Postmodernism, Alienation and the Small Press by Don Webb [Don is a great guy as well as freelance writer always looking for assignments...] I could begin this gang bang review of small press offerings with the usual platitudes on the small press community -- how Mike Gunderloy grew me from a bean etc. -- or just toady a Lithuaninan SF group who asked if I could send them some good small press stuff (Gediminas Beresnevicius / Anakalnio 91-16 / Vilnius 2040 / Lithuania a real address send them stuff!), but I'm not going to do that. I am going to talk about postmodern life and fictional approaches to dealing to alienation and individuation. Dealing with alienation is easy in modernist fiction. Afterall you have something to be alienated from. The modern paradigm is based on the keyword reason. This paradigm has been the intellectually established one in western society from about 1500 to the middle of this century. Unfortunately most would-be "modernists" are not very good practitioners of the chief tool of their Age. Most are in fact hypocritical believers grasping at the conceit that they are indeed "reasonable." There is a clear cultural matrix, and clear outsiders. The postmodernist paradigm has yet to find its keyword. In postmodernist fiction, as well as in postmodern life, there are no clear outsiders anymore, and there are fewer groups offering their image as one to identify with. Even those groups who -- say for example the televangelists -- want money not offering a way of being as means to changing both self and world. These five offerings approach the nature of alienation/individuation with different strategies and differing degrees of success. Rob Hollis Miller proposes the nature of the Secret as the way to examine reality. Is there a Secret? Am I part of the Secret? Or maybe -- more frighteningly -- there is no Secret at all. He takes his starting point from Phillip K. Dick, maintaining the reality quest in fiction almost religiously. Denise Dumars deals with alienation as the primary horror of our times. Her characters fall out of contact with the world, while we watch with the same sick fascination of watching the horror movie monster stalk his prey. Her fiction reflects the two labels hung on her writing, horror and poetry. Mark Amerika revives the most alienated character from modernist fiction Gregor Samsa and turns him to a demiurge (echoes of Jerry Cornelius and Leggy Starlitz here) the modernist alien stirring up things in the post modernist landscape until the words and sentences melt under the strain. Cris Mazza reduces the world into the harshness of subjective reality -- desire which is seen as the one coherent and true constant and the fragments of the objective reality -- meaningless signs that merely amuse us for their lost sense of wonder. pete plate makes perhaps the most hopeful statement to our postmodern eyes (although to modernists it would be seen as a cry from hell). He proposes the synthesis of will and the unconscious as a way of obtaining sufficient being to change both self and world. He offers a very self-driven way out of the nightmare of history. His is the boldest of the five, because it represents a model for rebellion in a society where there is nothing to rebel against. We stand on the threshold of a new epoch which goes beyond the collectivist totalitarianism of the medieval and modern Epochs. The postmodern world with its lack of centralized values can be the Epoch of freedom, provided that we find freedom in individualist approaches which are neither exclusively rational nor irrational. We can read these books not only to be horrified and amused, but for inspiration as we find and defend our own freedoms (while old beliefs systems fight old wars). The publishers of these books are significant. These are not going to be found in your B. Dalton's, in fact you may be lucky to find them at all. The sponsors for this particular cultural revolution are, a very small slipstream press (I realize that I have to pay Bruce Sterling a dime for using the word "slipstream") in Oregon with the microscopic print run of 250, a fragile collective of state and federal grants out of Boulder, and finally a small art house in Edinburgh which isn't afraid of printing the works of an American revolutionary. The real value of the small press, or of any fringe, is that you can see where your culture's going. Remember on a coral reef -- it is the thin outer fringe that's alive, not the dead core. I first saw Rob Hollis Miller's name in an article by Michael A. Aquino in Nyctaclops # 13 (1977). Aquino was responding to an article Miller had written concerning Aquino's made-up Yuggothic language appearing in the Satanic Rituals . I was not surprised therefore when this slim volume yellow with its apocalyptic title (and religious speculation) came my way. This book deals with fiction, metafiction and reality games. Its principal characters are dead before the beginning, and never make an appearance save by implication. The book, like The King in Yellow after which it is clearly modeled, is a series of short stories tied together by thematic reference to the works of Phillip K. Dick (called variously Dickens K. Philps, Dick K. Phillipi, Dickens P. Phillips, etc.) and Gurdjieff (called Hafiz). In a somewhat Borgesian manner Gurdjieff's work is treated as a commentary on Dick's, and both are treated as the sacred works of a what may or may not be a cult with what may or may not have a secret inner core. Like the characters in Dick's novels, Miller's heroes are not so much worried about what is reality, as by who is interested in manipulating them to think which reality frame is the right one. The book is the first place that the effect of Poe's Eureka on Dick's Exegesis is made clear. Both works are ignored by the standard critic, but both contain the roots to the fruit that is debated, dissected and enjoyed. For this revelation, Miller is in particular to be praised. I suspect that Miller is doing his work backwards, beginning with the cosmogony before writing the great body of work that this is the key to. Or perhaps he's playing a more subtle game and writing the cosmogony to a body of work that will never be written and will only be dreamed by the Reader experienced enough in the literature of exhaustion to create whole worlds by the implication of thought. A unique synthesis of Gurdjieffian ideas and postmodernism. It is said that there is an order of Black Sufis, who rather than trying to upset the dozers in the cave by pointing out that all is illusion, instead choose to produce such a plethora of images, one atop another, that the dozers figure it out for themselves. Recent grandmasters of the order include Phillip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson. Ocean of Fire and Glass is very much an apprentice work to join the order, but I suspect that the true magic will come from the much traveled Mr. Miller. Denise Dumars is another poet whose short fiction has recently been released as a chapbook from Wordcraft of Oregon. I use the word "poet" since her poetry has been widely published, and several of her poetic techniques appear herein -- particularly the dreamy quality of light. She has recently coauthored a screenplay -- it would be interesting if that same quality of soft and sharp focus can be translated to the screen. There are nine tales in the collection ranging from the prose poem that forms the title piece to a really good horror story "Lenin's Lich." (Future anthologists take note "Lenin's Lich" and my own "The Taste of Salt" would make a good beginning for that collection of Great Communist Zombie Tales that I'm sure you're planning -- where's Rodger Elwood when you need him?) Dumar's strengths are revealed in her tales of depersonalization. Her alienated characters sink into grayer and grayer universes of silent screams. Very Beckettesque although told in the tones that will sell in the horror semi-pro market (there are reprints here from Nocturne, Witness to the Bizarre, Der Riss in Himmel and others). A recurrent image is the falling of a gray or silver metal dust that literally takes the character away from direct contact with the outside world. For the most part this is the horror fiction of real life; Dumars' scenes of LA, Albuquerque, and San Francisco read true. I suspect that if these stories were written by a European, preferably a dead male one, we would have to pay a great deal more for the collection. Both of these perfect-bound volumes were printed by Dark Regions Press for Wordcraft. Dark Regions is apparently in the production business, and if you need a good-looking chapbook you might inquire about their rates (Dark Regions Press, PO Box 6301, Concord, CA 94524). The two volumes from the Black Ice Series are very much the stylistic children of Michael Butor's Mobile and the work of J.M.G.le Clezio. The series itself has grown from one of America's better small magazines Black Ice , edited by Mark Amerika, which is dedicated to the proposition that readers are tired of the Same Old Crap. This simple notion always attracts the Same Old Crowd (i.e. people who had hope in the New Wave); however since I am a card-carrying member of that group who holds deep in the heart that this is the way we'll write in the future (if we're lucky) I took to The Kafka Chronicles like a pig to slop. The Kafka Chronicles is the further adventures of Gregor Samsa and friends such as the talented cocksucker Mandy Bauer, Alkaloid Boy and Blue Sky. The parody of all and everything comes through in a variety of stylistic voices and linguistic strategies -- from cut-up to word golf to Multiple choice: 5. Clubbing It With Weird Capitalist Connoisseur of Carp Commodities a) "I met her the last time I was here . . she only likes Black guys . . ." b) dressing for the occasion c) undressing for the liaison d) stripped to the bone/cellophane wrapper/love preserved {Page 122} I 'm sure Mark Ziesing will do good selling this, and that it will be universally hailed by the rest of the SF community as what not to do. The later makes it a must for my bookshelf. Like the above volumes, another approach to the literature of exhaustion, in this case Krazy Kat exhaustion of exhaustion. As a totally relativistic novel, this is very likely the prototype of future writing, hence the most normative science fiction of the five offerings. Cris Mazza, who has also written Animal Acts and Is it Sexual Harassment Yet? , dazzles us (OK dazzled me) with another collection of short fiction. These eight tales (reprinted from the classier small press mags -- Fiction International , High Plains Literary Review ) are a wonderful mix of strongly voiced prose and great images culled from the strange iconography of America's heartland. I love the photo of the Dip Dog sign on page 112. The gem of the collection is "Between Signs" a smolderingly hot piece of erotica done with roadsigns punctuation. Mazza carefully reproduces the shape of the lettering that adds a sensuousness that I can't reproduce here: RATTLESNAKE SKIN BOOTS TURQUOISE BELT BUCKLES BEADED MOCCASINS, SNO CONES They took nothing. Credit cards bought gas and food, plastic combs, miniature toothbrushes, motel rooms tourist t-shirts, foaming shaving cream and disposable razors. She watched him shaving as she lay in the bathtub. Then he shaved her. Rinsing her with the showerhead, soaping her over and over again. Shoved a blob of jelly, from a plastic single-serving container taken from the diner, far inside her, went to retrieve it with his tongue, drop by drop taste by taste, but there was always more where that came from. See Mystic Magic Of The Southwest . . .THE THING? (Pg 138-139) The sharp crisp use of language and image makes this a read-aloud must. Of course for fullest enjoyment, be prudent in choice of audiences. OK so it has nothing to do with SF, so sue me. I should also mention that Black Ice Books' next volume will be Delaney's Hogg , a book so nasty that its publication may still cause an outcry. Way to go, Chip! There are writers who feign an "on-the-edge" lifestyle. Then there's peter plate, who has only just lost his ten-year squat in San Francisco -- pneumonia rather than the landlord forcing him out. I asked him about his latest book, and he shoplifted a copy for me. Polygon has put out some pretty fine writers -- Stewart Home, Paul Hammond, Bridget Penny, but this metafictional novel by plate is very likely their best offering. plate's novel focuses on the life of sam melville, a man driven by the strongest of wills -- the desire to change what is fundamentally fucked-up in the world -- and by the strongest of unconscious motives -- raw rage which rises up in him like a volcano. sam is mirrored by his boyhood friend george demmerle who driven by the same forces makes the weaker synthesis. george becomes a cop -- his impulses for violence and evil become sanctioned by the state, he has let his unconscious win by surrendering his will to the state, and yet no one in plate's world is entirely evil -- he is drawn again and again to the plans of sam melville. The particular whale, or perhaps I should say leviathan, that sam melville rages against is at the same time every oppressive piece of statist force, but also every lover that his momma took. Ultimately as sam is tried for terrorist actions, his father appears (dead or dying) in a wheelchair. His father's appearance is the ultimate sign that sam has won the battle within, despite the conventional view that having your ass thrown in prison is the sign of failure. That sam also is able to accomplish two more tasks is the sign of his synthesis of the unconscious and the will. Firstly he is able to lead a prison riot and escape (not just the guards but death himself), so he becomes an external symbol for change in the world, itself a postmodernist victory. Secondly he is able to continue to provide plate the inspiration to finish the novel. Again he is invoked by plate just as though he were a muse, so ultimately he achieves the real sign of synthesis -- he passes into a realm of semi-divinity, not because he was divine to begin with, but because of his direction of the use of the materials of his life. Early on while visiting a recently burned house, he receives the external sign (if you speak a Germanic language like English) of the One who looks within and without. A cinder flies into his left eye and he loses the sight of his eye. He Becomes like Odhinn who also had to give up an eye to gain wisdom. In an unattributed passage which could be either plate speaking to us or sam melville speaking to us, the postmodern challenge is laid out and as writers readers and just plain human beings will have to answer it: the future is uncertain, america's children are reminded by her ghosts that it is the end of a century, ghosts tell me, if i wake up from this killer sleep, i will never die again. Name: Don Webb Address: 6304 Laird Drive Austin, TX 78757 Telephone: (512) 453-5433 Author of book reviewed: Mark Amerika Editor of book reviewed: Translator of book reviewed: Title: The Kafka Chronicles Name of press: Fiction Collective Two Address of small press: PO Box 494, University of Colorado at Boulder / Boulder, Colorado 80309-0494 Year of publication: 1993 Cloth and/or paper: Paper Number of pages: 189 Price: Paper: $7.00 Cloth: Name: Don Webb Address: 6304 Laird Drive Austin, TX 78757 Telephone: (512) 453-5433 Author of book reviewed: Cris Mazza Editor of book reviewed: Translator of book reviewed: Title: Revelation Countdown Name of press: Fiction Collective Two Address of small press: PO Box 494, University of Colorado at Boulder / Boulder, Colorado 80309-0494 Year of publication: 1993 Cloth and/or paper: Paper Number of pages: 189 Price: Paper: $7.00 Cloth: Name: Don Webb Address: 6304 Laird Drive Austin, TX 78757 Telephone: (512) 453-5433 Author of book reviewed: Denise Dumars Editor of book reviewed: Translator of book reviewed: Title: Pangaea Name of press: Wordcraft of Oregon Address of small press: PO Box 3235/ LaGrande, OR 97850 Year of publication: 1993 Cloth and/or paper: Paper Number of pages: 91 Price: Paper: $7.95 Cloth: Name: Don Webb Address: 6304 Laird Drive Austin, TX 78757 Telephone: (512) 453-5433 Author of book reviewed: Rob Hollis Miller Editor of book reviewed: Translator of book reviewed: Title: Ocean of Glass and Fire Name of press: Wordcraft of Oregon Address of small press: PO Box 3235,La Grande, OR 97850 Year of publication: 1993 Cloth and/or paper: Paper Number of pages: Price: Paper: $7.95 Cloth: Name: Don Webb Address: 6304 Laird Drive Austin, TX 78757 Telephone: (512) 453-5433 Author of book reviewed: peter plate Editor of book reviewed: Translator of book reviewed: Title: darkness throws down the sun Name of press: Polygon Address of small press: 22 George Square, Edinburgh, Scotland Year of publication: 1991 Cloth and/or paper: Paper Number of pages: 135 Price: Paper: ??? Cloth: