BEACONWAY PRESS PRESENTS THE JOLLY ROGER
FLAGSHIP OF THE FASTEST-SAILING LITERARY MOVEMENT
ON THE SEVEN CYBER-SEAS
THE JOLLY ROGER: VOLUME 1, ISSUE 9, MAY 15th,1995
Welcome aboard the fastest-sailing literary vessel on the seven
cyber-seas. The conservative literary revolution is well under way,
and we're glad to have you on deck! While the liberal vessels are tacking against the
truth, we're running down-wind to deliver the New Literature. We wish
y'all good luck on your exams, for those that have 'em!
JOLLY ROGER CARGO CONTENTS
1. Responses to Our Interview With Suzie Greenberg at St. Martin's Press!
The best response we received was the actual manuscript for Elliot's, The
Drake Raft Field Trip. After its eight month hiatus at St. Martin's,
they finally sent it back. Suzie forgot to include Drake's book of poems
in the return package-- probably because she knows it's going to be a
collector's item. We believe that Suzie received wind of the publication
of her Beaconway interview, as no pains were taken to include the standard polite
rejection letter. It just goes to show the far reaches of The Jolly
Roger-- we've been sighted in liberal harbors in New York. --By Drake Raft
2. "Catcher in the Rye of the Grunge Generation" UPDATE! Ahoy there!
Any time the liberal machine compares a book to, The Catcher in the Rye,
we'll let you know, and we'll also let you know why the book is nothing
like it. Russel Banks, my old creative writing teacher from Princeton,
who used to enjoy telling us about his royalties from the Miami-Vice screenplays
he's written, has come out with his rendition of the MTV generation in,
Rule of the Bone. His liberal friends at the NYT Book review have dubbed
it a cross between, The Catcher in the Rye and, Huckleberry Finn.
Don't be fooled. What's going on here is that Russel Bank's work isn't
good enough to inspire people to read, so the liberals have to try to fool
ya into buying the novel. Don't-- just read our insightful review, if
you're looking for words that entertain. --By Becket Knottingham
3. Readers Respond. Thank you people! Keep the feedback coming in! We
love to hear your ideas, thoughts, and philosophies on everything! Let
us know how we're doing, and what you'd like to see more of! Send a
message to mcgucken@physics.unc.edu!
1. Responses to Our Interview With Suzie Greenberg at St. Martin's Press!
--by Drake Raft
It's fun to watch on as the liberal dope-fiends on
alt.society.generation-x (ASGX) become addicted to the truth, but it's
getting kind of boring watching what they do with it. They're studying
us, but in the way they were trained by socialists and feminists. Our
posts are by far the most popular on the ASGX news group-- I mean hey, all
we do is post one every two weeks or so, and when we check back in, our
post has spawned about fifty responses filled death threats and other
liberal reactions to truth. I'm not kidding folks-- there are young men
and women on ASGX applying all that they have learned in their women's studies
courses, and elaborating on how they're going to torture us, by doing
things to certain parts of our anatomy. We won't waste any space here
with the details, and risk marring the civil reputation of this journal,
but let us just say that you can be sure they've all diligently read Joyce
Carol Oate's, Girl Gang. Their hate-speech makes Pulp Fiction look like
Sesame Street, but hey, that was the only type of speech that liberally
dominated pop-culture and academia taught my generation. So unless you
were like me, and read the great books on your own at night, or tuned into
Rush, you're out of luck, and your mind is mired in the profane.
There was one letter on ASGX last week which I would like to share
with you. You'll recall that our issue last week was devoted to an
interview that probed the literary ideals of a young editor at St.
Martin's Press. Here's the letter, from another source inside St.
Martin's:
WRITTEN TO SOMEBODY ON alt.society.generation-x
I worked for St. Martin's Press. What amused me was the way
(Elliot)
gradually turned the conversation around, slowly and subtly, to talking
about his own manuscript. I was also amused that, yes, because she
thought he was from Details, she didn't argue with anything he said-- no
matter how outlandish.
I am well aware of the pressures of editing at a major house,
but I am also painfully aware of how the "bottom line" has taken more and
more of the editor's perogative away (assuming, of course, that the editor
in question does in fact have a spine), and put publishing decisions
rather firmly in the hands of the business managers. Far from a "liberal
conspiracy," the world of corporate publishing tends to be dominated by
small-minded, conservative, business-people. (IT GETS BETTER!)
So I also thought that Elliot was unintentionally amusing in
his:
a) disbelief that any one could blow off his "Great Work," b) dogged
persistence, and c) assumption that right-wing wonks like Rush Limbaugh
would ever help change publishing for the better.
The Limbaughs of the world wouldn't exist in print (or on TV)
were
it not for the profit-over-substance mentality that dominates intellectual
life in this country. Schlock still sells. I have much more to say on
this subject, but no time to say it right now.
* * *
How's that for liberal arrogance! The publishing industry
would prefer to be more substance-oriented, but the people it works
for, the people of the United States, are too stupid to appreciate it,
so they have to give the people Rush Limbaugh instead! Notice the writer
can't refute a single point Rush has ever made, for he has not educated
himself of any. And no, schlock doesn't sell, which is why nobody will
buy Russel Banks' book, except for maybe a few members of the
cultural-elite-idiot-club. Now that new avenues of media and
communication are opening up, liberals are finding out that their
superficial crap can't compete with the Truth in a free market, and
that's why they're freaking, because it's all they have the liberal
machine set up for-- liberal shlock. But the thing is, their
arrogance won't let 'em see it. And hey-- we don't care.
That's why the torch of Great Literature has been passed on
to Beaconway Press, and we're proud to pass it on to you-- the sober,
rational, thinking people who make this country great, and life worth
writing about.
2. "Catcher in the Rye of the Grunge Generation UPDATE!
--By Becket Knottingham
Well the liberal boomers are at it again. In the last issue, you'll
recall that Suzie Greenberg, a young editor at St. Martin's Press, said in
her exclusive Beaconway Interview that, "it's not like publishers are
looking for fifty-year-olds and then getting them to write Generation-X
Books."
Hell yeah they are.
Russel Banks has just come out with the latest "Slacker" novel, The Rule
of The Bone. It got dubbed a cross between, The Catcher in the Rye,
and, Huckleberry Finn in last Sunday's NYT Book review, on the front
page. I wonder if Russel Banks is insulted? For an artist takes pride in
the uniqueness of his vision and the uniqueness of his ability to render
it. Thus to be compared to another is not a compliment. To be compared to
a combination of two is an even greater insult. Who was Salinger compared
to? Who was Twain compared to? Who was Shakespeare compared to? Who was
Beethoven compared to? Who is Michael Jordan compared to? Who is Rush
compared to, other than God,sometimes? The reviewer states, "In his novel,
Russel Banks has returned to the source of sources and reinvented
Huckleberry Finn." Here he's accusing Russel Banks of reinventing the
wheel. But hey-- it's the liberals' desperate way of attempting to sell
books in the industry that has collapsed under their intellectually
pernicious ideology. Drugs mix a lot better with rock'n roll than they do
with literature.
The funny thing in the review was that the reviewer said that the novel
invites comparison with, The Catcher in the Rye, because, "Chappee is
more generic and less funny than Holden Caufield." He then goes on to say
that, "Mr. Banks also falls short of Mr. Salinger's artistry in filtering
acute psychological observation through vernacular distortion." In other
words, compared to Salinger, Banks sucks. But this is funny-- here the NYT
Book review emblazons on the cover that Mr. Banks' Novel is the new
Catcher in the Rye, and inside the review we find it is compared to The Catcher in the Rye because it is nothing like it. Welcome to the liberal
literary machine, folks. The Turth does not exist, and it's a good thing
they did away with it, as it takes the pressure off.
So anyway-- I biked over to the local book shop to check out who was
endorsing the novel on the cover-- it's always cool to see. I thought it
might be Toni Morrison, because she teaches at Princeton too. Sure enough,
her name was on the back cover, but she wasn't endorsing it. Cornel West
was, which made sense-- he's that Afro-American studies dude from
Princeton who recently took off to Harvard. Being a liberal academic, it
follows that by definition he must be an expert on the soul of
Generation-X, as well as all literature pertaining to it. On the cover flap
Cornel says, "Like our living literary giants, Toni Morrison and Thomas
Pynchon, Russel Banks is a great writer wrestling with the hidden secrets
and explosive realities of this country. In the Rule of the Bone, he
corageously explores the frightening new world of American young people."
Well I agree Cornel-- it is frightening growing up in a world where
liberals have a stranglehold on pop-culture, and thankfully that's all
coming to an end with the advent of www.jollyroger.com. We're going to
defend the soul of this generation against big-word wielding, condom
distributing liberal boomers such as yourself-- 'til death does us apart.
The novel is all downhill from the colorful cover and vibrant endorsement.
On the first page Russel presents the liberal boomer version of us-- a
fourteen-year-old named Chappee whose, "life got interesting when I
discovered weed." Liberals can deal with that-- one more dependable
CD-purchaser on their way to needing their government drug programs. It's
cute, and of course, he's just a kid that Newt Gingrich is out to starve--
no wonder he tokes up.
Every now and then, to give the reader a wink, Mr. Banks inserts a "like,"
or a "dude." But this wink comes across as a kick. It's not too long until
he blows his cover and has his fourteen-year-old grunge protagonist say,
"Then I felt the long arm of the law so to speak." Now "like" is my
generation's version of "so to speak" and we have disposed with the
latter, having found a far more economical term for the sentiment. A
contemprorary teen-ager would say, "Then I felt like the long arm of the
law." A liberal boomer creative-writing teacher at Princeton would say,
"Then I felt the long arm of the law so to speak." A fourteen-year-old
would refrain from saying it in this manner, for at that age one tends to
value the opinions of one's peers, and Chappee would not want to be
considered a fairy. This we know because Mr. Banks gave him a mohawk. Mr.
T and Billy Idol were eighties phenomena, but Mr. Banks prides his
knowledge of history far too much to let this opportunity go. Also, Mr.
Banks fails to realize that because my generation has found a far more
economical term for "so to speak" in the word "like," we use it far more
often than his character does. When "like" shows up once every three
pages, the reader is alerted to the formula being used in the placement of
the word, and the significance of the work is lost, for the reader has
discovered the author's subterfuges, and is too busy being annoyed by them
to grasp the content. But Russel Banks can afford such transgressions at
no expense to his literature.
He has Chappee watch MTV every seven pages, on schedule, but never does
he tell the reader what Chappee sees. You don't know if it's Sand Blast,
or Headbangers Ball, or Yo MTV Raps, or Beavis and Butthead. Does Chappee
like, "The Real World?" He also keeps Chappee's favorite bands a secret
from the reader, but the reader does not care. Chappee hears Megadeth
once, when he's hanging out with the biker gang he joined, but we do not
know if he appreciates their talents. I wonder how many Megadeth albums
Mr. Banks owns-- probably an amount equal in number to the biker gangs
he's been a member of.
We like to know what bands Beavis and Butthead think are cool and which
they think suck, because we know who they are. Beavis and Butthead have
discernible characters that were developed by placing the two in comic
situations, but Russel Banks provides no equivalent situations for Chappee
to provide him the opportunity to overcome his plight of being cursed with
a stupid name. Beavis and Butthead were endowed with the ability to change
the channel-- Chappee's character lacks this dimension. But none of this
matters to the audience, for the reader will be a liberal-elite boomer
who doesn't know the difference between "Guns and Roses," and "The Flaming
Lips."
In the novel Mr. Banks has somebody deliver the old addage to Chappee--
"Those that can do, those that can't, teach." Here he is drawing from his
own life's experiences. I had Russel Banks for creative writing, and I
think the saying should be amended to, "Those that can do, and those that
can't, do something else." For creative writing cannot be taught. That is
a liberal fallacy. It is something that is earned by the writer on the
frontier of his choosing. Russel Banks chose the creative writing
department at Princeton as his frontier, and we wish that he would write
about it more often. It would be interesting to see the true, deep
thoughts of the token white straight male in a liberal creative writing
department. It would be vastly more interesting to us than his books on
topics that he knows nothing about, like us.
It would be fun to hear him elaborate on the possibility that he was
chosen for the position because he is safe. Nothing that he ever writes
will ever distinguish itself from the nihilistic work of Joyce Carol
Oates. None of it will ever inspire my generation to read. None of it will
exalt the sober soul nor intellect of the people. And thus Toni and Joyce
will not be oppressed, the people will be kept in the dark, and the
liberals can hang on to their fading power base for one more day. And as
an added bonus, there will be no need to deconstruct Russel's work. For
he, like most liberals, writes in a pre-deconstructed format. Once they
had convinced themselves that words don't mean anything, it was easy to
make their novels follow suit.
For a novel that spans the sublime dimensions of this generation's
Reality, check out
THE DRAKE RAFT FIELD TRIP.
4. !!READERS RESPOND!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU! YOU'RE ALL TOO KIND!!
Date: Fri, 05 May 1995 12:37:33 -0800
From: DHEGEMAN@gateway.wbc.edu
To: mcgucken@physics.unc.edu
Subject: JOLLY ROGER
I always like those sorts of pieces where you wonder whether it is real
or . . . memorex.
I really enjoyed your web managerie. Some of those paragraphs were the
longest i've seen since victor hugo!
You guys are pretty good writers. A well conceived space. Very elegant.
Very allusive.
If you haven't checked his stuff out, you should read Larry Woiwode's
stuff. He is real conservative (an Orthodox Presbyterian) who is an
awsome writer.
Check out his Silent Passengers.
Thanks and ciao --Dave
Thank you, Dave!
Date: Mon, 1 May 95 19:14:47 EDT
From: Chris Rock
To: Elliot McGucken
Subject: Re: ***THE JOLLY ROGER***
Just read your interview with Suzie Greenberg and I have to say how
impressed I am. But here's a faked phone call that will never be made
into a movie like The Jerky Boys, too bad. Ohh, just imagine what Oliver
Stone could come up with for a movie about the liberal literary machine.
I also noted how noble she is because she's 'sick of blame'. Oh, except
for blaming Reagan for those evil eighties. Which is probably required to
get her position. Good job and damn those torpedoes...
Chris Rock chrisr@ici.net
Thanks for the advice-- we'll take it!
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