons I'll soon speculate about.

What do I do about this?

The only solution I see is to convert the monitors-- first by reminding them that the ideas the undergrounders represent are fully in keeping with the DIY attitude which founded this nation. Any objections I make to "Imperialism" are the kind that George Washington himself would make-- not to mention Tom Paine. I see the underground literary movement as a way to renew our culture, and thereby America itself. A most worthy project.

(Stay tuned also to my idea blog, http://www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com/ )

Short-Term Objectives

IMAGINING THE IMPOSSIBLE

ONE reason my ambitious plans to transform literature haven't been realized, aside from a total lack of resources, is that I've been pushed to an isolated corner of the literary map through fear and blackballing. My expanding blog network will eventually break me out of this, but I hope to speed up things.

1.) The boycott of my blogs and their growing readership by the main establishment-oriented lit-blogs is senseless. Maud, for instance, links to every obscure lit-blog on the planet, including many defunct ones, but pretends this blog doesn't exist. Talk about a Cold War mentality! The result is to shut out the kind of radical new ideas which the stagnant lit-world badly needs. Readers should be urging them to reverse this.

2.) I seek adventurous allies willing to join a planned future new assault on the status quo lit-world. My move to Detroit has been a tactical retreat, that's all. After the tremendous noise made by the initial stage of the campaign, does anyone believe I'll not rework the strategy and put together another wave?

What's to be gained? Everything! For starters, the excitement of making literary history. With the right ideas and energy we can reinvent the art, in so doing multiplying its audience. Steps toward accomplishing this goal are being put into place. . . .

What I'd like to hear from readers isn't more of the "It can't be done" naysaying I've been bombarded with, but suggestions about what stories, poems, products, personalities will give lit a radically new look and attract a mass audience.

New Essay

I have a new essay going up shortly at

www.happyamericaliterature.blogspot.com

which attempts to further explain my ideas.
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FURTHER THOUGHTS
One subject I haven't examined in depth, is that of the Beats. To me they're not a model, only an influence. Or, if anything, a negative model, in that I'm trying to understand where they went off track.

To me, the Beats were typified not by co-opted Ginsberg in the academy, but Kerouac drinking himself to death in disgust in Florida. Or maybe, as M. Grover keeps pointing out, typified by poet Bob Kaufman.

Why did the movement fizzle out so quickly? I don't know. I know that mainstream lit then was more vibrant and vital than it is today. I know that Ginsberg was obviously the wrong figure to appeal to proletarians; to the mass public. Ginsberg, like an Eggers or Gessen, wanted to appeal to intellectuals; Kerouac to the people. I know that Kerouac was thoroughly disillusioned with the bourgeois "counter-culture" direction of the Sixties. Maybe because he wanted what he was doing to BE the culture; to be the mainstream; populist at its core, to appeal to everybody.
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There's also the factor of course that his quick fame took him far out of his comfort zone, and he couldn't handle it, so he retreated. A shame, because if he'd kept his head, he was the movement's proper leader.

The ULA faced a little of this when its three intended original "stars" all fled into hiding; in their own ways, as far as possible from any media attention. Unfortunately, however, the mass media exists, and has to be addressed or manipulated if new ideas are to surface in any way. How to do this and retain one's integrity remains the dilemma.
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I want to reaffirm here that I've never claimed myself as nothing more than a precursor, at best, to literary change. That's the role characters like Frank Walsh, Tom Hendricks, and myself are playing-- voices in the wilderness trying to show the way, and open the door to literary revolution ever so slightly. The eventual success of the movement will depend on those who follow-- on new voices, with attitude, like Eric Broomfield's. They'll need the attitude we carry-- which we carry maybe because we came of age immediately post-Sixties, during a window of time when there seemed to exist all possibilities-- possibilities which for the younger generation today don't seem to remain, so that so many of them are entrenched in their own pessimism and timidity.

Misguided

MISGUIDED is someone who'd claim to have "shredded" my arguments; to think it a worthwhile goal to shred the arguments of one of the only persons thinking ahead of where American literature is now.

Misguided is to wring your hands over my contentious ballyhoo, for being "too mean," which shows a prim reluctance for lit to make the kind of cultural noise being made in other cultural activities on a daily basis from sports to movies to music in this country. If some individuals refuse to review underground books because one underground promoter is too loud or too mean, then they shouldn't be reviewing anything. Apply the same logic to a rock critic or movie reviewer and you'll see the absurdity of their misguided thinking-- absurdity times ten, because if any art form needs noise of every kind it's the sleepy world of literature.

I don't worry about upsetting a handful of tepid book reviewers because I know they're not reaching anybody anyhow. The potential and future audience for reading given the right promotion and the right products is ten times greater than literature's audience now. Given a choice, I'll take that future, ten out of ten times over the status quo.

Writers today are modeling themselves after the likes of Jonathan Lethem and Jeffrey Eugenides. I could give Lethem's last book full of nicely crafted prose that says nothing and goes nowhere to a non-lit person and the person would never connect with it. The novel is intended for the insular literary world itself. The status quo Volvo is stopped at an amber-light road barrier with emergency lights flashing. It's time to roar past it.

Lit needs a little less Mozart string quartet and a lot more MC5 "Kick Out the Jams." I've sought to provide that. You can have your fine musicianship. I'm looking for relentless thundering noise.

Imagining the Future

SOMEONE has said that I lack imagination. Nothing could be further from the truth. Who else but myself has imagined an entirely new and renewed literature?

What American literature lacks today in its totality is a sense of excitement. To create this excitement, we'll need exciting happenings, exciting works, and exciting stars. This is the path that was taken by the underground in the form of the ULA, and which needs to be taken again with increased vigor. Already, the various segments of the underground have produced novels with better writing (Larry Richette's), more entertainment (Wred Fright's) and more social relevance (James Nowlan's) than the tame offerings from the conglomerate mainstream. Our shows have been unspeakably wild.

On the other side of the room stand the cliquesters of the status quo "mainstream," tightly clutching their books, laptops, and Guggenheims lest anyone take them away. "We're entitled!" they claim. And, yes, they are very literary, these proper persons, no question about it. In their way, they love writing. In a quiet way they're even able to convey this. Francine Prose wrote an entire quiet book affirming how to quietly write and how to quietly read, without once raising her voice.

That's the problem! Literary writing and reading has regressed to a hard-core upper-middle class isolated in their plush condos or homes with Fluffy the cat sleeping on their laps and pristine books whose pages turn carefully to be placed in preserved condition back on the shelf or coffee table as if in a monastery. "Lions, Harts, Leaping Does." Well and fine, for them, but they've detached the art from human society.

Displace this crowd? Why not ? WHY NOT?!! Push them aside if they refuse to move. Shove them into the wings. They've had their turn, these proper beings. Allow please a more exciting variety of poet and writer to stand at the front of the stage.

Gaitskill Appearance

GOOD to see The New Yorker carry a story by Mary Gaitskill. Still, to me Gaitskill is a tale of unrealized potential; of the controlling influence of the corporation and the academy. Her stories, as excellent as they are, have always struck me as too controlled, like other literary stories, as if her art has been kept on a leash. Probably I was too influenced as a reader in the 90's by riot-grrrl zeens, which were full of literary "raw power" unlike any writing ever seen. They were crude affairs mostly, but captured the tough emotion of a Gaitskill and multiplied it by ten or twenty. Jen Gogglebox and Ammi Emergency are only two names I can recall from a score of great young women writers from that period; including the ULA's original "Zeen Elvis," who in pure explosive writing talent represented the fulfillment of what Mary Gaitskill hinted at. Talent that burned the page.

Gaitskill's story as a writer is a tragedy, in a way. Like a stray cat picked up from the streets; given shots, cleaned-up, and other things so to be properly domesticated. That's what I think of when I read her stories. "Look what we've done to her," the well-crafted writing says-- but I prefer the "before" kind of story; the fully uninhibited fully lusty and bloody voice of the streets.