Monday, May 16, 2005

Literature's "It" Couple

No, I'm not talking about the two establishment nerds being hyped by stodgy behind-the-times magazines like New York; pet birds in a gilded cage. I mean instead the ULA's Bernice Mullins and Noah Cicero. No refined safe academy-corporate creations they! Noah and Bernice are the look and voice of the REAL America today. They each have a story in the ULA's new "Slush Pile" album-- gritty bitter heartland writing penned in dives and alleyways.

Bernice's entry is unbearably strong, standing out in a collection of tough backbeat-driven tales which remove in total the phony gloss the glitterati have put on the world. Noah's is good also. (He's better in his new novel, where he seems to be creating-- as are other young writers like Urban Hermitt and Emerson Dameron-- a new literary genre. More about that later.)

The established system doesn't know how to take the ULA. Literature has never seen anything like it. I suggest plunging into ULA excitement-- accepting it and enjoying it. Change has become fact. The Underground Literary Alliance is the center of the new literary universe.

4 comments:

Jeff Potter said...

King refers to Noah and Bernice's hot stories in the new 80-page "Slush Pile #4" now available with a click at the ULA's LiteraryRevolution.com website ($4, postpaid). Yeah, their impact is awesome.They stand alone, yet their work also meshes amazingly. Very strong, with the impact of body-blows.

Jeff Potter said...

N + B deserve all the attention here, on this thread.

But I have to remark about another kind of lit-pairing I overhead on NPR's "Next [NOT] Big Thing" last night: Cintra Wilson and Rick Moody. Ouch! Mostly it was Cintra who hurt my ears. Rick let fly with the 'big thing' clinker that he liked Nirvana before they were popular. But Cintra is a painful person to hear. I bet her writing drips with irony. She could hardly speak due to it! It was like a speech impediment. She gave so many of her words that achingly arch, drippingly false, mis-beat emphasis that she sometimes sounded literally retarded. Irony and cocktail-party affect has turned her mind to mush! ---Her "big thing" was how free Salon was compared to the slicks. Passe'!

The ULA needs to start webcasting some radio... Get a mic for King! We'll show you the Next Big Thing all right!

King Wenclas said...

Right now my voice is heard only by the people I call on my evening telemarketing job. . . .
Re: NPR. Our tax dollars at work? Isn't NPR supposed to present an ALTERNATIVE to the corporate world?
Instead they merely recycle the same super-rich establishment stooges.
I've seen the person in question read, and he sucks. The ULA contains many who are far better, from Jack Saunders to Lisa Falour to Frank Walsh to Wild Bill, and on and on, great voices all-- the authentic sound of America; roots writers who should be on the radio.

King Wenclas said...

National Public Radio, by hyping aristiocratic writers representing a corrupt past, shows it self to be at best a joke; at worst, a total sham.
But that's okay. To have on ULA writers would inject too much truth and excitement into their enervated airwaves-- a new experience for them that would be unfailiar and potentially upsetting. They're best off being safe and irrelevant.