 |  |  |  |  |
by Michael Jackman
BECAUSE WRITING IS BEING PROFESSIONALIZED;
Because, as has become the norm in the legal and medical fields,
unorthodox or unordained practitioners are now being excluded,
bureaucratizing the occupation and alienating the public;
Because a well-connected world of licensed writers engenders
self-censorship and *de facto* 'gag orders';
Because necessitating a license to be published opens the way for
indoctrination of those who seek to practice the art;
Because professionalization initiatives push aspirants away from
thinking in their own ways, homogenizes opinion, and divorces craft
from culture;
Because professionalizations enforces *a priori* prejudices of what
'good writing' is;
Because great writers must have courage and commitment, and must
never be frightened that their 'credentials may not come through or
may be revoked;
BECAUSE LITERATURE IS ELITIST;
Because literature is completely out of touch with the reality of
contemporary life;
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;
Because literature has become just a tax deduction, and writing is
synonymous with 'writing off,' mired in the upper class, its stories
reflections of the bourgeoisie, written for readers isolated in
their wonderful homes, who wish to believe that the world is filled
with wonderful things and people;
BECAUSE THE LITERARY ESTABLISHMENT
AIMS TO SQUELCH CONTENTION;
Because the literary lights of big publishing have nothing to be
contentious about -- they're sitting on top of the world;
Because the aim of literature has become to induce complacency, to
narcotize people of conscience, to shout empty cheers for the status
quo;
Because publishing writers on the condition that they not be
polemical is not a matter of style -- some of the best writing ever
being of strong opinion -- but a matter of defanging, castrating,
and lobotomizing writers, and lauding them if they give these
assests voluntarily;
Because this pose is disingenuous, with an army of status quo
adherents comprising an 800-pound gorilla with an AK-47 in one hand
and a baseball bat in the other standing before a pile of vanquished
opponents and asking, "Can't we all just get along?";
Because the literary establishment does indeed have an agenda, and
the first point on that brief is that nobody criticize the agenda;
Because literature does not venture out of its Versailles to see a
world benumbed with pain, with dwindling options, with internment in
slave labor camps a likely possibility, with carcinogenic poisons
all around, facing a ruling class fascinated with eugenics; a world
of crack pipes, whiskey bottles, discarded needles; a hectic
uncooperative world of pushing, shoving, fighting, ego, arrogance,
and anger at the broken promises of this society;
Because literature must confront the evil and corrupt system of
class, greed and exclusion that this country has been based upon
from it's inception;
Because writers should see something wrong and denounce it, find
something foul and speak out, no matter how many friends, jobs, or
cushy endowments it costs them;
BECAUSE STYLE HAS BECOME PRIMARY AND CONVOLUTED;
Because writers have been trained to fear direct vernacular and to
value fancy cleverness -- resulting in linguistic glop that looks
like Latin or Greek to the average reader -- to the point where the
modern novel is like a medieval church where the reader struggles to
comprehend -- like the parishioner of the Middle Ages -- a sermon in
another language;
Because the literary establishment teaches writers to subsume
content to craft, bringing about a world of books that are massed
coagulations of words, reeking of clever construction, but leaving
the reader stranded in a quicksand of verbiage;
Because the literary establishment refuses to let writing take leave
at last of the pristine faculty lounge;
Because febrile imagination is lauded where real experience should
be;
Because literature dwells on the personal, locked into a solipsistic
world of idle navel-gazing;
Because authorial self-love is so engrained that to step out of the
pampered self simply means to write about the inner life of a sofa,
or a dead person, or a talking dog;
Because the literary establishment's writers have become monks in a
sheltered room scribbling esoteric and inscrutable nonsense while
ignoring the real society outside the curtained windows;
Because literature has ceased to seek engagement with the public,
and has transformed the world of literature, like the world of art,
into a place where artistic worth is in direct proportion to
uselessness;
Because literature is a world where words sit in bound folios in
attractive curio cabinets, under glass, apparently valuable but
lifeless without readers;
BECAUSE THE LITERARY ESTABLISHMENT
IS CORRUPT TO THE CORE;
Because literature -- which should have an unflinching eye for truth
-- exists in a back-slapping, incestuous world where billionaires
are given grants;
Because writers -- who must have a commitment to integrity and
conscience -- participate in or neglect to mention a 'go along to
get along' world where fattened pigs feast at the public trough or
guzzle the lees of vast financial syndicates;
Because corruption, cronyism, nepotism, and cowardice are mixed into
a toxic potation that poisons the soul of all who drink from it;
Because, upon disinterested inspection, the account books of major
foundations, government organizations for the arts, and other
financial syndicates looks as well greased as the books of any
criminal enterprise;
Because the disbursement of monies is set up to feed the
over-stuffed and well-connected, and to buy out the consciences of
strong principle authors;
Because the style of contemporary literature lingers over every
fleeting bourgeois neurotic feeling and every stray and fatuous
impression of institutionalized intellectual life;
Because writing has become intellectualism run amok, lost in a foggy
stream of confused gibberish;
Because these insane works are the products of the insane society
where the scions of empire dwell in seamless insane artifice, making
them unable to distinguish between what is and what is not;
Because writers have become addicted to big words and stuffy syntax
that puts the reader into a torpor, to the point where words clog up
the pipes of the mind and produce a deadly sewer gas;
Because literary writers who look at those who live in the real
world and reel away at their degenerated garbage are regarded as
boobs and fascists;
THEREFORE,
We renounce the professionalization of literary craft that has
become part and parcel of the writing world, and will never ask for
a piece of paper to offer fake 'legitimacy' to our efforts;
We renounce the elitism of contemporary literature, and swear not to
ascend the steps of the ivory tower, and to live our lives among
real people;
We renounce the corruption of the literary establishment, and affirm
that we will never drink from the fountain of this putrid temple;
We renounce the lack of contention in literature, and promise to use
our scruples to produce writing that doesn't shrink from the
opportunity to reflect polemically on the miserable state of the
world;
We renounce the muddled style of contemporary literature, and bear
witness that we will speak in clear voices, unfettered by
'cleverness' and intellectual gobbledygook;
We burn our boats behind us, and enter the new world of writing,
which eschews credentials, elitism, corruption, empty ideas of
fellowship, and muddled style.