Striking to me is the lack of knowledge, by everyone involved with the literary game, of the recent history of the art-- how American literature (including its writers) has been placed over the past sixty years more fully within a set of rigid, interlocking institutions. The art has become imprisoned: static.
This mirrors other historical phenomena. For instance, the way Bolshevism in Russia over the course of seven decades became bureaucratized and stagnant. A better analogy might be the history of Christianity, which began as a charismatic happening whose sole focus was the "proclamation" or message, only to be gradually institutionalized within church structures. Historian Schuyler Brown called it "the emergence of orthodoxy and the concomitant process of institutionalisation. . . ."
This happened to what's widely accepted as literature in this country. That the literary art has hardened into "set formulas" is why it's lost its excitement.
We can understand, then, the fear and hostility, by those who support, and are sustained by, institutional lit-- from PEN to Media Bistro to HarperCollins-- toward upstart literary undergrounders who exist OUTSIDE any institution; who are instead part of an uncontrolled charismatic movement whose focus is not on set formulas for creating writers or their artworks, but on the intent, the passion, the message: the PROCLAMATION of literature; the rebirth of the art.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Finding the New Avant-Garde
THE CRITIC'S JOB
is to herald the new; to recognize the real talents of his day-- particularly those who exist outside the walls of the status quo. To always seek a new direction for the art.
***********************************
For me, pushing the envelope in any art form means reaching new levels of emotion.
I was thinking this after viewing the classic Western movie "Shane" at a public library several weeks ago. The film is very much art, in that it pushes and pushes to new emotion, right to its very end, with the shadowy climb of a wounded rider matching the risen level of emotion of the audience.
I was thinking later about the difference between talent and genius; how Madonna is supremely talented, much moreso than the Britney wannabes who followed. Yet for all her pop masterpieces like "Beautiful Stranger," another singer exists on an entirely different level: Bjork, creating the undefinable; reaching new levels of what Bjork herself calls "emotional landscapes."
Are there writers doing with stories or poems what Bjork does with songs?
At the peak of the zeen scene in the late 90's, and since, I've read several striking talents whose absence of prescribed craft allowed art and emotion free reign. The underground writers who were brought to light inside and outside the ULA never really fit my needs, my espoused doctrine, but on their own they were busting aesthetic barriers. (What's Jack Saunders if not a new form of Dada?) A few of them at times have approached levels of undefinable genius; writing that can't be controlled or quantified. This is what any new avant-garde has to be about.
***********************************
Addendum:
TEN TRANSCENDENT MOVIE PERFORMANCES
1.) Marilyn Monroe: "The Misfits"
2.) James Cagney: "Angels with Dirty Faces"
3.) Marlon Brando: "On the Waterfront"
4.) Audrey Hepburn: "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
5.) Lana Turner: "The Bad and the Beautiful"
6.) Richard Burton: "The Robe"
7.) Al Pacino: "Scarface"
8.) William Holden: "Bridge on the River Kwai"
9.) Winona Ryder: "Girl Interrupted"
10.) Errol Flynn: "The Adventures of Robin Hood"
is to herald the new; to recognize the real talents of his day-- particularly those who exist outside the walls of the status quo. To always seek a new direction for the art.
***********************************
For me, pushing the envelope in any art form means reaching new levels of emotion.
I was thinking this after viewing the classic Western movie "Shane" at a public library several weeks ago. The film is very much art, in that it pushes and pushes to new emotion, right to its very end, with the shadowy climb of a wounded rider matching the risen level of emotion of the audience.
I was thinking later about the difference between talent and genius; how Madonna is supremely talented, much moreso than the Britney wannabes who followed. Yet for all her pop masterpieces like "Beautiful Stranger," another singer exists on an entirely different level: Bjork, creating the undefinable; reaching new levels of what Bjork herself calls "emotional landscapes."
Are there writers doing with stories or poems what Bjork does with songs?
At the peak of the zeen scene in the late 90's, and since, I've read several striking talents whose absence of prescribed craft allowed art and emotion free reign. The underground writers who were brought to light inside and outside the ULA never really fit my needs, my espoused doctrine, but on their own they were busting aesthetic barriers. (What's Jack Saunders if not a new form of Dada?) A few of them at times have approached levels of undefinable genius; writing that can't be controlled or quantified. This is what any new avant-garde has to be about.
***********************************
Addendum:
TEN TRANSCENDENT MOVIE PERFORMANCES
1.) Marilyn Monroe: "The Misfits"
2.) James Cagney: "Angels with Dirty Faces"
3.) Marlon Brando: "On the Waterfront"
4.) Audrey Hepburn: "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
5.) Lana Turner: "The Bad and the Beautiful"
6.) Richard Burton: "The Robe"
7.) Al Pacino: "Scarface"
8.) William Holden: "Bridge on the River Kwai"
9.) Winona Ryder: "Girl Interrupted"
10.) Errol Flynn: "The Adventures of Robin Hood"
Monday, July 13, 2009
The PEN Raj
In the realm of American literature, Manhattan is a Britain-like island dictating the standards for literature throughout the "empire." Centralized and hierarchical, it's an outmoded model. "I say, old chap." In some cases, like David Haglund at PEN, the administrators of literary empire have literally, not just metaphorically, attended Oxford.
THE SMALL PRESS
The official "small press," evidenced through outfits like CLMP, is a token opposition used to forestall dissent. Even Dave Eggers-- now standing at the center of Imperialist literary power-- was a tool; his McSweeney's embodying fake change which was no change at all, but instead a reaffirmation of the status quo. The establishment becoming its own opposition started with him.
WRITERS
American writers as a whole represent latent strength, like an undeveloped India or China ruled by a handful of Imperialist administrators. Writers are powerless because they allow themselves to be powerless.
PEN
An organization like PEN helps grease the wheels of literary empire. Worldwide it connects upper-caste writers across the globe, from the U.S. to India, while fitting itself into the dominance of the multi-nationals. In America it's one of many tools used to control the direction of literature.
REBELS
The resistance movement has centered around two main outfits: one run by a few feudal turf-conscious chieftains feeding off the carcass of past glory; the other an unmotivated mass unsteered by a silent, secretive, and apparently inert politburo. Yet the Rebellion has always worked best when it's been free-floating outside any real bounds or handcuffs, like rebellious Cossacks on the steppes in Taras Bulba or With Fire and Sword.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
THE SMALL PRESS
The official "small press," evidenced through outfits like CLMP, is a token opposition used to forestall dissent. Even Dave Eggers-- now standing at the center of Imperialist literary power-- was a tool; his McSweeney's embodying fake change which was no change at all, but instead a reaffirmation of the status quo. The establishment becoming its own opposition started with him.
WRITERS
American writers as a whole represent latent strength, like an undeveloped India or China ruled by a handful of Imperialist administrators. Writers are powerless because they allow themselves to be powerless.
PEN
An organization like PEN helps grease the wheels of literary empire. Worldwide it connects upper-caste writers across the globe, from the U.S. to India, while fitting itself into the dominance of the multi-nationals. In America it's one of many tools used to control the direction of literature.
REBELS
The resistance movement has centered around two main outfits: one run by a few feudal turf-conscious chieftains feeding off the carcass of past glory; the other an unmotivated mass unsteered by a silent, secretive, and apparently inert politburo. Yet the Rebellion has always worked best when it's been free-floating outside any real bounds or handcuffs, like rebellious Cossacks on the steppes in Taras Bulba or With Fire and Sword.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Art or Truth?
THE DECADENT CLASS in their gilded palaces forge not literature, but "art." It's the effluvia of literature; the ornaments, baubles, and squigglies, so that eventually all that remains is ornament, with nothing behind it. Which is fine for their class of affluent narcissists listlessly drawing circles in penthouse sandboxes. Greater society is something they stay safely positioned above, behind barricaded walls monitored by unthinking guards.
What literature needs is more anger, more polemics, more passion; raw gutter outrage at the conditions of life as civilization collapses. This isn't a time for dessicated "art" positioned in airless museum boxes of plexiglass. The boxes need to be shattered.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
What literature needs is more anger, more polemics, more passion; raw gutter outrage at the conditions of life as civilization collapses. This isn't a time for dessicated "art" positioned in airless museum boxes of plexiglass. The boxes need to be shattered.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
The Real American Voice
THE QUESTION
has come up as to what's the "real" literature of this country.
What should be obvious is that what's presented as our literature by the insular skyscraper world of New York is incomplete and inadequate.
THEIR FAILURE
Fifty years ago one of the largest figures in the cultural universe-- one of the world's giant personalities-- was a writer. Ernest Hemingway had a greater and more influential persona than any pop star. Movie stars like Gary Cooper and Ava Gardner clamored to hang around with him. HE set the cultural tone.
Today, the death of a pop music star is cataclysmic. The greatest establishment novelist died this year and garnered not a fraction of the same attention or emotion. Or was it this year? Or last year? Who was he again? We've forgotten.
The Caretakers of Lit-- they're nothing more than caretakers-- have failed with their stewardship of the art. They've failed to connect with the soul of the American public.
THE GOOD NEWS
The good news IS the literary underground, the sound of America's streets; an unfiltered noise that's raw and authentic.
That its leading practitioners are outcasts shows the movement is the new avant-garde. The diversely original writers inhabit uncoopted literary territory; a plot of independent ground. Neither their writings, nor their attitude, are acceptable to the caretakers of status quo. Check the names at
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
This is the sound of America now.
has come up as to what's the "real" literature of this country.
What should be obvious is that what's presented as our literature by the insular skyscraper world of New York is incomplete and inadequate.
THEIR FAILURE
Fifty years ago one of the largest figures in the cultural universe-- one of the world's giant personalities-- was a writer. Ernest Hemingway had a greater and more influential persona than any pop star. Movie stars like Gary Cooper and Ava Gardner clamored to hang around with him. HE set the cultural tone.
Today, the death of a pop music star is cataclysmic. The greatest establishment novelist died this year and garnered not a fraction of the same attention or emotion. Or was it this year? Or last year? Who was he again? We've forgotten.
The Caretakers of Lit-- they're nothing more than caretakers-- have failed with their stewardship of the art. They've failed to connect with the soul of the American public.
THE GOOD NEWS
The good news IS the literary underground, the sound of America's streets; an unfiltered noise that's raw and authentic.
That its leading practitioners are outcasts shows the movement is the new avant-garde. The diversely original writers inhabit uncoopted literary territory; a plot of independent ground. Neither their writings, nor their attitude, are acceptable to the caretakers of status quo. Check the names at
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
This is the sound of America now.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Literary System
It's absurd to argue that there's no established system for creating and promoting literature.
For part of my life I worked on the margins of the auto industry in Detroit, and witnessed how separate parts of the process, run by separate companies, interacted to create a living and breathing whole. By this I mean from the steel unloaded from ships at docks, to the very many parts suppliers creating goods from bolts to glass windows to foam rubber, the many warehouses, trucking companies, the gigantic factories into which all roads eventually led; the automobiles belched out and trucked or trained to independently-run but very dependent dealership showrooms. (We're now seeing this organism in collapse.)
Literature was once a free-booting enterprise, but over the last fifty years became a giant machine itself; fed, as with standardized parts, by regimented and standardized writers from writing programs, with all the many other pieces of the machine ostensibly independent but in fact dependent on the rest of the whole; in symbiotic relationships with other parts of it; from agents to editors, to the sustained awards foundations which serve as a kind of religious order conferring legitimacy onto the entire mess; to mainstream journalists, so many of whom in New York feed at the foundation-conglomerate trough. When they attend PEN parties it's not to report on them, but to indulge in them as accepted members of the club.
This machine, even as it jealously strengthens its power, is as obsolete as General Motors, and as likely to eventually fall.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
For part of my life I worked on the margins of the auto industry in Detroit, and witnessed how separate parts of the process, run by separate companies, interacted to create a living and breathing whole. By this I mean from the steel unloaded from ships at docks, to the very many parts suppliers creating goods from bolts to glass windows to foam rubber, the many warehouses, trucking companies, the gigantic factories into which all roads eventually led; the automobiles belched out and trucked or trained to independently-run but very dependent dealership showrooms. (We're now seeing this organism in collapse.)
Literature was once a free-booting enterprise, but over the last fifty years became a giant machine itself; fed, as with standardized parts, by regimented and standardized writers from writing programs, with all the many other pieces of the machine ostensibly independent but in fact dependent on the rest of the whole; in symbiotic relationships with other parts of it; from agents to editors, to the sustained awards foundations which serve as a kind of religious order conferring legitimacy onto the entire mess; to mainstream journalists, so many of whom in New York feed at the foundation-conglomerate trough. When they attend PEN parties it's not to report on them, but to indulge in them as accepted members of the club.
This machine, even as it jealously strengthens its power, is as obsolete as General Motors, and as likely to eventually fall.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
2nd Wave
THE FIRST WAVE OF LITERARY REBELLION
anticipated the current severe recession, probably because its generators came from Detroit, which nine years ago was already in severe recession. (Through most of my lifetime Detroit has been in severe recession.)
THE FIRST WAVE of literary rebellion was a Detroit-style baseball-bat attack on the literary establishment. We made noise, broke some literary glass. The real kick-off point was TV images of Seattle, December '99, so metaphorical broken glass was apt.
The Second Wave of Literary Rebellion will be more subtle, more focused on ideas and writing-- more literary-- albeit with no less excitement than Wave One. Though the Next Wave's scheduled kick-off date isn't until next year (February, most likely), its first step, the Petition to PEN, is happening already.
The Petition to PEN is also the final step-- at least my final step-- of First Wave activity. The Petition is grabbing the loose thread of a cloth curtain covering the current literary scene as if in front of a stage. It's pulling the thread and watching the curtain slowly unravel until it reveals, behind, the naked corruption and obsolescence of American literature today. The actors behind the curtain are naked. They're clowns-- real clowns-- but they're also naked. Their stage set is bare of all but a few naked props. The stage furniture is made out of cardboard. When we hop onto the stage set later-- next year?-- we'll examine the cardboard furniture and laugh about it. "That's all it ever was," we'll say, as the furniture collapses like soggy newspaper in our hands, and one of us pushes forward a trash bin.
Then we'll look further back, deeper, into the shadows of the stage, into the mists, creators of illusion, because that's the future of literature-- OUR future-- the new, scary unknown into which we must plunge; an entirely new theatrical presentation: a daunting, newly-experienced new literary world.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
anticipated the current severe recession, probably because its generators came from Detroit, which nine years ago was already in severe recession. (Through most of my lifetime Detroit has been in severe recession.)
THE FIRST WAVE of literary rebellion was a Detroit-style baseball-bat attack on the literary establishment. We made noise, broke some literary glass. The real kick-off point was TV images of Seattle, December '99, so metaphorical broken glass was apt.
The Second Wave of Literary Rebellion will be more subtle, more focused on ideas and writing-- more literary-- albeit with no less excitement than Wave One. Though the Next Wave's scheduled kick-off date isn't until next year (February, most likely), its first step, the Petition to PEN, is happening already.
The Petition to PEN is also the final step-- at least my final step-- of First Wave activity. The Petition is grabbing the loose thread of a cloth curtain covering the current literary scene as if in front of a stage. It's pulling the thread and watching the curtain slowly unravel until it reveals, behind, the naked corruption and obsolescence of American literature today. The actors behind the curtain are naked. They're clowns-- real clowns-- but they're also naked. Their stage set is bare of all but a few naked props. The stage furniture is made out of cardboard. When we hop onto the stage set later-- next year?-- we'll examine the cardboard furniture and laugh about it. "That's all it ever was," we'll say, as the furniture collapses like soggy newspaper in our hands, and one of us pushes forward a trash bin.
Then we'll look further back, deeper, into the shadows of the stage, into the mists, creators of illusion, because that's the future of literature-- OUR future-- the new, scary unknown into which we must plunge; an entirely new theatrical presentation: a daunting, newly-experienced new literary world.
www.penpetition.blogspot.com
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