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by NYTimes Book Review
We know that you already know, but it won’t hurt to make it
painfully clear. The Underground Literary Alliance has once again
proven that it represents nothing but the most rocking and
relevant writing out there.
Proof in point. A New York lawyer named David Orr (note that
he’s a lawyer), who reviews poetry for Poetry Magazine, was given
space in last Sunday’s (Oct. 3, 2004) New York Times Book Review
for a list of the twenty hottest places on the worldwide web to
find digital lit. Why he was given this space, or why the NYTBR
anointed his opinions more sacrosanctly than somebody
else’s—these are anyone’s call. But we of the ULA will tell you
this much: the guy knows what he’s talking about. Thank gawd the
New York Times did not allow an English professor—an “academic,”
as sickly as the term sounds—cull together the list for them.
It would’ve reeked of the cloistered.
(Keep in mind that David Orr selected sites without print
publications, which automatically discluded the NYTBR, McSwineys,
so on—but where was, say, edrants.com? This gave Ed something
special to rant about. Check out the site.)
Orr included reviews of great lit sites such as bookslut.com,
everyonewhosanyone.com, foetry.com, and maudnewton.com. Then,
towards the end of the alphabet:
The Underground Literary Alliance: Karl Marx once said, “Of all
the great inequities of capitalism, perhaps none is so
heartbreaking as the slush pile at Random House.” Fortunately,
the Underground Literary Alliance is here to change all that. Led
by an impresario who goes by the name King Wenclas (like the
Christmas song, only burlier), the rough-and-tumble populists of
the U.L.A. are determined to shatter the snotty New York
publishing scene and bring good ol' two-fisted, hard-working, not-
terribly-well-written fiction back to the masses. Accordingly,
they have caused ruckuses at readings, fired out screeds with
titles like “The Art Revolution vs. Corporate Art” and gotten
into shoving matches with the writer Thomas Beller (the “moody
giant,” in Wenclas's poetic description of the fracas). Do you
hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men?
Whatever that singing crack might mean, we do get the anger
thing. Of course we’re angry. You should be too. Media control
has been pin-holing to the nano-level over the past twenty-five
years. It’s gotten to the point where about ten conglomerates
control about ninety percent of—basically everything. What we’re
allowed to hear and read and be aware of is being dictated to us
by a constantly dwindling number of corporate-cowboys. Raging
against this is a huge part of what the literary activism arm of
the ULA is all about. And even though our webmeister, Yul
Tolbert, doesn’t even have home access to the internet and has to
perform all his webmeister duties at a public library (!), the
ULA message has still gotten through. And there’s a lot more to
come.
The ULA will keep at it. We’ll continue kicking ass and taking
names and searching for voices that are being marginalized by the
soulless conglomerate machinery. Stay tuned to our fanpage
website and watch all the literary action roll.
-Steve Kostecke