V-ilearly, everyone in this post-nEinstein world Icnows that all things arenrelative and that a novel is a fiction, ancounterfeit of life. Things, however, arennot what they seem. Novelists who creatensurfiction or otherwise break rules are—ifnthey are recognized at all by any but theirnpeers—typically dismissed as being experimental,nsomething only to benbothered with by academics. But I mustnagree with Federman, who notes:nPersonally, I do not believe that a fictionnwriter with the least amount ofnself-respect, and belief in what he isndoing, ever says to himself: ‘I am nowngoing to experiment with fiction; Inam now writing an experimentalnpiece of fiction.’ Others say this aboutnhis fiction. The middle-man of literaturenis the one who gives the label EX­nPERIMENTAL to what is difficult,nstrange, provocative, and even original.n. . . Fiction is called experimentalnout of despair.nIn other words, those who are not in thenmainstream of letters—not members ofnthe mob, Kostelanetz would say—justndon’t make it, so they are condemned tonwear the badge “avant-garde” and tonform their own little coterie.nIt must be pointed out that such fictionsnaren’t often pleasant reading,nthough they are often amusing. Thenamusement, however, might stem fromnnothing more than the release of frustration.nSukenick’sZo»^ Talking Bad ConditionsnBlues (the blurb from the NewnYork Times Book Review reads: “Thenvery best sort oi experimental yimmg bynone of the very best writers of it” [emphasisnmine]), for example, opens:nfrom his apartment on Ferrell AndersonnPlace he liked to walk down to thenquai which the local inhabitants referrednto as The Reiser for reasons Carlnwas not able to determine but hensomehow always lost his way on thenway and found himself in a puzzle ofnwinding and oblique streets complicatednintersections which were not innthemselves unpleasant in fact. . .nThe use of ellipsis is mine, simply a nodnto convention: Sukenick uses no commas,ncolons, semicolons, or end punctuationn. The savvy reader of novels mightnthink this another rendition of the MollynBloom approach. Possibly, or a variationnon Gertrude Stein. There’s a page in thennovel, 5 7, that only features that numeralnin the upper right-hand corner, whichncould be traced back to Laurence Sterne.nMaybe all of these conjectures are wrong.nBut Sukenick forces the reader to becomeninvolved or to dismiss the whole thing asnsuperfluous.n”erhaps the whole thing—Sukenick,nFederman, etc.—^^is superfluous. Maybenit’s just childish puzzles: crossword andnjigsaw. But the current situation bringsnto mind what was happening in seriousnhterature in the early part of this century,nthe work of Wyndham Lewis, in particular.nIn June 1914 Lewis produced a periodicalnentitled Blast: The Review of thenGreat English Vortex. Contributors includednFord Madox Ford, Ezra Pound,nand Rebecca West. About Blast, MarshallnMcLuhan wrote in Counterblast:n”Lewis told me that he found it impossiblento get it set up by any London printernwhatever. He finally found an alcoholicnex-printer who agreed to set it up exacdynas Lewis required in return for large suppliesnof liquor.” Lewis’s approach tongraphics was unorthodox by his day’snstandards, just as Federman’s is in hisnTake It Or Leave It. Lewis, Ford, Pound,nWest, and their associates, Joyce, Eliot,nWells, and others unquestionably hadnmore influence on literature in this centurynthan all but a few (Proust, Kafka),ncertainly more than today’s toutednwriters will have. Yet in McLuhan’s anecdotenit’s made clear that early leadingedgenwriters were sometimes forced tonfind alternative sources of publication asnthe then-reigning literary nabobs foundnthe writers to be negligible upstarts.nSimilarly, few entrenched New Yorknpublishers of today seem to have what’sncalled “venture capital” by industrialistsnin other fields. This money would benspent on possible new Lewises, Pounds,nnnetc. This parsimony has another effect.nPolitically, the leading-edge authors nownon the scene seem to be radical inasmuchnas they are political—not particularly.nPart of this probably stems from theirnforefathers, the dadaists and surrealists,nsome of whom admired the Bolsheviknrevolution since it initially appeared tonthem as a blow against restraints, whichnthey read as freedom of artistic expression.nHowever, the demands of proletcultnand Stalin’s retarded approach to artnsoon put an end to that interpretation.nStill, a revolutionary hangover—a smallnbut annoying one—remains for many innthe world of art: the producers, that is.nSurfictioneers are not noticeably acceptednby the burghers of art, those whonthink in terms like “return on investment”nand “bottom line” rather thann”aesthetic value.” Thus, possible conflictnwith the status quo, the “blasting” thatnWyndham Lewis cried for.nAnother effect is that the new flctioneersnutilize two terms that inevitablyncause the short hairs near the nape of thenneck to tingle on those who still correlatensemantics with ideological principle. Thenfirst is collective, as in Fiction Collective,nthe publisher of many of the leadingedgentexts. Everyone knows what thenword implies, but the connotationnshouldn’t be immediately applied in thisncase. That is, “limited partnership”—nLtd.—would be a good substitution forncollective, except that the fiction beingnpublished under the Fiction Collectivenimprint is anything but restricted. Thensecond term is alternative, as in alternativenmedia, the types of journals thatnprint and cover the works of the new fictioneers,nas opposed to the New YorknReview of Books and its epigones. Itnshould be noted that Chronicles ofnCulture is an alternative medium.nOne of the tenets of Leopold Tyrmand,nmanifest in Chronicles ofnCulture, is that there are many writers—nyoung ones, in particular—who havensomething to say that’s intelligent,nthoughtful, or simply fresh. Thesenpeople—Catholics, conservativenscholars, jazz buffs, fashion experts.nDecember 198Sn