Fight This Generation

Seven years in, the Underground Literary Alliance is regrouping.

by Elisa Ludwig

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Published: Apr 17, 2007

For a group that denounces the mainstream publishing industry, the Underground Literary Alliance (ULA) certainly enjoys basking in media attention. As publicity director Karl "King" Wenclas speaks proudly of the group's accomplishments, a comma-like glint lights his blue eyes. The longtime zine writer and mostly self-educated agitator has been stirring up trouble among the literary elite since he helped found the collective of scrappy outsider writers in 2000.

STAGGERING GENIUS? Karl "King" Wenclas and the ULA have initiated puzzling and sometimes comical feuds with writers like Dave Eggers and Rick Moody.

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"We've been trying to revive literature because the caretakers are dropping the ball," he says. "We're making literary history and having fun while doing it."

The fun has included crashing readings, staging public debates with prominent editors, and initiating puzzling and sometimes comical feuds with writers like Dave Eggers and Rick Moody. As a result, the group got a lot of attention, particularly in New York media, during the first few years of its existence. ULA tactics, usually accompanied by bold-colored fliers written in thick black marker, are reliably dramatic, even when the utility of protesting mild-mannered writers seems questionable.

But in 2004, he says, the national organization hit a "flat spot." He doesn't want to go into the details, but he says there were problems, mainly with the quality of some ULA members' writing.

Recently, the group has reorganized, resolved some of its internal disputes and recruited new members like Jessica (Disobedience) Wilbur — a zine writer who is moving to Philly this summer to get more involved. The ULA has even released two books on its own imprint, Security by James Nowlan and The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus by Wred Fright. A recent blog post from England's Guardian that mentioned the ULA alongside literary journals McSweeney's and n + 1 has been especially invigorating.

This week, the new and improved ULA presents a reading at the aptly named Underground in West Philly. One reader is Frank Walsh, a local lit-scene fixture for the past 30 years. He's been called one of the greatest living poets, Wenclas says. By whom, he can't remember. But he will challenge anyone to face Walsh in one of the group's competitive "read-offs."

"No one can beat this guy," Wenclas says. "Nobody's as good as we are at performing."

Walsh has an oddly circular way of talking, as if he is channeling poetry in real time. I ask if ULA's guerrilla tactics are a gimmick to draw attention to members' work. He says, "When it's received by the mainstream or the powers that be, you know, because what is familiar to them, based on perception, we're opposition. The Taoists say opposing oppression is the same thing as being oppressed, so we're basically just defending free thinking. The market has tried to replace those traditional, futuristic and adaptable principles with abstractions so that fantasy has taken the place of imagination."

The other reader is Eric "Jelly Boy the Clown" Broomfield, singer of local band Hydrogen Jukebox. Broomfield is also a sideshow performer who, when he's not swallowing swords, eating fire or inserting drills into his nostrils, chronicles his adventures in what Wenclas calls "Kerouac-style" prose. He met Wenclas and the gang through the Carnivolution events he holds at the Tiberino Museum in West Philly, and he has found the association to be a positive one.

"It's hard to get your voice out into the world if you don't have the right degree or know the right people," Broomfield says. "The ULA isn't exclusive. Anyone who wants to show up and express themselves can do it."

With their eccentricities and populist ideals, writers like Broomfield and Walsh are the ULA's biggest weapon in the war on elitism. They emphasize performance and excitement over literary correctness, voice and personality over technique. Wenclas acknowledges that underground writing is, by its very nature, crude — Security, for example, comes with a back-cover disclaimer: "This book is published with raw typos, adding to an edginess that MFA-ish literati always fail to capture with their attempts at typographic innovation." But Wenclas says that even without the resources of a major media conglomerate, any ULA writer can hold their own against the "big guys."

"Would Francine Prose really sell a zine without the establishment to back her? I don't think so," says Wenclas. "We're coming from the tradition of Allen Ginsberg, who hurled potato salad at his professors."

What about the critics who've said ULA was actually hurling sour grapes? They've got it wrong, Wenclas says. In fact, he turned down the opportunity to review books for BookForum rather than "bend over and take it" from an editor. The fact is, he'd rather write zines and scrape by for Xerox money for the rest of his life than achieve an inauthentic "success" underwritten by a corporation.

Still, with their new books and their Guardian name-check, you'd think that the ULA could afford to soften its revolutionary stance. Wrong again. Last month, the organization got into a tussle outside the New York Times building where they'd set up a table. "We were just handing out fliers," Wenclas says. "Then these security guards came out and one just grabbed the table and I ended up on the ground, wrestling him for it."

(e_ludwig@citypaper.net)

Frank Walsh, Eric Broomfield, Toussaint St. Negritude, Yarrow Regan, Mark Sonnenfeld, Lawrence Richette, Steve & Kingsley, Supercam and Duretee Focus from Mighty Paradocs, plus more. Sun., April 22, 3 p.m., free, The Underground, Spruce and 40th sts., www.literaryrevolution.com.

 

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