Start Making Sense: “Eighty miles southwest of here, a small group of writers is plotting
to overthrow a common enemy: the monolithic, ever-oppressive New
York Literary Establishment. Tired of McSweeney’s, M.F.A.s, and
literary mooning, the Underground Literary Alliance (ULA) promotes a
straight-talking, street-smart prose of yesteryear (think Dickens)
designed to supplant the perceived products of postmodernism
(think Foster Wallace) that flood our bookstores. ULA founder and
promoter Karl “King” Wenclas disdains the “literati” for being like
“French kings and Russian czars”–out of touch and producing work
that’s irrelevant beyond New York City. He boasts that his “lowest of the low” ULA-ers (dishwashers, army
enlistees, skid-row dwellers) write with a “raw power” that’s absent from literature today.” Village Voice