Totalitarianism And The Great Masses Fully Roused: Part II

I said I'd return to this post. It wasn't a lie. It's been a while, granted. And just how often I'll return to the subject remains to be seen, I suppose. I'm still fascinated by ideas of power, and the ways in which we willfully submit to power. I find myself submitting, deferring and otherwise overly aggrandizing the powerful all the time. I was meditating on this idea a lot the other day. Why? I get why, but still, why? What I do realize is, though there's merit to everything, once you find yourself in the esteemed position of someone like Malcolm Gladwell your obligation to a certain degree of scruples when disseminating your work is hardly what it was when you first started. You've been vetted. Your opinion carries more weight. You, in turn, are more important in the grand scheme of things. Tremendous. Wonderful. Congratulations, you. You did it.

People will continue to seek the upper echelon. In large part because Nietzsche wasn't wrong. There is a "will to power." I think its manifestations might be more nuanced than the desire for control over everyone and anyone who might try to undermine you, and so who you, in your turn, undermine as a result. In other words, in any scenario someone is going to need to be undermined, and it's up to you to decide whether that's you or that's not you. (It is possible that you'll have no choice at all, depending on your paltry little circumstances or lack thereof.) We're not quite that cynical, are we? On the whole? What I'm saying is we don't necessarily mean to force our own wills on others. It just sort of happens, a lot of the time, at least.

I was listening on the radio when a fragment of information appeared. The host was quizzing people on what wealthier folks are less likely to want to do than the rest of the population. The DJ said as you become wealthier you tend not to be willing to wait in line as much. I only have the anecdotal example of the many cars I see cruising along the shoulder of the highway, and that many of those cars are models that tend to be more expensive. Nevertheless, the notion seemed reasonable to me. My question was, and this the host did not elaborate on at all, are people who are wealthy that way as effect or is this tendency more causal in nature? In other words, do people who don't want to wait in line become more wealthy than the rank and file, and one aspect of this is their willingness to shove their way to the front of the line, probably on the flimsy pretense that someone else would do it if not them? If there is any justifying at all to the process. If it's not anything more than complete and unthinking entitlement. They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and it would seem the annoying patron with little to no social awareness or concern gets the conciliatory deals and compensation. People tend to get what they want, when they're of this mind: that for some reason or another it's what they're owed. That's not to say people don't complain for entirely justifiable reasons, and sometimes complain long and hard, giving the impression while doing so that they were probably driven to this point. I'm thinking of the infamous customer service call that leaked onto the internet last September, during which a man's harangue and the violent expletives included therein lasted for something around eight minutes. Here's a link to it, if you haven't heard it already. But somewhere along the way that carping seems to ring hollow. It seems the recourse of an untrustworthy sort, designed to fool the average you or me, who might hear it and find reasons to sympathize, no?

But it's that sleight of hand, good old misdirection. The masquerade that you're just a guy with a beef.

There's a lot about authority and absurdity out there right now. There's this article, which validates the notion that we tend to value absurd directives over more reasonable directives, because they seem to our thinking to be coming from a place of actual authority. The article is light on a few details I find myself curious about, though this is more or less necessary since there would be no way to objectively measure their presence. It's worth noting, though, that the answer could just be people tend to enjoy tearing stuff apart, when the opportunity is presented to them, when they're effectively told to just go nuts.

I think money and power is a vital theme, to be returned to as often as possible. They certainly go hand in hand in American society. They seem to go hand in hand the world over, too. With the U.S. Supreme Court's unsurprising recent decision to allow money to have even more say in American politics, we're really left with no other option but to conclude that your voice does matter more if you can afford it. That's not a democracy, or maybe more reasonably, we can define our founders' original government as a "constitutional republic." Still better than plutocracy, right? Oligarchy? What we're just about totally embracing these days. I'm not opposed to Scalia retiring. I think that much is obvious. Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas are all encouraged to do the same. You've earned it!

Robert Reich pretty masterfully skewers the popular talking point that the rest of us are simply envious of the wealthy, and that we should just stop being so envious already. It goes back to the great conservative - liberal divide: preserving the community (or, more cynically, the status quo) vs. the idea of universal equality. What the wealthy ought to remember is, actually, most people are fine not having what they have. Just because you spent your life maintaining or acquiring a fortune doesn't mean the rest of us desire that at all, or even a fraction of that. Certainly everybody desires the same right to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." All three of which seem to be getting more and more difficult, not easier. (And when we're talking totalitarianism, it completely freaks me out because it's weary economic times like these, with a population under-educated and over-worked when the forces of totalitarianism are at their most viable.)

Plus the Boston Review's Claude S. Fischer has a great counterpoint to some seriously frustrating / obnoxious perspective from Harvard professor Gregory Mankiw. I think in Mankiw's "Panglossed perspective" of the so-called agreement between employers and labor, we see a perfect illustration of the ideological hold neo-liberal thought has on the greater academic world of economic theory. I will say, just as I think the humanities breed a more left-leaning belief system, economics breed a more conservative one. I'll also be forced to note the apparent monetary incentive for such beliefs, too. I mean, it's a smidgen intellectually dishonest, and I have to believe Mankiw knows this (isn't that deluded), to suggest that employers and laborers are equal players in deciding what a fair rate for the laborer's labors is (tongue-tied after writing that one, myself). Power would dictate without an intermediary like the government, and power would favor those with money (because they're effectively one and the same, as has been said before, I think). Workers could come together and unionize, but with the way unions have been so successfully maligned in the US over the past fifty years, it seems unlikely that's something that would get a lot of traction. Government is the last friend (and evidently a growing enemy, or at least impediment) of the average laborer, in my frank opinion.

I'll leave you with THIS LINK. My favorite "Shouts & Murmurs" piece in a mighty long time.

Speaking of Editing: The Latest SmokeLong Quarterly

I had a great time interviewing Bezalel Stern for SmokeLong Quarterly's latest issue, 43. You should check it out. It's a wonderful publication and I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to guest edit, so thanks once again to the whole SmokeLong staff for giving me that opportunity.

I should also mention the awesome dude Ryan Werner has a piece in the latest issue, which you ought to check out as well. It's called "If There's Any Truth In A Northbound Train." Great title, I say. I had the wonderful opportunity to finally meet Ryan Werner during his trip to Chicago last Friday. He put together a reading that I participated in with my friend and Artifice head honcho, Peter Jurmu. It was at the Church of Templehead down in Pilsen. We talked DIY and the indie publishing realm, too. A lot of fun!

Taking on Fiction Editor Duties at Another Chicago Magazine

Hey all,

Happy to report, for the first time reporting on anything around these parts in a few months, that I'm the new fiction editor at Another Chicago Magazine. Can't say enough about how excited I am for this opportunity (although I tried over on the ACM blog -- Here) (many, many thanks to Caroline Eick Kasner, ACM's managing editor, for inviting me to join her staff). Another Chicago Magazine has been around and great for going on 40 years and it's just such an honor to be a part of this tradition.

Anyway, enough gushing. I want to read your stories, so send them to me. Please? Another Chicago Magazine is open. I'd be remiss not to mention the 3 dollar submission fee. I hadn't realized this before but Submittable's costs for a yearly membership seem to me increasingly exorbitant (despite the wonderful features they offer and the discount they extend to non-profit creative efforts like ACM). To have a fully functioning staff that can handle the volume of submissions ACM receives we need the money, I'm afraid. Know this, though, I take reading your submissions seriously and they'll get a fair and honest look (in more cases than not by both myself and another reader, at bare minimum), if not necessarily any personalized feedback.

Parabolic Turns

I like absurdist shit. Here's some absurdist shit I wrote awhile back. I posted it on Fictionaut, too, because I can post whatever I like there, here, everywhere that's here and there.


Parbolic Turns

There was a man dressed in stately attire. His name was Abacus, which maybe you find strange, but then keep this in mind: it is, after all, just a name.

He was eating a sloppy sandwich. It was probably brimming with meatballs, because he often ordered extra meatballs when he would order a meatball sandwich.

Occasionally, very occasionally, he would spill a meatball onto the ground where a scavenging city creature, a squirrel, a pigeon, perhaps even a rat, could get to it and be rather well fed. But he was usually very careful to make sure the entirety of the sandwich (all of the meatballs and everything) ended up in precisely the spot it belonged -- his mouth.

A spirited fellow chimed in, once, at the midpoint of Abacus' career, “Sir! I wanted to inform you, because I worry about the environment, sir, that you have in fact spilt a lot of what you are eating onto the ground. That is called littering. I hope you understand that I only mean well in calling you out about your littering. I want what's best for the world at large.”

“Most of what I've spilled is edible. The rest is wrappers that make up so little of the harm we do to our environment,” Abacus replied.

But the spirited fellow was vehement and persisted. “Sir, I must insist you clean up after yourself. I'm doing this for the environment. I don't want anything bad to happen to the environment. Ever. I want it never to happen.”

“Leave me alone. I'll discard my trash wherever I've trash to be discarded, even if that's not in a proper receptacle.” Abacus defied the spirited fellow. He noted the man's spiritedness but downplayed it by noting that he, Abacus, was indeed far more stately dressed.

“Then I should be the one to stop you.” And at that the spirited fellow and Abacus had a terrible row, till finally the spirited fellow's face was smashed with a rock, and he ran off cowering in pain. Abacus was somewhat relieved to have beaten his determined opponent. The spirited fellow's tie was blue, like that of a peasant. Abacus would remember it.

Later, many months later, Abacus was walking near an intersection where he was surprised to see a car crashing -- an odd parabolic turn leading its driver to hit and dislodge a fire hydrant, water from the hydrant become a geyser like you'll see in films. Abacus' dropped his trash on the ground, surprised. He thought about bending over to retrieve his trash but then decided he would not.

“I am back, sir. Good sir,” said that spirited fellow with the blue tie. He was wearing a cast on his arm from what Abacus assumed was an unrelated injury. “I'm for round two. Are you, sir? Are you going to pick up that trash?”

“You're trash!” Abacus shouted, proceeding to beat the man with an incidental log he'd found near his littered trash.

There would not be a “round three,” because this time Abacus beat the spirited fellow to death, strangling him with his blue tie for good if horrible measure. It was never discovered that Abacus was the murderer, though the spirited fellow's corpse was eventually found and reported to the authorities.

A poem

Gritty truth, human, you human, too human.
You are the king, queen, you are the knave.
Stalin dances on a coffee mug: no.
Y the dance.

Two dragons embrace, they cry.
I M BITING TO THE BEAT
Tigers grinning moanfully
Meatastic, you human
yuman

To the dogs go the spoils
bible smuggling, the other white meat
shoot me so I can never stop

I'm Trying to Jinx Myself

I've had a great run so far as a writer of fiction and other weirdo stuff. I'm really glad for it. It's a great outlet, this writing stuff is. I'm happiest when it feels most natural, and happily -- most of the time -- it feels very natural. I'm also happy for the places I've been accepted for publication. I want to acknowledge that first and foremost, so I don't sound to whiny here in a second (though I know I'll sound whiny, and that's no one's fault but my own). I've had a ton of success publishing my stories. I'm really proud of that fact. HOWEVER, there's one realm I can't seem to break into. I'm sure we all have our "targets," those of us who write and submit work. Mine of late (that is, for the past two and a half years or so) have been literary publications associated with MFA programs. Usually they're amazing! The ones I like definitely are. And so I can see how exclusionary this necessarily leads them to be, how exceptional the work must be. But still, with all that taken into consideration, I'm humbled by my lack of success. While I've had hundreds of stories accepted over the past four years, only one has been published by a literary magazine associated with an MFA program (Booth Journal, which I highly recommend you read, by the way). Yes, poor me. Pity me! No, I know. Obviously, no one should do that. Don't pity me in the slightest. I have nothing to complain about. And yet, here I sit, typing out a pretty obvious complaint.

I guess the difference is, I don't expect anyone to coddle me (certainly in the wake of a rejection, I feel a good deal of outrage -- but I know that's my problem. What's more, eventually the feeling abates and I'm rational again). It's just stunning, the lack of success. I'm really impressed by my failure at this point. I suppose that's where I'm going with this, the positive spin I intend to make. Here is a complete list of the MFA literary journals I was rejected by last year alone: Washington Square Review, Whiskey Island, Moon City Review, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, The Journal, West Branch, Emerson Review, Devil's Lake, Superstition Review, Diagram, Quarterly West, LIT, Puerto del Sol, Ghost Town, Barnstorm, Redivider, The Minnesota Review, The Cincinnati Review, Bat City Review, AGNI, Phoebe, Beecher's Magazine, Noctua Review, Eleven Eleven, The Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, MAP Literary Journal, Gulf Coast, Cutbank Literary Journal, Passages North and Fence. And that was just last year. It's a bit liberating to write them all out like this. I might be forgetting a few. I know I submitted multiple times to quite a few on this list, so this list will need to be multiplied by number of times submitted and number of submissions each time (I send flash and prose poetry!). By my count, thirty-two separate places. Granted, they're thirty-two of the most revered publications that publish literature in the country. And in case you're wondering, yes, I've read pieces -- if not entire issues -- from each and every one. Something drew me to each one of them (I try not to just send my work out in rapid fire). (I should also mention several have been very kind with personalized rejections that give me that nagging hope that some day something could change.)

So ultimately, my hope is that this jinxes me. That one of the places listed finally caves to my undaunted, stupid will, which I expect in time will happen, and I finally can be published in an academic literary journal (other than Booth Journal, which again is awesome, don't misunderstand me). Thank you.

UPDATE (1/23/14): Green Mountains Review rejected me yesterday. The streak continues!

Saying Goodbye to 2013 and Hello to 2014 -- Things Worthy of Checking Out

Firstly, a note from our sponsor that's written by me and goes as follows: I use Grammarly's plagiarism checker because sometimes it's the robotic, objective eye of an internet web-based program that can be the best friend to your writing, and sometimes it takes that kind of robotic and objective eye to tell you what others can't (i.e. your work "has flaws" or plainly "sucks" -- though Grammarly won't literally say your work sucks; that you will need to infer (I myself have gotten quite good at inferring such things)). 

Honestly, I've used Grammarly on a trial basis, pasted in some stories I wanted to have someone look at, and I was really pleased with the results. I consider it a good thing and encourage your considering it as well. 

Now moving on: 

I think 2013 was a good year for writing and reading.

Tenth of December arrived and was what I hoped it would be, even being nominated for a National Book Award. You can see more of what I read and what I thought of it here. That's a link to TNBBC blog, a blog I become acquainted with in 2013 and highly recommend you read. Lori Hettler runs it and runs very well, if I may say so.

I didn't finish as many books as I set out to read (I read 24 of a planned 40, according to Goodreads). I did start quite a few, thoug, for whatever that's worth. In the place of books (i.e. poetry and short story collections and novels), I have discovered the joys of a great many literary magazines, and here, to name some: Whiskey Island, Unstuck, Caketrain, Salt Hill Journal, Mid-American Review, Sleepingfish, The Lifted Brow and Black Warrior Review. All are places I'd love to see my own work published, but even if it never finds a home at any of these journals / reviews / magazines, I'll at least have the pleasure of reading them. That's plenty. I encourage you to check them all out.

I've decided in 2014 I'm going to read 50 books. To do so, I'll have to finally finish all the books I started in 2013, which I believe I can do. What's more I want to,  I want to be a more proactive reader of novels and that sort of thing.

A book I'm excited for this coming year is Bark: Stories by Lorrie Moore (it'll be out in February). I hope I don't have to explain why, but ok, I will. Because it's Lorrie Moore. Looooooorie Moore. She's great? Ever read her? Like her? Yes! Don't like her? What's the matter with you? Stop it. Self-Help is awesome. She is one of the great short story writers of our time, dammit.

Anyway, I think you should also be aware one of the great poets of our time, James Tate, has a few poems in the latest issue of NOÖ Weekly. What are you waiting for?