Underground Library Needs Your Help
PH Madore has started a wikisite called the Underground Library and he needs your help. The idea is that it will grow beyond the basic project that it is and become a useful resource for all of us. If you know a thing or two, take a few minutes to add that information to an already existing article or write a new one if one doesn’t already exist. The process is fairly simple, even for a computer moron like me, so give it a shot. All contributions are welcome and all contributions to contributions are welcome.
From the Lobby:
Why We’re Here
To document, promote, and sustain the literary underground in the most grassroots way possible: relying on the knowledge of said literary underground. To give incoming generations of writers and publishers a sense of history from which they may learn and to which they can contribute. To remain balanced and factual; to bring writing back to the reader.
I’ve tried writing up a few short things for the library based on my limited knowledge (I’ll also be helping with the site when he heads off to Iraq) and so far have posted rough articles on The Cupboard, the ULA, Bear Parade, Avery Anthology, Publishing Genius, and No Colony. Please add to them or change them if you know more than I or can write it in a much clearer way.
Write your own articles too.
Do stuff.
Visit the Where to Begin page or simply type in a search term and edit an existing page/create a new one.
Friends: In Which People Who Don’t Know Eachother Try to Get Along
Perennial provocateur and imminent instigator P.H. Madore, has written A Wordless Threat of Kung Fu Reprisal, featuring Htmlgiant contributors and other likely lit world suspects.
An exceprt:
Ken Baumann struck the bartender called J. K. very hard with a dead fish he’d had wrapped in recycled chapbooks specifically for such an occasion. The bartender dropped the champagne bottle. Jackie Corley shrieked and said, “Fuck this, I’m getting back to work!” Nick Antosca smiled. Ken Baumann said, “No posit, no colony, motherfuckers!”
Mmm…I wonder if J.K. stands for ‘just kidding.’
Personally, I welcome such satirical takes on me, and hope — god I hope — others feel the same about them.
P.H. Madore is off to Iraq soon, so be nice. Gawd bless you Madore, and Amerika.
this morning in breathless, endless, pointless Tao Lin coverage
If you don’t already know from having seen it on his own blog (where I found it), you might or might not be interested to know that a person named P.H. Madore has posted something he calls 8,794 Rambling Words On Tao Lin. I don’t know what it is about Tao that somehow, simply by existing in the world, he is able to bring out the stupid in otherwise reasonable people–or else to bring out the stupid people into otherwise reasonable discourse.
I’m always in the tank for Tao’s writing, and I’m usually in support of whatever bizarre culture-jam or e-bay auction or stunt he’s got going on, but man–his super-fans are just some of the most irritating fucking people you’ll ever encounter.
As soon as I saw that Part One of this post was entitled “Half-Assed Introductory Words,” I started yawning. I can’t stand it when people start out by telling me what a piece of crap the thing I’m about to read is. Why do so many writers do this?
SELF-FLAGELLATION #1: YOUR PERFORMATIVE SELF-ABUSE REVEALS ITSELF AS A CRY FOR ATTENTION AND PITY.
I thought to myself, who is P.H. Madore? So I skipped the next 8790 words, and went down to his bio note, which reads >>P. H. Madore was once a finalist in Riot Lit’s novel contest. That novel sucked, but you can read it and other stuff through his website, freemadore.<< More self-abuse. How charming. Also, I’m sure Riot Lit (whatever that is) will be thrilled to know that the novel they almost published “sucked,” though in all fairness to Madore, it probably did, which in turn begs the question: why would anyone want to read it? It would be easy–perhaps, too easy–to read this bio solely through the lens of S-F#1, pictured above. But friends, before you jump to hasty conclusions, consider another option:
SELF-FLAGELLATION #2: YOU ARE ACTUALLY VERY SERIOUS ABOUT THIS--AND GUESS WHAT? I STILL DON'T CARE.
Anyway, the rest of the post is a lot of transcribed g-chats, emails between Madore and Tao, categorically idiotic assertions such as “Tao Lin is a better artist than Andy Warhol,” and a section on a dozen writers who Madore considers Tao Lin “followers.” “[M]ight be you can count me among them,” he writes. Good company! A few lines down, he tells the followers not to lose heart, because “[a]rticles like this will be written about each of them one day…” Don’t worry Gene Morgan, everyone grows at their own special pace! Keep drinking milk! You too, Brandon Scott Gorrell!
Was the young William T. Vollmann a Tao Lin follower?
If I had to identify one truly, unimpeachably excellent thing about this post, it would be that somewhere in the middle of it there’s a link to this picture:
Don’t worry, Ellen Kennedy! Even though P.H. Madore ranks you with the other followers, he knows that you’ve got your “own things going on.”