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.