The Reality Beneath

The main problem with the McSweeney’s outfit, and with the officially approved U.S. literary scene in general, is that we the public never see the reality beneath the happy face. Are all McSweeneyites truly so happy and blank-minded?

All we see is the happy face.

There’s no human reality presented. We’re asked to believe that McSweeneysville consists of all these happy and wonderful and empty-headed people doing so many wonderful things all the time with never a trace or whispered hint or possibility, ever, of disappointment or disagreement between them, any of them, or at anything with their world which is always wonderful even the poor because they’re grateful because they’re being helped and aided to become fellow blank-minded happy people just like the wonderful folks at McSweeney’s!

But are all McSweeneyites truly happy?

Is sidekick the Ogre despite his mammoth amounts of money ever the sidekick truly happy?

Is Stephen Elliott having compromised his principles to become an earthy but still basically satisfied uncomplaining McSweeneyite truly happy?

Are second fiddles Ben and Heidi destined forever to be secondary never primary truly happy?

Are there never divides? Ever? No disagreements?

Has every one of the McSweeney’s nation been lobotomized?

Say this about the Underground Literary Alliance: We represented human disagreement. Among ourselves as well as against the entire world we were always fighting. Bitter or explosive defections from first day to last because after all we were bitter and bitterly flawed fucked-up bitterly human human beings and we represented and presented and lived bitter tough sometimes angry human reality.

With McSweeney’s all we get is the happy face.

The Truth About McSweeney’s

The truth about the McSweeney’s Gang is that none of them is is very bright. Their ideas about literature are backward. Their intellectual capabilities are missing. Their best advocates, allies like Tom Bissell and Jonathan Lethem, are terrified at the prospect of engaging a smart opponent in debate. Their leaders, Dave Eggers, Heidi Julavits and Company, exist behind a smokescreen of pose and affirmation. The entire structure is bluff.

This Is Your Brain

This is your brain on McSweeneys.

The McSweeneys Gang by King Wenclas is a satirical history and a new e-book. Look for it at Kindle or Nook.

Why Did Eggers Relocate?

This is a question touched on only briefly in my new e-novel, The McSweeneys Gang. Why did Dave Eggers move his base of operations to San Francisco from New York City?

One can speculate that there were too many uncontrollable, independent-minded journalists in NYC. Eggers couldn’t control the city’s literary scene. His history indicates that he dislikes contention, disagreement, and debate. His entire philosophy stands against the notion of literary contention and debate. His solution is either to remove himself from such possibilities, or take out such opponents as he’s able to, as he more or less did with the ULA.

But as Mohamed Morsi may be finding out, one can’t remove oneself forever from democracy and debate, except by becoming a dictator. Disagreement will eventually reawaken. It will follow Eggers even to his protected city. Ideas and freedom have ways of seeping their way in through tiny cracks of the strongest fortress. Possibly even into a monothink operation like McSweeney’s.

What’s the Truth?

Which side tells the truth? Which side lies?

Who was telling the truth all along: the Underground Literary Alliance or McSweeney’s?

The Believer Books reprinted the Tom Bissell essay about the ULA was an affirmation of their support of the original story. They in effect said, “This is the truth.”

I have the obligation to challenge that affirmation, and I have challenged it, pointing out in numerous blog posts the essay’s deceit and fundamental dishonesty. Will the Believer people now defend the essay? Anybody? Hello?

They published the essay. I didn’t. It’s incumbent upon the McSweeney’s Gang to show their belief in intellectual debate. To prove they’re not simply a pose; a pseudo-intellectual facade, stage scenery with nothing behind it.