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North Star, The Port Richmond Star, The Bridesburg Star, The Three Star, The
Girard Home News, and The Art Museum Home News.
Germ to Host Underground Writer's Tour
By Brian Rademaekers
Star Staff Writer
Despite the persistent presence of oddballs attracted to Germ Books, there are a few
nice things that Fishtown residents get for having the weirdo bookstore in their
neighborhood.
For one thing, they have an active storefront along Frankford Avenue, as opposed to the
vastly abandoned stretches of the street farther north that tend to draw blight and crime.
It's also an intimate place to buy decent books by authors who might make it onto a high
school reading list now and then. Then there is the owner, David Williams, who,
though a bit of an oddball himself, is a great guy who owns and maintains a good-size
house in the neighborhood.
But every once in a while, the little bookstore draws in something really great ó
something so off the wall and bizarre that it could only happen at a place like Germ.
That'll be the case next Wednesday. Converging on the newly christened and expanded
store will be a group of firebrand writers known as the Underground Literary Alliance.
Now in its seventh year, the ULA coalition has grown from a cluster of cranky and
dejected writers who got their kicks by ruffling the feathers of the literary elite to a
contingent of cranky and dejected writers with an operational book press. The intended
goal of that book press is not so much to perturb the literary elite, represented by
booksellers like Barnes & Noble and the publishers that populate their shelves, but to
make such establishments obsolete.
IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY!!
The main gripe of ULA writers is that the publishing industry has been come too
profit-oriented, too upper class ó and in effect ó too far removed from the kind of
writing that appeals to most Americans. Books today, they say, aren't judged so much
by what's between the covers, but by how much cash they think they can make from an
author.
They also have a beef with the top echelons of New York City's literary society, which
the ULA sees as the primary hijackers of American literature. For those who pull the
strings that dictate what eventually reaches the nation's bookshelves, who you know
carries more clout than how you write, ULA writers say.
One ULA member even said he made the move to Philadelphia so that he could be
"closer to the heart of the beast."
By setting up their own book press and heading out on book tours like the one that will
stop at Germ on Wednesday, the ULA hopes to give book fans a taste of writing that
hasn't gone through the filter of the modern publishing industry. They also hope to
inspire and attract a new breed of writers who don't want to pander to the market just to
get printed.
In the words of King Wenclas, one of ULA's founders, the movement seeks to
reinvigorate a literary tradition that can appeal to the Jerry Springer demographic
while still retaining deep-seated meaning.
So far, ULA has published books by three authors, Fred Wright, "Crazy" Carl Robinson
and James Nowlan. Next week's event will see Wright and Robinson reading from their
books, with other performances by ULA poet and Philadelphia resident Frank Walsh
and local musician Eric Broomfield, best known on the streets as Jellyboy the Clown.
David Talento, a local experimental musician of the electronic vein, will provide
background music for the readings.
CRUDE? ME? I'M FLATTERED
Wright, who scribed his novel The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus under the pen
name Wred Fright, said the reading at Germ Books is just part of ULA's drive to make
reading and writing books a more grassroots experience.
"People might call us crude, but so be it," said Wright. "It's time for writing to get real."
In Emus, Wright takes readers through the experiences of a college rock band in a raw
and highly comical manner. Written from the view of each band member, the chapters
are broken down into first-person perspectives that read more like diary entries than
flowery prose.
The effect of the untraditional narrative is to make you feel like you are actually talking
to or inside the head of the band members.
It is, as Wright suggests, very real.
And while listening to the ramblings of college-would-be rockers may seem like a
topic unworthy of a book, the scattered dialogue in Emus somehow manages to paint a
complex picture of the ambitions and obstacles faced by the youngsters.
Wright started the book as a "zine," or a short home-made publication that straddles the
border between a book and magazine.
Zines, Wright explains, are by their nature hard to pin down, but they are almost always
cheaply produced and geared toward fringe subjects.
In the case of Emus, Wright spent two years releasing various chunks of the book, both
online and in printout segments that he would mail to fans. Before ULA publisher Jeff
Potter decided to pick up Emus last year, the book had been printed only on Wright's
home computer.
The experiences related within came from the decade he spent flirting with the idea of
making it in the music business. But the idea to put it all down in writing came from his
dissatisfaction with the current state of rock-lit.
HE ROOTS FOR LOSER BANDS
"Every time I read a book about a band, it was about a famous rock star who had
already made it big and had everything he wanted," said Wright. "The experience of
reading those books left me feeling flat, so I gravitated toward writing the zine."
The story that he felt was missing was the more common one, the story of the band that
doesn't make it.
Wright's friend and co-reader on the tour, Carl Robinson, will be reading from his
short novel, titled Fat on the Vine.
Robinson's style is quite a bit darker than Wright's, but he too maintains a grimy sense
of humor in the tradition of no-frills mastermind Charles Bukowski.
Like Wright, Robinson tackles a down-to-earth subject matter, this one surrounding an
overweight drunkard in search of lost love.
Wright and Robinson's penchant for telling stories in a straightforward manner that a
broader scope of the public can relate to is what the ULA is all about, explains
Philadelphia poet Frank Walsh, who is known in the movement as the "Masked
Perfesser."
Walsh said the reading at Germ on Wednesday should appeal to people who feel out of
touch with the current world of literature summed up on the New York Times Best
Seller List.
It should also draw in those who want to relate to others in a way that makes sense.
"We want to give people back the desire to read," said Walsh. "This literature is the
literature of the people, and it'll remind them where they came from. It is going to be a
really great happening, and a great mix of people."
The Underground Literary Alliance book tour will take place at Germ Books, 2005
Frankford Ave., on Wednesday, July 18, at 7 p.m. The event is free.