What David Berman Said

When the ULA (Underground Literary Alliance) was fighting the literary establishment ten years ago, they didn’t know how to handle us. They couldn’t handle our credibility, our honesty, and the strength of our arguments. They were so badly losing on every point in the intellectual debate, they’d grasp at any occasion when it seemed one of their number scored a point.

Such was it with my e-mail exchange with David Berman, which Thomas Beller spotlighted in his 12/13/12 “River of Berman” essay for Tablet magazine. Like every other status quo writer discussing the ULA, Thomas Beller gives a false presentation.

In his essay, Beller quotes from part of this email from David Berman to me:

 “Look King, if you're going to be so civil about this then
disregard my first letter. I thought you were hot-headed
assholes looking for a fight. I got more projects than I can
handle now but I was willing to drop them all
for a good old fashion ass-kicking contest, not some fancy
symposium with wine and cheese. Obviously I'm talking to the
wrong guy. Who's the head asshole over there?

Tell him to call me,

David Berman”

Thomas Beller considers this dealing with the ULA “gracefully and usefully.”

There’s not a gram of honesty in Berman’s remark, and it has little connection with anything I said. Berman is being intentionally snarky, that’s all. He’s not serious about the “relevance read-off” he’d proposed and he’d never been serious about it. His retort is more on the order of a small child running up, yelling a putdown then quickly running away.  For some reason, Beller and others were impressed by Berman’s remark—given out of context. It was one out of a series of exchanges I had with him. The end result was that David Berman backed out of the read-off, though we proposed a number of venues. We, in fact, had a “Relevance Read-off” anyway a few months later, without David Berman, in Chicago—though we would’ve included him or anyone from Open City right up to the last minute.

Why does Thomas Beller admire this behavior? There’s nothing admirable in it. Berman challenged the ULA, on behalf of Beller’s mag Open City—then he never followed through on it. So what was the point? It exposed THEM as frauds, not us.  Here, by the way, is David Berman’s initial email to me on the topic. Note that it’s semi-coherent and disingenuous. Graceful? Useful? I wonder why Thomas Beller doesn’t reprint this email?

“My name's David Berman, I wrote a book of poems for open city
and heard about you folks from Joanna Yas. I've checked out
your website and agree with a lot of what I see. Moody sucks
and he's rich and its a crime he got a grant. McSweeneys is
fueled by a lot of arrogant nerds (who i count as a more
insidious demographic than standard issue elitists) and open
city published too much euro trash. Yet, i really believe these
people are not the enemy. they actually publish blind
submissions. Its the fusty old journals who wont give a young
writer an even break. i stopped submitting along time ago to
paris review etc. because i cant stand rejection. So i offer
you a challenge. you have seven guys or so on your committee.
select your best writer and i will read against him at your
venue. i will represent open city and paint my face our team
colors your guy paints his face your team colors. after the
reading we will pass out a ballot to the audience they will
vote for which reader fulfills your criteria for good writing.
It will be based on YOUR CRITERIA so you start out with an
advantage. how about it?

sincerely david berman”