Free Magic Hours by Tom Bissell

production surely have something to do with this, as does economics. Since movies made beyond the clutches of studios have been proven, at least in concept, financially viable, independent film has for the last decade been growing steadily less independent. The music industry, on the other hand, tends to mainline the energy of anarchic independence to such an extent that it packages even its grossly mainstream outfits in the roguishly tattered robes of the True Outsider. Given the considerable seductions of both industries, the successful True Outsider does not, as a rule, tend to stay True or Outside within them for very long.
    The publishing industry, on the other hand, has little faith in and less regard for the True Outsider because it is difficult enough to make money on sure-thing insiders. It is a real challenge to
come up with more than a tiny handful of self—printed novels of serious artistic intent published in the last hundred years that achieved even the mildest sort of cult status. (James Joyce’s Ulysses , though not exactly self—printed, was a deeply homegrown publishing endeavor. A more modern example might be Arthur Nersesian’s underground hit The Fuck-Up , though one could hardly claim it is well known.) In a weird quirk all but unique to publishing, even literary movements that furiously reject the mainstream—the Beats are the prime example—tend to be more or less gratefully published by traditional, mainstream houses. This is because traditional houses offer what are essentially the only means of widely dispensing one’s work. This is also because the literary world is not usually regarded as spinelessly money-hungry as the worlds of film and music. In short, a different, less rapacious sort of person is attracted to the literary world, and the typical literary novel sells, if it is lucky, 5,000 to 10,000 copies. This is quite a bit less than one tenth of one percent of the American populace. The conglomerates could board up and soap the windows of lit—erary publishing in a day, if they chose. People would complain, certainly. But would most Americans care?
    Hence the problem the True Outsider has in the publishing world. The peddling of literature is itself an outside industry. So few literary movements have sought to destroy this fragile creature because without it, what on earth would they do? There is, however, one literary movement today that seeks to save the publishing industry by smashing it into a million genteel smithereens. They call themselves the Underground Literary Alliance. They also call themselves “the most exciting literary movement in America.” They might well be, as I cannot really think of any other existing literary movement in America. This, they would say, is the problem. The system, as it currently exists, does not welcome movements or true independence, only perversely canny
individuals who have figured out how to work that system as though it were an uncommonly prodigal slot machine. Here, perhaps, I should share another appellation the ULA has earned, this from an editor acquaintance: “The ghastliest group of no-talent whiners to have ever walked the earth.”
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    The ULA’s founding members first connected during the early-to mid-1990s in what they themselves refer to as the “zine world.” These writers read one another’s zines and dispatched fan letters to the authors of the work they admired. Many of these letters were filled with complaints and jeremiads about what was currently being published, which makes them the least unusual writers in the history of American literature. (A quick scan of the letters of William Faulkner or Virginia Woolf will find them, too, railing against the perceived mediocrity of their contemporaries: in Faulkner’s case, John O’Hara and James Gould Cozzens; in Woolf’s far less happy case, James Joyce.) Nevertheless, in the summer of 2000 these writers