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At the Risk of Waking the Sleeping Idiotbeast...

Remember those U*L*A guys? (I put the asterisks in because they routinely google themselves and they're like all vermin, hard to get rid of.) Well, normally I would let them rot in the purgatory of their little fedora-wearing, nerds-turned-badass world, but I thought this blog piece about them and their "methods" was quite articulate, if somewhat late on the scene. (From TEV)



Home

wines or whines?

We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now!

Thanks, Mads.

Sigh. I'm finding this whole ULA discussion rather tedious. "Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;" must it continue? Let's go back to talking about Withnail. Then the fucker will rue the day!

I'm just getting caught up on this discussion, but it seems to me, judging from the link Killer has posted below, that this King Wenclas person is deluded in his righteousness.

It seems to me his philosophy is rather basic: established values should be questioned, and those who hold power should be held accountable. There’s nothing objectionable there. It’s just Political Consciousness 101 as far as I can tell. Bookninja.com offers its fair share of iconoclastic material as well (Paul Vermeersch trying to turn the solemn Governor General’s awards into a glamorous awards show, for example, or Bookninja’s unrelenting attacks on The Walrus magazine), and if it weren’t for all the childish sloganeering at other people’s parties and pelting people with fruit at commencement ceremonies and such, I’m sure he’d have more support here. But what he doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s the methods of the ULA, not its message, that draws all the ridicule and scorn.

Yes, I knew some lurking Withnail fan was going to get me on that. Nevertheless, Wenclas is making a clear reference to the struggles of under-privileged British actors in Clapham Common at the end of the sixties. Brilliant, really.

Hey, look what I found on the ULA site, dated just after our big squabble. I think we hurt his feelings:

http://outyourbackdoor.com/ULA/letters/letters.12.8.03.htm

Why doesn't he realize we mock out of love, not hatred? Right, we'll have to work quickly. A pair of quadruple whiskeys and another pair of pints.

Edited by author 12-30-2003 03:21 PM
killer, it's arses. As in

"I could hardly piss straight with fear. Here was a man with three quarters of an inch of brain who'd taken a dislike to me. What had I done to offend him? I don't consciously offend big men like this. This one has a definite imbalance of hormone in him. Get any more masculine than him and you'd have to live up a tree. "I fuck arses". Who fucks arses? Maybe he fucks arses. Maybe he's written this in some moment of drunken sincerity. I'm in considerable danger in here. I must get out of here at once."

See, now that's what I'm talking about. Who wouldn't love and respect a movement whose leaders can write such clear, inspirational prose?

"You guys are all fucking assholes."

The subtle reference to "Withnail & I" is clever, (you know, early on, the pub-scene where "I" is called a ponce on his way to the washroom, and while pissing reads the graffiti "I fuck assholes.") taking us out of what appears initially as just a childish, childish, brainless taunt, and really making the most of those six words.

Not only can "you guys" (I assume he doesn't mean me, since he doesn't know my gender) now be defined as assholes, and assholes engaged in the process of fucking, you can also be considered to be just guys who, while not assholes yourselves, do seem to enjoy fucking assholes. The one criticism I would make is the use of the modifier "all." I'm not sure "all" is doing what King wants it to do. As it is written, the word seems to imply that each and every one of the defined group "you guys" enjoys fucking assholes or is the same, while a more effective attack would be to reduce "you guys" to that definition alone -- in other words "All you guys are, are fucking assholes." Or better, "You guys are only fucking assholes." -- now that's going somewhere. That's got some momentum.

But let's not nitpick during this festive season. I am willing to consider "You guys are all fucking assholes" as one of the ten best American novels of 2003. Please discuss.

Edited by author 12-30-2003 02:27 AM
Pot...Kettle....

From the Article: "They interrupted literary readings with chants and slogans. They ranted on the phone to George Plimtpon's secretary that the Paris Review was a fraud. They threw orange slices at John Irving during his commencement speech at Mary Hale College in Laconia, New Hampshire."

You should be embarrassed. These are the tactics of the infantile and untalented, bud. Jealous tantrums, that's all. You might think you're a band of blood-soaked Carries getting your revenge at the prom of "the New York elite" (to borrow from another King), but from the outside looking in, it looks pretty pathetic.

So, what? Success has eluded you? To protest this you head out like the Al Qeada of book launches (or would Trench Coat Mafia be more fitting?) to piss on other people's fun? What the hell? Grow up. You wanna be a writer? Stop chanting and throwing shit at people and fucking write something. You want success? Write really well and wait for it, sometimes it takes a while. You just want the notoriety of being an annoying gadfly in the footnotes of literary failure? Keep up the good work, your majesty, because you just might go down in history as a big fat nobody who went down kicking and screaming into the abyss of forgettable, punk-ass insignificance.

You guys are all fucking assholes.

[At the risk of firing this up again....]

Haw Haw

Funny bit on those ULA losers (LOL* MaudNewton).



Home

I got McMugged in Windsor for my nuggets once. Or was that mugged in Windsor for my McNug...

Anyway, Windsor gets my vote for big, bad, dirty, ugly city.

I used to live in Ottawa too. A veritable snake-pit. I got rolled by a gang of hoods for my beaver-tail once.

Oh, sorry. Was someone saying something? I was drinking a martini and reading The Corrections.

ninja, you can ssshush me, but I've lived in Ottawa, which makes Detroit look like an ornamental duck pond. I will not be silenced! Wait, I've lost interest. Nevermind.

I just read this entire thing from start to finish because the G&M book section is full of children's books today. I realize it's over now (go home boys, nothing to see here) but I dream of the day an American, instead of raging at his own government for what they have done to to world, instead turns outward and quietly apologizes. Right about at the words "I'm sorry" I'd start to listen to what that man had to say.

Grr [twitch twitch] whimper

I want that pudding pop.

Pete! Shhh!

He did have a point about the litzines though.

Thanks for the goodbye, King! Fight the Power! 911's a joke! Fear of a Black (turtle-necked) Planet!

(Guys, gals... please just let him go now. I know, I know, the fun part has been making fun of them, but let's move on. It's like talking to a religious zealot on a street corner, fun at first, for the kitsch value, but eventually eye-rollingly tedious. They have their world, and it's cool for them and, more importantly, it keeps them out of ours.

Zed, breathe deep and go lay on your mat by the door. Killer, sshhh. FK, here is a pudding pop. Shhh. Shhh. Sleep my little ninjas, sleeeeeep.)

Ah, such brave souls! Waiting until the person has left to speak. Reminds me of the last reading the ULA "crashed" in NYC, when we entered the home turf of literati we'd contended with on-line and in print for months-- there were 300 of them, and all five of us-- and in person they could say hardly a word. (Though drunken lit darling Tom Beller followed us outside and got in a wrestling match with the ULA's Leah Smith-- all 5 foot 2 of her, I don't know what that is in centimeters; but she's from Detroit and is tough.) I'd bet the crowd we'd tried to debate with inside had a lot to say-- after we'd left!
You'll find this hard to believe, but in my country there is actually more than one lit site, more than one forum to go on, and so when I do go on-line, I hop around to those places where I can be most effective. Makes sense, doesn't it? When the host here told me he wasn't interested in the ULA, that he was yawning, and that this was merely a little corner not to be disturbed, I took him at his word. If I had seen a couple posts added, I wouldn't have dropped back in. But, twenty? I guess we're not quite as boring as he said.
I don't know if I'm on my high horse-- maybe I am-- but there seem to be high horses all around on this forum. The condescension you show would be amazing, if I wasn't already used to it from others. You make a lot of assumptions without knowing anything about me and the ULA.
A little essay of mine up on our fan site wins someone's approval. Very generous of you. I'll have to print out your remarks to show everyone. The fact though, is, that the essay is up there only because it's short. I've written much better essays and stories than that. As I've implied, I have a track record of sorts as a writer. My newsletter in the 90's was subscribed to by many of the best young writers in the U.S., including by Mr. Franzen (maybe someone was taking ideas from someone). Plimpton and Company also were paying subscribers-- that he knew me was how I got him to debate. And as I've said, I was published in several prestigious literary journals. And yet, I've never received a nibble from a conglomerate. That's not a lie. But I'm not alone in that situation. A better writer than I am, Fred Woodworth of Tucson, has never been touched. A possible reason is that his novel, Dream World, tells the truth about life in America today, and the monopolies don't want to hear this, unless it comes in a watered-down version from someone like Jonathan Franzen.
I'm also lectured about protest from you folks, and given the example of the WTO. Which is funny, because several ULAers were involved in the WTO protests. One, Michael Grover, was beaten and jailed. As for myself, I'm from Detroit, as are other ULA founders, and to survive there one needs to be in constant protest against the world. (These, of course, are things I've written about.) It's not really a polite city. I've been to Canada many times, and as Canadians who live in Windsor know, the two cities are completely different worlds.
I'm not here to give you my resume, but I was a union steward in the past on a job; I've been involved in walkouts and strikes; I've seen strikers heads busted. I know all about protest. I realized, at some point, that most dissent in my country is stifled (even Ralph Nader wasn't allowed into the Presidential debates-- as a spectator!) We in the ULA naively thought we'd influence our society with a Trojan Horse approach, through literature.
Which of you suggested that ULAers form a group and we all publish ourselves? Great suggestion-- except that's exactly what we're doing. Merely printing one's own writings, however, isn't enough. One needs to get the word out. That's what the ULA has been trying to do-- and which is why I sometimes waste my time on forums such as this one.
Lastly, I meant what I said when I used the word "independence" instead of "sovereignity." There are a lot of countries in this world who have their sovereignity, yet are controlled by the United States. Most of them, I'd say. The American Empire is a little more subtle than empires of the past. It doesn't need to take formal political control of a nation, when it can own its banks, its businesses, and its media,; can control the circulation of goods and services and control even the information that goes into individuals' heads. The fanatics fighting the U.S. in the Mideast know this-- they don't want our fast food chains and our mindless TV shows. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know; I'm aware of that.
So long. It's been real.

"I rilly hate the phony democracy. The people in St. Jude pretend they're all alike. It's all very nice. Nice, nice, nice. But the people are not all alike. Not at all. There are class differences, there are race differences, there are enormous and decisive economic differences, and yet nobody's honest in this case. Everybody pretends! Have you noticed this?"
                           -- The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

... now I see where King and the ULA boys are getting their view of America and the world. From those bastard, emotionally vacant, out of touch millionaire novelists.

ZING!

Oh crap, there's nothing worse than really zinging someone and then watching as they don't even realize they've been zinged.

King, if you haven't completely taken your hockey net and gone home, it's time to open your eyes a little bit from that permanent scowl you've got going (I've seen your picture on the website, pretty boy) and recognize that you are among friends.

Do I think all anti-establishment protest is high school behaviour? No, the folks who get beaten down and shot with rubber bullets at WTO meetings are not silly. The folks in Central American prisons and mass graves are not silly. You, on the other hand, are silly. You know you're silly -- at least you should -- so why not drop the pose and hang out awhile?

Do you really think you need to lecture us about the need for protest in the world today, and about the Harvard-industrial-complex that is the American writing world? We're a bunch of Canadian poets fer Christ's sake. We have to walk 200 kilometers (that's like a thousand miles, man) in snowshoes before we can catch a bus to take us to the plane that will fly us to New York , in order to have the door shut in our faces at FSG.

And thanks for the heads up on Canada's "independence," which we call "sovereignty." I for one have been completely out to lunch the last few years. You say there's been a war recently?

The way off the high horse is down, King, down.

I've read some of your stuff. That story about working on the Windsor/Detroit bridge is really good, but I don't think so because of the political view it reflects (which I share). I like it because it is effective writing. You're telling me if you sat on your ass a bit more, wrote a collection like that and fished it around Manhattan you wouldn't get a single bite? That's a lie you're telling yourself brother. But if you do have trouble landing a contract in New York, try Toronto, or do what disaffected Canadian writers do -- get a bunch of folks together, start a press and get the word out that way.

Your behaviour (Canadian spelling) on this site makes me even more suspicious than I already was about your claim to have kicked Plimpton's ass. I'd love to see a transcript of the evening. My guess is you guys were loud and obnoxious, interrupted at every opportunity and stomped out of the place loudly declaring victory while the audience and your "opponents" simply shook their heads, ordered another martini and forgot you even existed.

In Canada, we look for protest to have some real impact, and are embarassed by it when it so obviously serves merely to advertise its participants. We also stick around to finish the debate, even once we start losing.

My world is turned upside down. And to think I almost had evilninja killed. What a disservice to the world of poetry that would have been....

I must regroup.

John MacKenzie? evilninja? You slay me.

Edited by author 12-05-2003 04:36 AM
And the performance-enhancing substances, John, don't forget them! It's all about the Andro, man :) Like they say in the Dominican Republic: ya can't walk off the island, eh.

I'd have more sympathy for the platform if "bourgeois" weren't such a goddam cliché. It's hard to say it without sounding like some super-earnest turtleneck-wearing Marxist, especially if you drop the "r", as so many Yankees doodle.

King, I actually sympathize with some of your platform but I ain't much for fanaticism in groups. Personally, I care about as much for how much established writers make as I do about how much baseball players such as Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez make. What I care about is the quality of their production. If I want into the big leagues, I'm gonna have to hit my way in. At my desk, or at the plate I've got to put in the time and work it takes.

A flash mob is more like it.

A cabal? :)

Um, what the hell are we?

I think we can safely draw the conclusion "Literary clubs are bad be they wealthy or poor" from all this, yes?

More often than not, "DIY" looks an awful like "No one else will publish my stuff". There's a fine line between raging against the machine and just so much jealous feet stamping by pretenders to the throne with more thwarted-ambitions than passable talent.

But Wenclas is right about McSweeney's and the staggering genius at its helm. So much pompous, self-aggrandizing pretence.

I guess I don't like anything.

Reminds me of the late Ted Plantos' editorial whines against "Can Litter" and the academic establishment in his People's Poetry Letter. So much misdirected anger and energy. So boring.

Edited by author 12-04-2003 10:41 PM
Saber rattling at the literary establishment just becomes so tedious. The rhetoric reminds me of the spoken word Gulag that became Montreal, in the 1990's, where every angry young man or woman with an axe to grind began to write silly angry poems on the back of cocktail napkins. I think Vehicule even enshrined the 'movement' in a book when really it was just a bunch of kids meeting in cafes, reading poems (which, in itself, is quite admirable)while keeping poetry score-cards of "Who's Hot, Who's Not". Silly. It was not an inviting enviroment for serious aspiring young poets and there were very few of us.

Manners and tact? Speak for yourself :)

Edited by author 12-04-2003 08:45 PM
P.S. King, I know yer peeking -- you're welcome to stay, as is anyone (just ask our resident troublemaker GG Giller:), if you stop assuming we're the enemy and you're better than us. It's a damn nasty way to come off and I think it hurts your cause. Holier-than-though is as Holier-than-thou does... as you Yanks say, Gump.

We're actually like a version of you, but with manners and tact. Come to think of it, that's kind of a microcosm for our two countries, init?

What about Skinny Puppy!? Chainsaw!

Never heard Linkin Park. Guess I'm not cool anymore. I was into Metallica, Pantera and Ministry when I was a teenager. They make Nirvana look like a bunch of greasy whiners.

You know, Zed, I've learned something about myself from all this: contrary to an earlier post in which I said no band needs to be angrier than Nirvana was, I am starting to dig Linkin Park. It's like they travelled back in time to read my teenaged mind!

Well, now that KW is gone, Ninja, I'd just like to say that I liked the 9/11 commentary you did on CBC as well as your work with Poets Against the War.

Just in case KW is still lurking out there, I did some research into the guy who's publishing my book and I was shocked to find out that his name is Michael. And I'm not sure, but I think he's hoping to not lose money on it. I can't believe I was so blind!

Available on Amazon, eh? Way to keep it real, Philip Routh (if that is your real name). Think I'll read Nostromo instead, thanks.

Missed the punk train? God, are you clueless. You seem to think protest is only a pose or a style. It's obvious you know little about the world you live in, and don't want to know.
Such writers, so prevalent everyplace, are a big reason for the irrelevance of literature lately. I call them house cat writers, content to give the same impressions an animal would in their works-- describing the furniture and the lights, or the effect of a breeze against their sensibilities-- while making no effort to understand the world they exist in and how it operates.
Yes, the great dream of a writer scribbling away at his desk. A nice image. Except that no writer exists in a vacuum, without context. I would suppose that most of your readers hope to be published someday, or have their writings read by people in some way. Who, then, will publish them? Do they really not care to know who publishes books, what the companies are, what they're like, how the game is played? The writer who doesn't know something about this will see his writings end up in a wastebasket. Phillip Routh, a very talented novelist the ULA has been trying to help, addresses the question of the lone writer at his desk in his novel The Camellia City (available on Amazon, I believe, and well worth the price). He makes a convincing argument that even great writers can exist, and die, unrecognized, unknown, unmourned. Talent, alas, is not enough, not in this day and age.
Anyway, sorry for disturbing your little corner. I guess I opened a door to the outside world and this disturbed you. Yes, I handle publicity for the ULA (my job is to get attention for overlooked writers-- always looking for some good ones, you know) and to build the ULA name. Toward that end, I do check up once a month or so on the attention the ULA is receiving. I didn't know, when you put the ULA up as a topic, that you weren't being serious; that you saw it as a quick way to make a few cute remarks, about vanity or such, without knowing what we're about, and plainly, not caring what we're about. You clearly don't welcome debate, you're content to exist within your unknowing smugness, and so I'll say good bye and good evening and move on to other arenas.

I'm just impressed you got Fish Fish to post more than one line.

But I do have one thing to say: yaaaaawwwnnnn. All this anti-dis-in-enstablish-mental-artarian-ista-ism smacks of having missed the punk train in the late seventies. Couldn't you just listen to Linkin Park or something?

I think Zed said something important: Get it right at your desk, where it counts. All the yelling and upset feelings in the world won't fix anything if you can't do that, your majesty.

Practically everyone here is an as-yet-unestablished writer in Canada, struggling with first, second, third books. We have some bigwigs pop in every now and then, and some more lurking in the shadows.

Go be angry at someone else. We were just trying to have our little corner here, like at a party where no one wants to talk to us. We can't help it that you were doing vanity searches on Google that lead you here. You have bigger fish to fry. Conspiracies are afoot! People on the streets of New York go unharassed! The world needs you! Go! Go! Fly, King Wenclas! Fly!

I ask you, when you are aged and lying on your death bed, what will you be proud of? This?

Killer, your tale leaves out a lot.
Do you realy believe that anti-establishment protest groups are high school behavior? Is there nothing to protest in this world?
I can't speak about Canada, but in the U.S. there's much to protest. Those from the upper classes in this country like to pretend there is no such thing as class, that we're all the same, yet there is a great gap between rich and poor right now in America and the gap is growing wider all the time. Most of us have to work our asses off just to make ends meet. What I wrote about in the 90's was why this was happening. I depicted such things as unions being busted, wages cut, benefits vanishing, at the same time the stock market was skyrocketing. Class war has taken place relentlessly in the United States the past twenty years, and it's all been one way. The wealth of America, and the dominant position it holds in the world, was bought at a high price.
Why is this important for writers?
First, the task of writers should be on occasion to examine and depict the world in which they live. The ULA contends they've been doing an inadequate job-- one reason why literature has become marginalized in this country.
Second, every writer should be aware that most media on this planet is increasingly controlled by a handful of conglomerates. We've witnessed the monopolization of media, which has narrowed the variety of viewpoints given to people.
Third, in the U.S., a hierarchical society, those who are the products of prep schools and Ivy League universities are wildly overrepresented not just among those published authors given publicity and promotional backing, but they also dominate the mastheads of the major magazines. Whether it's People, Time, New York, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Elle, etc etc, the staffs are made up (sometimes entirely) of Ivy League grads. Their narrowed, conformist outlook is what's being given to the American people. This is not democracy, but aristocracy.
The ULA has barely scratched the surface on these questions. But surely they are questions which should be addressed.
I'd say that Canadians should be concerned about these questions also, as your media and information are being swallowed up by the beast to the south of you. As we saw during this recent war, your nation is under increasing pressure to give up its independence-- which some Americans greatly admire and respect-- to become part of a mindless global empire dominated by conglomerates which is going to war, stifling dissent, and increasing its power all over the place.
Writers can bury their heads in the sand and ignore such happenings, or we can act, "to take arms" (or at least words) "against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them."
After all, if writers don't speak out, if we don't act as the conscience for society and the public, who else will?
Hyperbolic statements? Maybe.

Edited by author 12-04-2003 03:59 PM
Yes. Where to start?

In high school we had an anti-establishment protest group called the SLU (you figure it out). This was way pre-websites, so we mimeographed our "manifesto" onto flyers, snuck into school early and papered the walls with them. We used to send radio-controlled toy cars into the examination rooms, just to see the teachers and monitors jump and follow, and to get an appreciative laugh from all the kids who wouldn't regularly give us the time of day, or a mint. Once we ran an SLU "flag" up the pole, and finally, finally got what we were looking for. The principal banned us, mentioning our name on the morning announcements over the PA. Yes, I remember high school. Good times.

Then some of us made zines, practicing our writing and continuing to form our personalities that way. Then we got published elsewhere and made the decision not to see that publication as a symptom of the greater evil inherent in the professionalization of the writing process.

Wankers.

"Because literature is the product of upper class writers so jaded, inherently sick, emotionally barren, and spiritually dead that they thrive on anti-truth and esoteric parlor jokes."

Man, that sounds like a fantastic novel. You should do some more work on that. And be careful who you're calling "emotionally barren." I'm pretty sensitive about that. It's not my fault my upper class parents didn't help me form worthwhile emotional connections, like your, what? steel-working, coal-mining parents did for you?

Keep interrupting readings you crazy freedom loving revolutionaries! 40 zinesters on a petition? It's like freakin' 1917 all over again. I promise to visit you guys in prison.

And yes, I don't use my real name because I'm scared of you. That's why. Me scared of you.

p.s. Regarding writing: I was published in standard literary journals in the 90's. (All solicited, incidentally, by editors aware of the newsletter I was doing then, NEW PHILISTINE.) One of the best things I've written was a monster essay for North American Review in 1994 called, "Detroit: Among the Lower Classes." I received one letter in response, at a time when I was receiving dozens in reaction to each issue of my zine. I realized that playing the lit game by the rules is a waste of time. For one thing, the audience for approved literature has been by-and-large reduced to affluent genteel folk whose brain arteries hardened a long time ago. How many university lit journals are cranked out every year? Who buys them? Either rich people who keep them unopened on coffee tables as an indication of breeding and taste, or colleges who shelve them in the periodicals section, where they gather dust ignored. That's the truth. Anyone care to dispute this? Do we have any PINDELDYBOZ editors on this forum, or others who produce overpriced lit journals filled with postmodern gobbledygook appreciated only by themselves and their friends?
The ULA makes noise to get the word out about our kind of writers. We've been selling our zines to some "literary" people, but mainly to non-literary folks. (Grunt soldiers seem to like our house journal SLUSH PILE for some reason, maybe because it's entertaining.)
The standard literary world is at a dead end. We're doing anything we can to move around it.
(My new zine is LITERARY FAN MAGAZINE, available for only One Dollar cash to me c/o the ULA address up on our site. It's designed not to be a vanity piece, but to be bought and read.)
Thank you for your time.

Actually, Winkleass, Zed is my real name. It wasn't my name at birth. My parents called me something else--a triple barrelled affair of first, last, and middle--but I grew to recognize it for the bourgeois affectation that it is, and so invented my own name in order to assert my individuality and my scathing contempt for mainstream society and its scions.

Petitions? What's next, a sit-in at NEA headquarters?

You folks are just filled with misconceptions about the ULA, aren't you? If you really think we're nerds, you should check out one of our shows-- or the reading we've crashed. (Wild Bill Blackolive could hardly be classified as a nerd.) The truth is that none of us have taken the creative writing workshop route. That's strictly for wannabe poseurs like, well, you I guess. I would certainly never pay money in order to "learn" how to be a writer. Either you're a writer or you're not. Workshops are for bourgeois pretenders who want to "be" writers-- to play the role-- without having anything to write about.
Most ULAers are from the zine scene. Instead of sucking up to a closed and corrupt system, we've done things ourselves, publishing our own words and finding our own audience. It's a different road to travel, which has taken us out of the sheep pen wherein reside most creative writers.
Why the phony names, Zed and Fish Fish? What are you hiding from? Are you brave only parked in front of a computer screen, under the cloak of anonymity? I guess you don't believe yourselves what you're saying. No matter. The ULA has faced skeptics and scoffers from the beginning.
BTW, how we received attention was by exposing the way rich writers abuse the grants system for their own benefit, in the process screwing overlooked writers-- perhaps even you two. Check out the "Special Report" posted on the News thread on our site and you'll see the noise we've made has substance. When we circulated our first petition on this subject, we got the signatures of 40 underground zine writers and publishers. Then we circulated it to 300 established names. Not one had the guts to sign it. (Though many agreed with it privately, as noted in the first NY POST piece about the ULA.)
We welcome debate in any forum, because our ideas have substance. We fill a necessary role in today's literary system. The alternative is to have all writers roll over and play dead, as was the case in the past.
We have a lot more noise to make. . . .

Way to ignore him, FishFish :)

Wank less. Yes.

Uh, it might be best not to engage these fedora-wearing nerds when they show their bespectacled faces. In my experience, quietly ignoring them as women have done for their entire lives is best. They are the kind of creative writing workshop dreck that flunks out because they aren't popular or talented enough and then goes pro in the biz of making other peoples' lives hell (ie, not just in CW class anymore, railing against success and authority, but taking their nerds-r-us roadshow nationwide).

Any loudmouth with enough insecurity masked as overly-confident arrogance can get attention. They've been doing it since mommy first stopped filling their yaps with hairy nipple and Professor Carey gave them their first F on a story about a Kafka-like guy who turns into an insect, but a different insect than, you know, the one in Kafka...

"King" is a dumb nickname. He should wank less.

Edited by author 12-03-2003 05:23 PM
Because their manifesto is poorly written, subsuming craft to empty rhetoric and to the politics of envy, I smile indulgently at their cries of "Look, Ma! No hands!" and will shake my head in gentle mock bewilderment when they begin to wonder why they have no teeth....



[edited to remove an extra 'to']

http://www.literaryrevolution.com/essays/manifesto.htm

They score some points.

FYI "King" is a nickname. "Wenclas" is the guy's real name.

Edited by author 12-03-2003 04:59 PM
King Wenclas? Is that Good King Wenclas? Phew. For a minute I thought you were using a pseudonym.

Anyway, I'm glad you had a last look round, though it ain't the feast of Stephen.

Gotta run, check out a new link, hmm.

I'm pretty suspicious of anyone so ready to allign himself with a school or movement. Whassamatta, Wenclas? Afraid your writing won't stand on its own? Or maybe you're just more interested in stirring the pot than getting it right where it counts: alone at your desk. We stopped talking about you because you're boring and easily forgotten. Ta-ta.

Hey, isn't this thread supposed to be about the most radical literary group on the planet, the Underground Literary Alliance?
To our critics: We bring excitement wherever we travel. When we met (since deceased) George Plimpton and his Paris Review staff in debate at NYC's CBGB's in 2001 we mopped the floor with them. We have the best voices and most energetic performers on the lit scene. We also have some good writers! Including Phillip Routh (yep, that's his name) Steve Kostecke, Wild Bill Blackolive, and many more.
Re the McSweeney's gang: the truth is that Dave Eggers ripped off the zine underground for a lot of his stance, but he's a watered-down version of the authentic underground, of true DIY. His writing and that of his acolytes is pretentious postmodern nonsense, for the most part, completely opposite to what the print underground puts out. We loath him and his fans and the entire rich-brat crowd they're associated with.
By the way, does anybody on these threads use their real names, or is everyone gutless?
What distinguishes ULAers from other writers is that we speak the Truth, we say what we mean and mean what we say-- no Neal Pollack-like games-- we represent real change; and we stand behind our actions, our words, and our ideas.
(We can be found at www.literaryrevolution.com, for starters.)
Have a good day!

Writing: addiction: masochism: insight: ah.

Edited by author 11-09-2003 09:50 AM
I'm a pretty slow writer and I need to have a fair amount of stress-free time. I find I can't write if I'm stressed about too many things, like finding a job, etc. Or when I worked with at risk kids in the "Kiddie Stroll" area of East Vancouver and they kept being carted off to foster homes? Oh, yeah, I just wrote reams and reams of stuff then!

I do find though that writing poetry is a hell of a lot easier than writing anything more sustained, because sometimes it might just take an hour or so out of your time. I'm currently trying to work up the guts to write a novel but I'm kind of terrified. How do the novel-writing ninjas out there find the time? Do interruptions/other jobs make it difficult to sustain the narrative, and the original feeling you had when you started writing it? How make it still essential and exciting when you have to leave it in mid-chapter to do other things?

PS - Zed, all I have to say to you is "EEEWWW"

Edited by author 11-09-2003 02:53 AM
I read something once about Philip Larkin inscribing a collection to Robert Lowell along the lines of: "From a trickle to a flood."

I don't think either production scale is more or less valid than the other. I love Layton and I love Bishop. Sometimes I wish Irving had been a tad less prolific, but part of me enjoys sifting thru the reams of his collected poems and reading his worst stuff, much of which still has something in it. It's easy to say Layton should have had more restraint, but then he wouldn't have been Layton, would he? And Bishop could hardly have been Bishop with a 1500 page poetic oeuvre.

My writing tends to progress quantity-wise pretty much glacially, as any poet friends of mine can attest. Am I tired of the "So how's your mss coming?" questions? Uh, yeah. But at least I'm writing lately a lot more than I have been over the past few years (because of too much publishing work). So things are looking up. But finding a balance between other work and your writing can be very difficult, I find. I guess I'm like Bookninja, I have to find some space, inside and outside myself, before I can seriously sit down to work on stuff.

And then there's the whole spend six hours writing and revising four lines of poetry and then discard them after all is said and done. Those are just the peachiest writing sessions. Gotta love this gig. :)

I hear ya man. For less valid reasons (having something, I think, to do with moving and making significant transitions I'm as yet unable to process), I've been poetically constipated the last few months, tho the bowels seem now to be loosening. And yeah, when I first started scribbling as an undergrad, I'd fill notebooks in weeks rather than months. But 99% of that was sheer diarrhoea (or diarrhea, depending on how you like to spell it) and the remaining 1% corn niblets. I like to think my less regular output now consists of comelier turds.

I need buckets of time just to wind down from the mundane details of life before I gear up for something else. This is what I am missing -- downtime. Whenever 15mintues or an hour crop up, I spend it vegging here or infront of "Freecell" -- trying to clear my mind and remember how to think. By the time I am ready I have to go back to the kid. Bad mojo, man. I wrote a poem today tho, the first in three weeks. If you knew me in university you would gasp. I used to write like mclennan on a chocolate speed cocktail. Mind you, I keep more of what I write now.

I'd have to concur on this one. For me, there seems to be a law of diminishing returns: the more idle/unscheduled time I have, the less good writing gets done. Some of what I consider my best work has got done on buses, planes, airports, has been composed while walking and dashed down as soon as I stop. Maybe because it's always been something I do in between less important things, something that helps me negotiate with the banal dramas and traumas of daily life. Maybe because I'm restless and lazy at once. Dunno.

I'd say it's easier to be interstitial with poetry than prose, but clearly this isn't the case for the Ninja. Maybe it's something you can learn. A friend of mine has a wee one and is doing her master's, but has trained herself to do the writing in the alotted windows of child-free time. "Hello Muse", as she put it to me in a recent letter.

Keep your ear to the ground, G, and horsewhip that muse. The poems are still there.

This is a real tangent on this board, but, yes, art can be done "in between things." Adrienne Rich may say no, but Toni Morrison says yes. In the book of her collected interviews (U of Mississipi Press, I think), she talks about writing while her two kids played around her feet.

So, some people can write like that; others, no. (I don't buy the "room of one's own" argument in the least.) The times when I've had a wide open schedule, specifically freed-up for writing, ... they haven't been my best scribbling moments.

Yeah, I'm not so good with "mindless..." I barely have grey matter available for my own writing these days and yet I spend too much time on the boards. The reason? It can be done between things, in spare moments. Formal criticism can't, at least in my experience. Nor can art, I am finding. (Tell that to Adrienne Rich, right?) So, it's these snippets of thoughts and little jokes that keep my mind from atrophy until young Silas goes to school..... three ... more ... years....

And god, if I have to watch my spelling and grammar? I am doomed.

I was tempted to suggest that this forum isn't particularly conducive to well-developed critical debate on writing, but thinking about it more, I realized that's bunk. There's plenty of stuff archived in these here discussion boards that puts the lie to any generalization about us merely carping about peripheral literary ephemera. If there's talk about awards on threads dedicated to talk about awards, it should come as no surprise.

I shall now retreat to my rug by the door like a good dog.

Oh god, not another stapled submission. . . :)

I'm with Bookninja - getting tired of the vitriolic tone of some of these postings. I think Giller raises an interesting point - lots of whingeing (love that word!) about awards, etc, which we all know is unfair, yadda yadda yadda, but not a whole lot on writing itself. I don't think much of the conclusion that because we indulge in such rants, we are small and probably mediocre writers, but it’s true, we don’t talk much about writing here.

Yet, having said that, do I want to then talk about how/why I write? Nope. Because my writing is a fairly private thing, and I know how I write, and I know, as much as I ever can, why I write. But what I don't know is what those crazy publishers out there want (I lie awake at 4 a.m, wondering whether stapling that cover letter instead of paperclipping it was a major faux pas) and what kind of good books there are out there and who knows, I may pick up a great book as a result of a discussion thread and it may inspire me to write a good line or something. And even if these threads don’t inspire me, they can be mindless fun, and hey, I like dumb fun. I read YA novels and cruddy mysteries as well, so there!

But this fun is going to stop being fun if everyone starts insulting each other and making fun of grammatical and spelling errors. Who cares if someone spells a word wrong? I just want this forum to be a place to share info, etc, about literature/the literary world. And sure, I’d be interested in hearing about more writerly concerns – I just don’t feel comfortable talking about those myself.

My editor is on holiday with my maid.

Twinkle, you never need reminding. Sparkle on, sweet star.

Company's coming. Wash yer face!

and Twinkle, keep twinkling

Hey Folks, just a note. As you may have noticed, we're getting some good press and links from all over, so we're bound to get some new posters appearing on the boards over the next few weeks (a la Rel, G-cube, et al). Let's treat them with respect until they deserve otherwise. Fish Fish, clean up that grammar and spelling. FK, put your toys away--esp those lego bits I keep stepping on. Z, go lay on the mat by the front door. Killer, wash your beard -- there's some buffalo wing sauce in it.

Giller, (G-cube, who said that? that was funny) I need to know more of this allegory as "the lowest form of all artistic expression" claim you make, but perhaps we should shift this over to the Coetzee discussion board, and after you've read the James Wood article. Wood nudges him for the same thing, but is less dismissive. I'm wobbling all over the fence on Coetzee. Enjoyed Michael K., but that's just cause I really like pumpkins.

Then we can talk more about awards.

Fish Fish: How can you decry "verbal diarrhoea" at the same time as writing a sentence like this. P.S. Note the proper spelling of diarrohoea.

"Outright dismissal of any pseudopod of the litamoeba is, like the verbal diarrhea that spews from those socially and artistically retarded ULA hacks, reads like a symptom of an ugly case of mental dysentery."

Z: What’s all this noise about Coetzee. I read Disgrace about a year ago. I thought it was a good book but no more profound that many other middle of the road novels. I see Coetzee more as a literary illustrator than an artist working on a broad canvass. He often uses his characters to outline a few rather pedestrian ideas. There is always a trace of allegory ( the lowest form of all artistic expression) in Coetzee.
 As for Disgrace, I thought the daughter was an interesting character except that Coetzee only allowed her to exist as a symptom of a larger issue. There was potential in her character that a greater novelist would have felt obliged to express. Also, if I read another novel dealing with the existential angst of an ageing academic, I’ll burn my library card. Plumbers, carpenters, and engineers have existential dilemma’s also but of course it would take more artistry to give expression to their conundrum. Coetzee is a writer who knows his constituents and I suspect they are never far from his mind.

Grrrr... Don't mind dissent, but would prefer to see it done constructively. Perhaps Mr. or Ms. Giller has some illuminating thoughts on Coetzee, for instance, that (s)he could dazzle us with.

Yes, I have similarly ambivalent feelings. Officially don't give a rat's ass and know awards signify nothing even if they aren't full of sound and fury, but I still get teed off when mediocrity is lauded, Listerene or no Listerene. Just ask my wife.

Down Z! Down, boy! Sit! Ah, faithful pitbull Z. You overbred, foaming-mouthed toothmachine. Don't make me and the proper authorities put you down.

Seriously, GG has a point and is a welcome voice of dissent. Why do we care so much if we all agree these things are faulty? Envy? Ego? I have officially given up on caring about awards, yet once I'm drunk (which hasn't been the case for an ungodly long time) I'm sure I'll pound my fist and cry unfair with the rest of you. Heck, I might even do it when sober. Ask my wife.

Wait, Fish. Are you saying the McSweeney's crew or the ULA haven't written anything worth reading?

G.G., if you have something important and lofty to say, then by all means say it, but please spare us all the preaching. If you don't like the conversation round here, there's the virtual door.

I wonder at your wondering, Giller. Part of the point these forums seems to be the establishment of a place for writers to gather, gripe, extol, declaim, etcetera. It sounds like you've got a bit of the ULA spirit in you yourself (I.E., the spurned, fedora-wearing, Kafka-loving writer nerd - likely with a pair of those face-hugger safety glasses that have the little bar over the bridge. Obviously I am kidding you, but impressions can be drawn from our words here and you're reading like you sign your books with two initials and a last name...) Outright dismissal of any pseudopod of the litamoeba is, like the verbal diarrhea that spews from those socially and artistically retarded ULA hacks, reads like a symptom of an ugly case of mental dysentery.

By the by, those McSweeney's clones haven't written a thing worth reading since 1999. The sooner people realize they arrived after everything had already happened the sooner that little sect can die.

The McSweeney's/Believer gang is definitely a double-edged sword. Though they have produced some of my favourite writing in the past few years, they really are like the too-cool kids back in High School. The ULA, however, are just bitter. They've probably all tried to get published in McSweeney's. There's always envy.

Twinkle: Elite credentials are very important especially if you don't have them.

I do find it strange that 90% of chat on Bookninja deals with superficial issues around writing rather than with writing. I wonder if such small voices that seem to do nothing but gripe have anything of real import to say.

Prizes are for children. Accolades are usually given to the undeserving...lets move on.

I, for one, would be nowhere without my elite credentials. Long live the aristocracy!

Oh, FK, that's a question. I was trolling for answers.

Twinkle, how would define "elite" credentials in a Canadian setting?

"The ULA's first and most concrete critique of the book industry is that its insider orientation prevents the publication of literary writers who do not boast elite credentials."

How much do you think elite credentials matter in Canada's book industry?

Edited by author 11-06-2003 09:05 PM
Tea With the Enemy

The Brown student newspaper interviews Karl King Wenclas of the Underground Literary Alliance, which really likes to pick literary fights. Although it's really more of a review of the ULA.




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Edited by author 08-13-2003 08:31 AM
Hey, everyone! Fight! Fight!
The Underground Literary Alliance, best known for complaining about the "cronyism" of writers like Rick Moody and Jonathan Franzen, has lately gone after Dave Eggers and his crowd. Tom Bissell fired back in Eggers' latest project, The Believer, with an essay about the ULA. The ULA fired back with a couple of essays of their own. Collateral damage is everywhere, even the pages of the Village Voice. Even the bully is wading into this one.

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