THE FIRST STAGE
of publishing from the literary rebellion-- which I fully applaud-- through authors like Wred Fright, Carl Robinson, Steve Kostecke, Bill Blackolive, Jack Saunders, and others, represents the best of American folk lit NOW.
Folk art has always been the life force, the renewing stream, for the best art. This has been seen even in the realm of classical music. One hundred years ago the best modern composers like Vaughn-Williams and Respighi returned to the roots of their art for inspiration.
Folk Lit is the necessary foundation for the next stage of the literary art-- the step, in styles and products, which will be truly revolutionary.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Where Goes the Underground?
THE SALIENT POINT
to be made about the literary underground ("Resistance"; "Rebellion"; et.al.) as it's currently being managed at entities like the ULA and OW is that it does everything ass-backwards. In this respect it mimics the literary world as a whole. It makes me wonder if writers by nature are congenitally incapable of having a contemporary understanding about business, instead wanting to operate as if this were still 1820.
The problem is and has always been a MARKETING problem. The Underground Literary Alliance was founded to address this-- not to engage in the same-old same-old. Undergrounders, instead of using new tactics which I proved work, operate with the same baby-step way toward guaranteed failure; producing modest quantities of product; spending enormous amounts of energy in distributing it, without understanding the context within which it's placed, which demands ways to move it. Underground writers themselves are well-satisfied to have their books published, or poems placed on-line, without understanding it means nothing if new ways aren't found to attract readers TO that product.
Creating more supply isn't how the literary rebellion was intended to operate. The plan was always to first create DEMAND for that supply, to a great extent, into which the product could be fed. 90% of activity, if not 99%, was intended to go toward creating demand. Instead, 99% of effort is now spent on the other end. In this loud, media-saturated society, this is senseless.
to be made about the literary underground ("Resistance"; "Rebellion"; et.al.) as it's currently being managed at entities like the ULA and OW is that it does everything ass-backwards. In this respect it mimics the literary world as a whole. It makes me wonder if writers by nature are congenitally incapable of having a contemporary understanding about business, instead wanting to operate as if this were still 1820.
The problem is and has always been a MARKETING problem. The Underground Literary Alliance was founded to address this-- not to engage in the same-old same-old. Undergrounders, instead of using new tactics which I proved work, operate with the same baby-step way toward guaranteed failure; producing modest quantities of product; spending enormous amounts of energy in distributing it, without understanding the context within which it's placed, which demands ways to move it. Underground writers themselves are well-satisfied to have their books published, or poems placed on-line, without understanding it means nothing if new ways aren't found to attract readers TO that product.
Creating more supply isn't how the literary rebellion was intended to operate. The plan was always to first create DEMAND for that supply, to a great extent, into which the product could be fed. 90% of activity, if not 99%, was intended to go toward creating demand. Instead, 99% of effort is now spent on the other end. In this loud, media-saturated society, this is senseless.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Total Disgust
THE LATEST
bad news is the Republican stance against the auto companies. They're blithely willing to allow America to lose its manufacturing base-- to have our industries owned by Japan! The unfortunate truth is that both major parties are anti-American at their core-- due to a privileged and centralized intellectual class embedded and nurtured in and around New York. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal follow different strategies for achieving the same end-- the obliteration of America. This is why the campaign to take back our literary culture is fundamentally important.
bad news is the Republican stance against the auto companies. They're blithely willing to allow America to lose its manufacturing base-- to have our industries owned by Japan! The unfortunate truth is that both major parties are anti-American at their core-- due to a privileged and centralized intellectual class embedded and nurtured in and around New York. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal follow different strategies for achieving the same end-- the obliteration of America. This is why the campaign to take back our literary culture is fundamentally important.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Rejection of Palin
The instant fear and hatred of Sarah Palin by the intelligentsia, on first sight and beyond, in a real sense is a rejection by this crowd of America itself-- "Fifties" America if you will, or America Past. It's a rejection not just of America's mistakes, but of everything that was truly great about this nation; its earnest striving, values, character, and wholesomeness. I don't know how anybody could see Sarah Palin, baby in arms, and not recognize a good person. Maybe that's the problem.
We're seeing the failure of the ideology of the global economy-- which has not served this country well-- but there's also a failure for us of the notion of a globalized culture, including globalized literature as represented by the intellectually bankrupt N+1 and other such outfits.
I advocate for roots-based new American literature.
We're seeing the failure of the ideology of the global economy-- which has not served this country well-- but there's also a failure for us of the notion of a globalized culture, including globalized literature as represented by the intellectually bankrupt N+1 and other such outfits.
I advocate for roots-based new American literature.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Wrong
AS WRONG-HEADED
as to believe that America is never wrong is to believe that America is never right.
as to believe that America is never wrong is to believe that America is never right.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
The Rootless
THE TRAGEDY
of America's white liberal intelligentsia is that they've been raised without roots in their own land and authentic culture. Since 1968 they've been bombarded by the educational system with the notion that they're responsible for all the crimes of history, and should be ashamed to be white. Simultaneous with this they've been hit by the anti-American "citizen of the world" ideology. They've been imbued with false nyths and disconnected from legendary American cultural figures like Davy Crockett. The name embarrasses them if it means anything to them.
But real culture by definition IS rooted and has to be rooted in a land and people. This has been denied to America's most pampered and affluent class of people, who walk around like living tragedies. This is part of the tragedy of lost soul David Foster Wallace, whose art floated in the air in a disconnected way and whose ideas were disconnected from reality, the man so out of touch with the brutalities of life and society that he worried more about the boiling of lobsters-- giant cockroaches-- then the plight of human beings. A true representative he was, though, of his literary class and intellectually bankrupt time.
of America's white liberal intelligentsia is that they've been raised without roots in their own land and authentic culture. Since 1968 they've been bombarded by the educational system with the notion that they're responsible for all the crimes of history, and should be ashamed to be white. Simultaneous with this they've been hit by the anti-American "citizen of the world" ideology. They've been imbued with false nyths and disconnected from legendary American cultural figures like Davy Crockett. The name embarrasses them if it means anything to them.
But real culture by definition IS rooted and has to be rooted in a land and people. This has been denied to America's most pampered and affluent class of people, who walk around like living tragedies. This is part of the tragedy of lost soul David Foster Wallace, whose art floated in the air in a disconnected way and whose ideas were disconnected from reality, the man so out of touch with the brutalities of life and society that he worried more about the boiling of lobsters-- giant cockroaches-- then the plight of human beings. A true representative he was, though, of his literary class and intellectually bankrupt time.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
American Folk
ONE REASON for Sarah Palin's instant appeal to so many Americans is that she fits into American folk tradition going all the way back to Davy Crockett: the appeal of an untutored, "unvetted" backwoods personality bringing common sense wisdom to the corrupt political hills of Washington. THIS is what was instantly recognizable to Americans about Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican convention: a wise-cracking, larger-than-life character unleashed from the American wilderness with a plethora of legendary feats behind her.
Sarah Palin didn't kill "a bar" like Davy but she did kill and skin a moose, which is even larger. Accomplished in everything she's tackled-- point guard basketball champion and beauty contest winner-- she emerged as a pure natural, new baby in one hand and high-powered rifle in the other. The rumored stories about her, that she birthed her baby on an airplane on the way home from a conference in Texas(!) and was back to work as Governor a day or two later fit the mythic aura. She's an American character, and she represents what's best about the American character.
*********************************
If Hemingway was right that American literature stems from Mark Twain, then it really began with Davy Crockett, our nation's first true underground "zine" writer, whose folksy voice created American pulp fiction of the 1800's and had to have been a huge influence on Samuel Clemens.
For a quick look at the Crockett legend and persona, rent the simple 1950's Disney version of the Davy Crockett saga starring Fess Parker. Fast-forward to Davy as politician, including on the stump. The naive, mythic appeal is the OPPOSITE of know-everything wonkiness. It's anti-wonkiness.
Sarah Palin's advisors make a huge mistake if they expect her to come across as a nerdy expert on "Bush Doctrines" and other Beltway b.s. nonsense. People want someone who instead knows what's right and what's not; who from native experience can tell good guys from bad guys and with good humor get directly to the heart of a problem, with joke or rifle, Crockett-style.
******************************************
(Other interesting movie characterizations of Davy Crockett include folksy Arthur Hunnicut in "The Last Command," a colorful adventure whose primary focus is the similarly legendary Jim Bowie; John Wayne in the overblown "The Alamo," which includes a great Dimitri Tiomkin score; and this decade, Billy Bob Thornton in a newer, quite excellent, quite underrated version of "The Alamo." Rent them all!)
Sarah Palin didn't kill "a bar" like Davy but she did kill and skin a moose, which is even larger. Accomplished in everything she's tackled-- point guard basketball champion and beauty contest winner-- she emerged as a pure natural, new baby in one hand and high-powered rifle in the other. The rumored stories about her, that she birthed her baby on an airplane on the way home from a conference in Texas(!) and was back to work as Governor a day or two later fit the mythic aura. She's an American character, and she represents what's best about the American character.
*********************************
If Hemingway was right that American literature stems from Mark Twain, then it really began with Davy Crockett, our nation's first true underground "zine" writer, whose folksy voice created American pulp fiction of the 1800's and had to have been a huge influence on Samuel Clemens.
For a quick look at the Crockett legend and persona, rent the simple 1950's Disney version of the Davy Crockett saga starring Fess Parker. Fast-forward to Davy as politician, including on the stump. The naive, mythic appeal is the OPPOSITE of know-everything wonkiness. It's anti-wonkiness.
Sarah Palin's advisors make a huge mistake if they expect her to come across as a nerdy expert on "Bush Doctrines" and other Beltway b.s. nonsense. People want someone who instead knows what's right and what's not; who from native experience can tell good guys from bad guys and with good humor get directly to the heart of a problem, with joke or rifle, Crockett-style.
******************************************
(Other interesting movie characterizations of Davy Crockett include folksy Arthur Hunnicut in "The Last Command," a colorful adventure whose primary focus is the similarly legendary Jim Bowie; John Wayne in the overblown "The Alamo," which includes a great Dimitri Tiomkin score; and this decade, Billy Bob Thornton in a newer, quite excellent, quite underrated version of "The Alamo." Rent them all!)
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