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(From The Boston Globe)
Author: Joshua Glenn
Date: February 22, 2004
Page: D2, Section: Ideas
LAST MONTH, shortly after Brigid Hughes succeeded the late George
Plimpton as top editor of the Paris Review, she boasted to the
Associated Press that the esteemed literary quarterly had
recently published a story by an unknown author, Yiyun Li, from
its file of unsolicited manuscripts. Not so fast! barked Steve
Kostecke of the literati-watchdog group Underground Literary
Alliance.
Li, Kostecke pointed out in a Jan. 26 column on the ULA website
(literaryrevolution.com), is in fact an Iowa Writers Workshop
degree candidate who has been published recently in both the
Paris Review and the New Yorker. Hughes's heartwarming anecdote,
he went on to charge, was "nothing but a gross attempt at the
perpetuation of the myth . . . that the American lit world
operates like some kind of fair democracy, instead of the
shut-off, where-are-your-papers?, meaningless institution it has
become." L'Affaire Li was the latest salvo from the ULA, a
Philadelphia-based group of self-described literary outsiders. In
2000, ULA founder Karl "King" Wenclas first gained notoriety with
a petition protesting the award of a Guggenheim fellowship to the
already wealthy novelist Rick Moody. Since then, Wenclas, et al.,
have made the gossip columns by disrupting readings by Moody, New
Yorker writer Ben Greenman, Vanity Fair columnist Elissa
Schappell, and other "insiders."
The ULA has crossed paths with the Paris Review crowd before.
When Plimpton attended a 2001 press conference organized by the
fledgling outfit, he proclaimed himself "disappointed." In a
subsequent interview, Plimpton said of them, "They're very
spirited, and I'm all for that . . .. [But] when they busted into
the [Schappell] reading, I lost a lot of respect for them."
One can only imagine how the ULA will react to Wednesday's news
that the Paris Review has awarded Yiyun Li its first-ever
Plimpton Prize, for the best piece of writing in the past year by
a "newcomer." Stay tuned!