Liberal Intellectuals Hate the WWW
Because it Empowers the Independent Thinker, and Things
Liberal Intellectuals Hate the WWW
Because it Empowers the Independent Thinker, and Things
Ahoy there people! Thanks for all the kind words regarding my mastery of poetry and prose. I hope everyone had a fun & relaxing holiday. I did, even though I spent most of it working. I had an awesome weekend down at Wilmington Beach, even though we ended up sleeping in a car, and it went down to 40 degrees, and all I had was shorts. But it was all worth it, for I experienced a revelation about the future of American Literature, and my place in it.
Some friends and I went down to the beach with some books of my poems, THE AFTER DARK FIELD BOOK, and a video camera, to capture the historic moment of my poetry's coastal debut. Little did we know we would be capturing a revelation on tape, but hey-- we have litle experience with miracles and stuff. We chose Wilmington Beach because the Atlantic is visible from it, and that is the same ocean upon which Melville embarked upon his tragic search for the Great White Whale.
Now selling poetry takes a certain combination of finesse and aggressiveness that I don't believe can be learned-- it can only be honed. It's one of those knacks you're either born with or not. It's a rare knack, as I am close to absolutely sure that I was the only person on the Wilmington Beach who sold a book of their poems this past Saturday. If others could have, they surely would have been out there, working the crowd, but I caught no glimpses of rival poets. It was my beach, and everyone knew it, and acted accordingly, and the police relaxed.
I don't know if anyone here is a big-wave surfer, but selling Great American Poetry is a lot like that. Every surfer has felt that shot of adrenalin that flows through your limbs when you first arrive at the beach, and you see a towering thirty foot wave breaking and tumbling in a furious explosion of swirling white foam. You just never get used to it, no matter how many times you've done it before. That's just what it was like-- when I woke up on the beach, at noon, and sat up, and saw what my generation was wearing, I got that shot of adrenalin.
At that point, in most sane people, there're a thousand voices in their head calling out to them, pleading with them to remain on the shore, with over five-hundred of the voices being their mother's. When I was sane, I heard those voices too. I also heard them when I lived at home. Ah now, but now, there was but one voice in my head, calling me out to sea. And there was no reciprical voice saying that I ever had to go back. As the surfer stares down that first wave, I stared down the first glimpse of my fate. I, Elliot "Ahab" McGucken, would endow my generation-- a generation that did not read books, that did not particularly like books, that preferred CD's and MTV-- I would deliver unto them a literature of their own, and rescue them from the spiritual desert the liberal left enjoys keeping us in. For we need a literature that means something to us more than an "A" in diversity studies, more than a high score on our LSAT'S, more than a diploma and a pat on the back from a professor who long ago gave up on their soul, stationed up high in the ivory tower, behind walls fabricated from bricks of arrogance, cemented with willing deceit.
So we walked on, 'neath the blazing sun, honing our technique, searching for a sale. Things went slow at first-- at first people would not even look at the book. They would just lie there, and say they didn't want it. So we decided to try more girls whose bikini tops were tied.
We did not fare much better with them. We cut the price from $5 down to $2, but it was still too steep, so we halved that, but still there were no takers. We told our prospective customers that the video we were shooting was for MTV, but few believed our pitch, and still no books were sold. We told some that we would trade the book for their phone numbers, but that didn't work, except for one group, almost, who gave us a phone number, and told us to call them if we wanted to go to the Red Dog. But they didn't want a book-- they were studying for upcoming tests. I remember we told two girls, one of whom had braces, that the poems were inspired by Greenday. Unfortunately, they didn't have any money. We saw Dante Calabria, the shooter for the Tar Heel Basketball Team (I'm sure you know who he is), and we told him all the poems were Shakespearian Sonnets, and he told us he'd already read some for a class, and had had his share.
But we were undaunted. For the ghost of Melville, who died with Billy Budd in his top drawer, was riding on the soft spring sea breeze that day, and the gentle spirit yet spurred us on. For even if I went to my grave without ever selling a book of poems, I knew that it was inevitable that future generations of humanity would honor me. For being liked by one's contemporaries is not necessary for the few Greats. They would have Elliot McGucken conferences at Hiltons across the fruited plain, to commemorate my existence. Scholars would yet still study me, and indict the cruel society of idolaters who ignored my greatness, and the stubborn, misguided literary editors who often confused literature with Slacker Handbooks. They would throw book parties for their treatises convicting the liberal-groupie scholars who shunned my poetic talents, and made me go to law school to feed my family, after I got my PhD in physics, where I was never happy inspite of the fact that I gained a moderate degree of fame one morning on campus, for my quote in the paper, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and knowledge of it shouldn't be either." A future scholar would find that quote, someday, and get tenure. I squinted in the sun, and marched down the beach, towards my destiny, and towards a day where people would once again turn to the printed word, to find the sober soul, buried deep within themselves, that the liberal-left-elite record company executive loathed so much. My generation would not be kept in darkness forever, even if it meant cutting in to David Geffen's profits.
At Dairy Queen we tried to trade a book for a sundae, but the counter lady didn't go for it. It was policy. We tried to sell a few there, too, but like the Dairy Queen setting was far too pop-culturish for the greatest sonnets written in hundreds of years, and I felt uncomfortable, like a fish out of water. The whole time I was nervous. People could spill hot fudge on the pages while looking at the book, and then I couldn't even give it to my mom on mothers day.
Finally we found the literary crowd in a Surf Shop. There were three girls working the register, and one of them was reading, THE CHAMBER, by John Grisham. You develop an eye for these details. The girl reading the book, Jan was her name, picked up our product, flipped through to a random page, and began reading. And then the revelation occured. I wasn't sure it happened at the time, but the video-tape affirmed my strong suspicions. Jan smiled, looking up from the book, and declared her immortal words, "it rhymes-- I'll take one."
And so it was that history was made. It was the only book of poetry that was sold on a beach, on April 15th, 1995, in Wilmington, NC, and it rhymed. It was the sell that was heard around the world, for a literary revolution had been launched. Great American Literature is coming back, folks, and this generation, who has been kicked and prodded by vulgarity and brutish displays of poor taste as no generation ever has before, is going to do it. The first step in a thousand mile journey has been taken, the first domino knocked over, the first chink in the liberal wall of spiritual nihilism encircling the hearts of so many has been made.
Tears came to our eyes, as we left the Surf-shop. Our chests filled with thundering triumph, as we headed back, alongside the full moon, leaping forth from the water, to kiss the holy occasion with her mystic, silvery light. I had kept my faith, and I had been rewarded with the sign. "Ahab is Ahab," the tumbling surf whispered. "Ahab is Ahab."
It's literature without the liberals, so like it means something. Ahoy! Drop the crew a line!
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