Reform or Rebellion?

Events in Egypt show what happens when a monolithic, corrupt system fails to reform itself. Eventually, the mass of people not being served by the system have enough of it.

Fear of an Idea

When I look back upon the history of the Underground Literary Alliance, especially my last year driving the outfit, 2007, I'm struck by how much fear such a small and powerless band of outcasts generated among those who hold the power in the lit world. You'd think they'd be secure with their institutional standing, their positions, the articles by and about themselves in the leading publications of American culture, their access to money, funding, and attention. But no! They were like an elephant in the presence of a mouse. That someone dared to criticize their premises, their corrupt behavior, and their preciously fragile art sent them into shatterings of confidence. Which in itself is an indication of the shaky state of literature now.

When the ULA did some street theater outside the New Yorker building in Manhattan in January of that year, waves of panic were regenerated. Billionaire aristocrats jumped on my blog to discredit me, and instead, on what remains this blog's most widely read thread, were royally trounced. What was left of the ULA lived in abject poverty, yet signs of panic among the literary intelligentsia and their interpreters and acolytes were everywhere. The foreword to the Black Book Anthology worried over what I thought of the mag's posings. When I was interviewed by an NPR commentator here in Philly, she expressed worry that this nowhere group called the ULA would somehow exclude multi-millionaire authors published and promoted by billion-dollar media conglomerates. This in 2007 when the ULA campaign was for the most part over.

What was the ULA's power?

Nothing more than the power of an idea, the reality of a few writers not going along with the program. The stance alone gave us enormous integrity and leverage which, clearly, the literary establishment couldn't deal with. The elephant desperately sought to stomp out the tiny mouse.

Aristocrat panic is caused by the inner knowledge of living within a tottering structure able at any moment, with the tiniest push or puff of wind, to collapse. This anyway is the message I got from the experience and history of the Underground Literary Alliance.

The Primordial Swamp

OCCASIONALLY I drop onto one of the post-ULA underground forums out there, founded by ex-ULAers in the wake of the ULA’s literary rebellion. They’re a giant step backward, because they did away with that which was most crucial to the ULA’s noisemaking, the sense of an organized identity, a semi-cohesive unit confronting the established literary world with the stance of an outspoken equal. The literary underground today resembles a primordial swamp of thousands of random molecules bouncing about aimlessly, each going its own way, happy to exist at the lowest level of activity. The Rebellion was an attempt to climb out of the swamp. For a few years several of the molecules began moving as one in one direction. We believed that progress was possible. That it was necessary to escape from the swamp. We climbed briefly onto dry land before falling back into the aimless mess.

Pop Songwriters

Just as the best recordings of Bob Dylan’s songs were done by others, many of the best versions of Lennon-McCartney songs were covers.

Here are three to consider:

“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” recorded by The Silkies.

“Yesterday,” recorded by Elvis Presley.

“Dear Prudence,” recorded by Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Are there others?

Why Are They Talking?

Why is everyone talking this morning about football teams and football players-- about a completely unnecessary, made-up game?

Because of fifty years of an exciting product, astute branding, and dynamic marketing.

Being Honest

One of the major problems about American literature today is the refusal to be honest about it. By honest, I mean admitting that most writing today is very bad. It’s shit. You can’t compete unless you admit this fact, because otherwise you’re unprepared to rectify it. In the Underground Literary Alliance we were at least honest with our slogan, “Our Bad Writers Are Better Than Your Bad Writers.” Not a good slogan to run with, no. But it was essentially true. We were at least more interesting, and energetic, than the generic Franzens Lethems Lorrie Moores et.al. of the established bourgie literary world.

Try to get this point across to writers. Impossible! They’re all legends inside their own heads. There’s very little writing today that stands out, that in any way rocks. This applies across the gamut, from stories to poetry to novels; particularly in the first two genres. If a writer does show sparks of talent—think early Gaitskill—the system quickly enough strangles that talent as if it were an accidentally born baby in an abortion clinic.

Every writer in America produces his own vehicle with no thought to the audience, like producing an automobile with each of the four tires pointing in a different direction, misaligned axles, a dull gray paint job, and a motor that won’t start. They’re fit for the writer’s basement, but not to ever be sold. Curiously enough, the individualistically ugly cars all look similar.

THE LITERARY AUTOMOBILE OR WRESTLING CARD

Literary writers invariably inescapably disdain “the market.” Ugh! The market! Everything wrong with literature today, in their thinking, is “the market.”

What if other fields had this attitude? Fossilized Motors produces aforementioned automobiles unfit for driving anywhere. You point out the vehicle’s flaws. “The market!” they begin screaming. “Is all you care about the market?!”

An esteemed wrestling promoter—no, not Wred Fright—decides to present a proper wrestling card with “proper” wrestlers. No hype, no personalities, no masks, no caricatures. Not one of the contestants stands out. Two grapplers begin grappling in the proper, rule-followed mode. Which means getting one another in a regulated hold—and holding it for hours. “This is art,” the promoter complacently states. Meanwhile, in the arena behind him the audience escapes.

The Underground Problem

The underground problem is a refusal of those shut out of the current literary system to see themselves as undergrounders. As a result, they're unable to work together at promoting the underground as a viable alternative to the status quo. It's always each individual working to promote the self-- and so no one goes anywhere.

The trick is finding the proper balance between individualism and cooperation. A neat trick to pull off. Still, if even two individuals begin to cooperate toward a common goal, energy is created. It's a blueprint for changing the (literary) world.

Zen

Zen Buddhism has become too big an influence on today's writers. They're all laid-back, relaxed, and satisfied. They're so relaxed they're comatose.

Give me writers who aren't satisfied.

It’s All Promotion, Folks!

WRITERS need to stop being children and get a clue about modern human society. Do you think those stacks of excruciatingly dull Jonathan Franzen novels in chain bookstores, product of a third-rate personality and a second-rate mind, would’ve moved at all if not for Himalayan mountains of hype? That Time magazine cover was an advertisement. The entire magazine, and every article in it, is an advertisement for something; chiefly for the global corporate machine and the political systems which sustain, and are sustained by, the machine. Movies, politics, books—all part of the machine in some way, as are the glorified hypemaster “journalists” writing about these happenings. It’s all advertising. Hype.

Those seeking to compete with the machine need to understand the game.

ebooks

Article after article posit ebooks has the future of publishing. They’re being hyped as a boon for writers. More writers will achieve publication. But as with so much in the universe, the actual result for writers will be the opposite of what’s claimed, because it will be the kind of publication that’s worthless. The mass of writers to choose from will grow even more enormous. Frankly, it won’t matter to most writers, who wish the illusion of success as writers instead of the actuality. It will not be micro-marketing, as we see now, but micro-micro-marketing. As long as writers have something of theirs to be found somewhere, in order to tell Aunt Helen and Uncle Fred at the family picnic, along with a Facebook profile, they’re happy enough.

For anything more than this, promotion takes on more importance. With an overcrowded field, promotion becomes all.

Mediocrity

ONE ENCOUNTERS mediocrity at every level of the literary realm, from high to low. I define mediocrity as not just resistance to change, but resistance to the very idea of change. Those who end up inhibiting or stopping the progress of an art or project are those individuals most comfortable in their own stagnancy: their own mediocrity.

The vast majority of those who today consider themselves, or pass themselves off as, creative writers, are folks without a microgram of imagination or creativity. The literary art has become so mediocre that the image of a writer today is the opposite of a picture of charisma and excitement. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kerouac are long departed. The image of a writer today is the image of a mediocrity, and so the field attracts the like-minded.

If you step too far outside the acceptable bounds of the mediocre personality, as I surely did, then you face hostility and denunciation. This happened eventually even within the Underground Literary Alliance. The engine in the ULA’s souped-up car was making too much noise, so the ULA’s mechanics removed the engine.

Experiments in POP

IT MAKES ALL SENSE for writers of any type to begin experimenting in what I call "pop" fiction. Fiction designed to be popular, populist, and at the same time, very much intended to be art.

Write your literary stories 90% of the time. But also try your hand at pop. Do it, and if it's in any way pop I'll post it at my American Pop Lit blog, which is a blog devoted not to the ultimate, "serious" literary product-- but to experiments at POP.

This is what I've been posting there myself. Yes, much of it might be considered to be bad writing. The tales break many of today's literary rules. When you're creating something new, you're going to be bad at it until you become good-- until you get to the finished point which exists now only as an ideal within your head. You need to imagine the ideal, then try to produce it.

Think of creating an entirely new kind of automobile. Your first prototypes likely won't run-- or they won't run the way you want them to run. This is fine as long as each attempt gets you closer to the goal. It might take a hundred attempts-- or a thousand. At the end of the line awaits the produced vision, the revolutionary answer to sweep the board of the status quo.

This is what the progress of art has ever been about.
**************************************
THE BABE RUTH EXAMPLE
The most profound thing baseball player Ty Cobb ever said was his insight into why and how Babe Ruth was able to revolutionize the sport. A sport at which, before the Babe appeared, Cobb had been dominant. Cobb exemplified the dead ball era, when precision and control when hitting the ball was the norm.

Babe Ruth was a pitcher. It didn't matter if he made hits or not. He was presumed to be an out.

Having no pressure on himself, Babe Ruth began experimenting with his batting swing. He didn't take himself too seriously. He didn't care if he struck out, or looked foolish while doing so. He didn't have the vanity and self-importance of a Ty Cobb.

To amuse himself, Ruth began swinging as hard as he possibly could to see how far he could hit the era's rock of a baseball. Often he swung so hard he fell down. Other times he hit the ball farther than anyone before him ever had. The crowds took notice, as did the lords of the sport. The game was transformed. Its popularity, along with the popularity of Ruth, skyrocketed.

What's the lesson for writers?

You can't be afraid of looking foolish.

Intellect-- or Soul?

What the best popular novels-- think the books of Michael Crichton-- have in common with postmodern novels is that the focus, the viewpoint, is on and from the intellect. It's what makes them, in both cases, artistically unsatisfying. Which makes them ultimately dead.

Not that some emotion on occasion isn't stirred. The writing of David Foster Wallace, for instance, seems to generate a certain empathy from a narrow circle of readers. It's the kind of emotion felt for the android in the movie "Blade Runner."

Literature will become great only when it stirs again great emotion-- when it reaches deep, as great art reaches deep, into our very souls. That should be the goal.

Pop Story Rerelease

Now up at "POP," the return of "Strange Mummer Creatures of Philadelphia," in celebration of the New Year's holiday.
www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com

Still to come: the concluding chapters of th Big Boy Saga.

The Plot Intensifies!

Chapter Eight of the Big Boy Saga, "The Lovers," is now up at
www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com

Two chapters to go! Next: "Killtown USA." Not to be missed!

"True Grit" Review

See my thoughts about the new Coen brothers flick, "True Grit," at
www.elcidproject.blogspot.com/2010/12/kind-of-movie-review.html

About POP Fiction

LINER NOTES 

Call it Art Pop or Neo Pop, Power Pop or Neo Pulp. A handful of writers in America are trailblazing a new direction for the literary scene. Imagine! Exciting new writing. Not standard popular fiction, and not standard “literary,” but something better, something more. Old fashioned raw and gritty zeen writing with a brass section and an added beat. In the final chapters of my novella which doesn’t have a title but which I describe as the Big Boy Saga, I intend to take fiction into a new place. This will be on the remaining cuts on my pop album. (Ten chapters altogether.) Have a view. Take a listen.

www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com

Chapter Six: “The Trap”

Chapter Seven: “The Armory”

Confidence Men

Reading about the snowstorms in Britain and Europe, I thought again about the man-made global warming hoax. Why have so many otherwise intelligent people bought into it? Likely because of the boldness. It's in the tradition of a couple confidence men who were around in the 1930s, early postmodernists, who said that people are more likely to believe a lie if it's a very big one. Global Warming theory is such a large, dramatic concept, that most people accept that it must be so.

A few moments of thought should dispel that. Computer models "prove" the theory. I'd like the same computers to pick a Super Bowl winner. Even in a very controlled situation, like a horse race, where most of the variables can be quantified-- weights and speeds, history, track conditions-- it's difficult if not impossible to be consistently correct in the analysis. How much more difficult with climate, where you're facing infinitely more variables. Scientists are dealing with a mere two hundred years of semi-reliable recorded weather statistics, out of millions of years of climate on this planet. Very tough to credibly determine any cycles or patterns, which are the most likely explanation for modest warming. Scientists also focus on one variable-- co2-- out of thousands. Not the largest variable either. (See the sun.)

What was P.T. Barnum's quote? No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Another Chapter!

Yes, the latest part of the Big Boy Saga, "The Trap," is up at

www.americanpoplit.blogspot.com

Who will win the now-unleashed gang war? Maxwell aka "Big Boy"? The malicious but well-loved Fake Face? The District Attorney? Sal the Hood? Jake Pol?

Exciting chaotically colorful chapters are yet to come.

Worst Christmas Songs?

In the post below I stated my two favorite Christmas songs. I could add to those anything by Mario Lanza-- the greatest voice ever-- and anything related to Snoopy, from the entire Vince Guaraldi "Peanuts" Christmas repertoire to "Snoopy's Christmas" by the Royal Guardsmen, a true holiday classic.

But what are the worst Christmas songs? Nominees abound. There are good bad songs, like Dylan's, and then there are songs which are simply bad. Among the latter put Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," a typical pretentious Bruce shoutathon; the Burl Ives version of "Twelve Days of Christmas," which seems to last an entire twelve days; and, well, 95% of what you hear in a shopping mall. What I loathe the most though are the Elvis Presley Christmas songs which have been layered over with the voices of bad contemporary female country singers. It results in mangled Frankenstein monsters, mistmatched sounds, and shows that, whatever Presley was, he wasn't really a country singer. (A hillbilly yodeler at Sun, maybe, but that's not the same as the generic corporate pop country music of now.)

Anyone else have Worst Christmas Song candidates? Surely by now others must also be cringing from the omnipresent onslaught of recorded garbage.