A LETTER FROM THE AMERICAN DISSIDENT

To Suzanne Nossel, PEN America Executive Director:

Well, I doubt you’ll respond.  After all, what could you possibly write in your defense… of apathy and bourgeois elitism?  Hopefully, you’ve not become so high and mighty that you won’t even be able to focus on anything this lowly plebe has to write here… hopefully.  Thus, I simply continue this dialogue de sourds.   

Currently, I’m sketching the next front cover of The American Dissident, #28, which will feature Frank Bidart, you, and other literary elitists (Quinn et al) involved in your Literary Awards (the images of you on Google portray a NY West Side elitist cocktail-party socialite… how odd for the jefa of PEN America!)

Regarding the awards, you state:   “The PEN Literary Awards bring together writers, editors, and members of the literary community to celebrate the ultimate fruit of free expression: great literature.”  But what about those writers and editors NOT of the “literary community,” as you term the closed community of mostly established-order academics and their poet/writer acolytes.  How to become a member of that community? Well, the response is obvious:  play the game of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil PC-expression-only. The “ultimate fruit of free expression,” as you term it, is certainly not academically-approved, promoted, and designated “great literature.”  The “ultimate fruit” is rather literature scorned by the elites because it dares criticize the elites.   Far more often than not, “great literature” as you term it, is a subjective—not an objective—term.  Far more often than not, that so-called “great literature” is innocuous, hardly at all threatening to the power structure, which designates it “great.”  You seem quite confused pairing “free expression” with so-called “great literature.” 

Have you read The Oak and the Calf?  If you haven’t, do so!  But one would certainly expect that you have read it, considering your position.  In any case, if you recall, Solzhenitsyn’s book depicts the literary scene under the Stalinist dictatorship.  Sadly, that scene is a mirror of today’s literary scene in America.  Of course, Americans are rarely arrested for writing (three cops showed up to escort me out of the library one week after my published writing, but I was not arrested).  Instead, they are ostracized into oblivion, that is, if the established order feels offended by the writing. 

Why does PEN America not focus on that?  Why does it not support the few American writers who dare criticize the academics and writers who control the literary scene in America, including the pompous chancellors of the Academy of American Poets (Bidart et al) and the one-percenters of the Poetry Foundation?  The answer of course is that PEN has become an integral part of that scene.  In essence, the scorners of free expression (academics and literati) have infiltrated and taken control of PEN America… unless, of course, it was always thus.  In essence, if that were not true, why would your publication, PEN America Journal, not even respond to, let alone publish, the highly caustic article I wrote on PEN and submitted to it (See http://www.globalfreepress.org/sections/free-speech/3415-pen-an-ethical-consideration). The following is a pertinent quote from The Oak and the Calf to back the above contention: 

“The shrill, vainglorious literature of the establishment—with its dozen fat magazines, its two literary newspapers, its innumerable anthologies, its novels between hard covers, its collected works, its annual prizes, its adaptations for radio of impossibly tedious originals—I had once and for all recognized as unreal, and I did not waste my time or exasperate myself by trying to keep up with it.  I knew without looking that there could be nothing of merit in all this.  Not because no talent could emerge there—no doubt it sometimes did, but there it perished too.  For it was a barren field, that which they sowed.  I knew that in such a field nothing could grow to maturity.  When they first came to literature they had, all of them—the social novelists, the bombastic playwrights, the civic poets, and needless to say the journalists and critics—joined in an undertaking never, whatever the subject, whatever the issue, to mention the essential truth, the truth that leaps to the eye within no help from literature.  This solemn pledge to abstain from truth was called socialist realism.  Even writers of love poems, even those lyric poets who had sought sanctuary in nature or in elegant romanticism, were all fatally flawed because they dared not touch the important truths.” 

Finally, unlike your journal, The American Dissident will publish the harshest criticism received because it really does believe in free expression… and vigorous debate, democracy‘s cornerstones. 

Sincerely,
G. Tod Slone, PhD (Universite de Nantes, FR) aka P. Maudit,
Founding Editor (1998)
The American Dissident, a 501c3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence
www.theamericandissident.org
wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com

The Library: Defender of Freedom of Speech and Expression?

by G. Tod Slone

In almost all the 45 libraries studied here, and probably hundreds and hundreds more across the country, we have failed our professional duty to seek out diverse political views. [...] These books are not expensive. Their absence from our libraries makes a mockery of ALA’s vaunted ‘freedom to read.’ But we do not even notice that we are censoring our collections. Complacently, we watch our new automated systems stuff the shelves with Henry Kissinger’s memoirs. 

—Charles Willett, Founding Editor, Counterpoise, and retired librarian [remarks presented at the Fifth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries]

Over the years, I have tried mostly in vain to get libraries to subscribe to the 501 c3 nonprofit journal I’ve been publishing on literature, democracy, and dissidence since 1998.  To date, I’ve managed to obtain 15 institutional subscriptions.  Compare that to the well over 500 obtained by Agni and Poetry magazine.  As a result of one attempt, Watertown Free Public Library ended up issuing a three-month trespass order without warning or due process.  That was the only time I’ve ever been to that library.  One would suspect I must have had done something terrible like issue violent threats, swear belligerently, or make sexual jokes.  But none of that occurred.  Hard to believe?  Perhaps not.

More recently, on June 19th 2012, I was sitting in Sturgis Library (Barnstable, MA), described by former library trustee Kurt Vonnegut as a “clapboard tomb.”  There I was in a corner alone in a room quietly working on my laptop, something I’d been doing there about five times per week for a year and a half.  The director, Lucy Loomis, and no less than three police officers suddenly entered.  When I asked what I’d done, the director said:  “you’ve been critical of me, you don’t like it here, so now you can’t come here anymore.”  Actually, I did like the library, though did not like the director’s blatant hypocrisy.    

One of the officers made the trespass announcement.  I asked for how long.  He asked the director, who said “permanently”.  I asked for a written document.  The director said there was none.  It was verbal.  I asked why three officers were necessary and mentioned I didn’t carry a weapon.  At that point, one of the other officers [Officer Foley] grabbed my arm, twisted it around my back, then frisked me.  I was not resisting arrest. I was not put under arrest.  (Days later, I’d discover Foley was a training officer who was training one of the other officers present, using me as a live training dummy.)  And that was that.  For me, what happened was unbelievable.  No warning at all!  And no due process whatsoever.  So, what was my “crime”?  

Outside, one of the officers told me to go to Town Hall, when I asked where I could go to lodge a complaint.   A day later, that’s what I did. But Town Hall told me it had no jurisdiction over the library and that I should go to the police station or contact the president of the library committee, Ellie Claus.  Unsurprisingly, the president would not respond to my correspondence.  She was a good friend of the director.  At the police station, I was able to obtain a written record of the police action.  But on it, there was no mention of the duration of the trespass order.  The officer, who had taken the director’s phone call, told me the director had said I “made her feel uncomfortable,” had “said inappropriate things,” and that it had been an “ongoing concern.”  And that was all.  The director hadn’t mentioned I was critical.     

If politically-correct proponents one day have their way, making someone feel uncomfortable might indeed become a criminal offense. Fortunately, it is not yet thus.  Besides, shouldn’t a library director have a little spine?  Was her remark not a bit childish?  After all, I do not have a criminal record, have no tattoos or visible scars, and do not walk around naked.  In fact, over the year and a half I’d been going to Sturgis Library I rarely ever spoke to the director, though in the beginning of that period I’d asked her to consider subscribing.  She’d said, no, arguing the library was a “family friendly place” and that there was “too much negativity.”  So, is democracy now family unfriendly and negativity?  And what about all the sex and violence DVDs the director had been purchasing for the library?  Unfortunately, people in power positions are often impervious to logic and reason.

During that earlier period, I’d placed one flyer on a car windshield in the library lot because that car had a bumper sticker:   “Everything I Learned Was from Reading Banned Books.  Celebrate Banned Books Week.”  The car belonged to a staff member who complained to the director.   Is it not mind-boggling that a staff member with such a bumper sticker would complain about a flyer that mentioned sarcastically that perhaps libraries should also celebrate banned periodicals?  

The director then asked to speak with me in private.  She said that I was no longer permitted to leave flyers on library grounds, including the parking lot.  She also told me that I was not allowed to speak to staff about that.  So, I contacted one of the local papers, The Barnstable Patriot, which to my surprise interviewed me and published a story on my intellectual conflict with the director (click here for link)

Nevertheless, I did not contravene the director’s orders, fearing indeed she’d resort to banning me from the library if I did.  And I needed the library for the internet for my job as adjunct online instructor.  Over the year and a half that followed, I almost never spoke to the director.  Now and then, when she addressed me, it was brief small talk. 

So, what had I done to merit the sudden permanent trespass order? Quite simply the week before I’d sent two open letters to about 25 of the library directors of the Clams Library System of Cape Cod in a last ditch effort to get just one of them to subscribe and thus get the journal into the system.  The only director to respond was the director of Sturgis Library, and as mentioned not in writing, but with three police officers.  How can such a thing happen in the year 2012, some 40 years after the great push for freedom during the Sixties?  

The argument I’d put forth in those two open letters was, as far as I can tell, fool-proof and quite simple.  Perhaps that’s why not one director responded with a reasonable point-by-point counter argument.

    

A. The library’s own policy clearly stipulates in writing that “Libraries should challenge censorship […].”

B. Sturgis Library banned my flyers and even rejected a free subscription offer. 

C. The library’s own policy stipulates in writing that “Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view […]”.

D. Sturgis Library banned the “point of view” expressed in the journal I publish with regards poetry, a point of view that stood at direct antipodes to the point of view expressed in the one literary journal it subscribed to, Poetry Magazine.  And now it permanently banned my point of view, regarding Sturgis Library, from Sturgis Library.

   

Was that so complicated?  One of my subscribers, Timothy Bearly, who does wear a lot of tattoos, understood it and noted perspicaciously:  

Unbeknownst to the library brass, this [the permanent trespass order] validates everything you have posted about them. They inadvertently proved your point by banning you from the library! As you said, how hypocritical for them to celebrate banned books week... then they ban you! Perhaps they became so enraged with the irrefutable logic [in the two open letters], they resorted to the only tactic they had at their disposal. 

Now, just how uncomfortable did the director make me feel by suddenly appearing with three police officers?  And just how uncomfortable does she make me feel now, knowing that in the town where I live I can no longer frequent the publicly-funded library and am forced to pay taxes that help fund it?  Arguing “uncomfortable” and “inappropriate things” clearly serves to divert attention away from the initial argument:  the library’s egregious hypocrisy regarding its own policy and actions.   

Finally, the American Library Association, which I contacted, responded that it had no jurisdiction over libraries.  Sadly, it was totally disinterested in what had happened.  Its Office of Intellectual Freedom, which evokes Orwell’s 1984, did not respond.  PEN New England (“defending free expression everywhere”) did not respond. Poet/professor Fred Marchant, former director of PEN New England, did not believe my assertion that PEN did not respond.  The explanation for the non-response, however, was evidently that current director Karen Wulf was friends with Joan Houlihan, whose Concord Poetry Center I’d criticized a number of times.  Moreover, Marchant is a friend of Houlihan’s too.  Cronyism is the oil that  makes the lit milieu in Massachusetts function.   The ACLUM did respond, requesting further information but could not stipulate whether or not it could help.  It has limited resources.  Eventually, I spoke with one of its intake lawyers at her request.  Later, she mentioned a group of lawyers met and decided one of them would call the library director. Thus, I await with a sparkle of hope.  Nevertheless, the director’s ploy will most certainly be the he-made-me-feel-uncomfortable and said-inappropriate-things card.  I await to discover what precise things I’d said were inappropriate and if that actually holds weight vis-a-vis freedom of expression.  

The Great Existential Conundrum

by G. Tod Slone

The ducks don’t think of it, nor do the crows,
as the water eternally flows round the creek,
swelling slowly upwards, then draining outwards

Christians don’t think about it, nor do Muslims,
or Jews, Buddhists, or others of that ilk

Only those of us alone contemplating the tic toc
of time resound in the silence of our dwellings
feel its dearth reality, “lo fatal” as Dario called it

Babies cry, while children are taught the fairytale
as if reality could or would pain them

But the fairytale, of course, is not for them at all…

CHAINS OR, THE NECESSITY OF SAMIZDAT

by G. Tod Slone

A Borders Experience

Free WiFi, so I bring in my laptop,
hook it up and buy a coffee, sip,
and recharge my battery.
Later, I get up to stretch my legs,
walk across the long space
to hunt for the poetry section.
The religion section is quite ample
—three huge wall-to-ceiling shelves—
same goes for the fiction section,
where I spot right in the middle
a small island stand marked Poetry.
So I walk over to it, and as I reach,
a lone elderly lady farts a gurgler.

Damn, I decide to skip the poetry
before the waft engulfs me.


Bums Don’t Carry Laptops

In the morning, I get out of the
sleeping bag in the back
of my two seater, crawl up to the
driver’s seat, sit, start the car,
then drive out of the mall lot
on down to Barnes & Noble,
where I escalator upstairs
to take a dump and
wash my hands and face,
then find a seat off in a
solitary corner and write:

Bums don’t carry laptops
or maybe they do.
I carry a laptop…

The Frozen in Mind (The Donkeys vs. the Elephants) —inspired by Becky Tuch, a donkey

by G. Tod Slone

It seems we’ve reached a very sad point
in this country,
purported model of democracy
—you know, free speech and vigorous debate.

Everything seems reduced to black or white
where thought remains bounded
in the box of ideology

and nothing exterior tolerated, let alone considered,
no matter how reasonable
—no discussion needed, wanted, heeded, or dared.

Phoneheads

by G. Tod Slone

Everywhere I go
phoneheads appear
as if out of nowhere.

“What was the number?”
says a phonehead.
“Who knows and who cares?”
I respond.
"What was the number again?”
he says.
“Who gives a shit what it was!”
I say. “Move your goddamn
conversation away from me!
I don’t need it; I don’t want it!”
He looks over at me, snickers,
then actually moves the yap
down the aisle of the bookstore
for someone else to enjoy.

Phoneheads everywhere I go,
I can’t defeat them,
they’re all over the goddamn place.
Jabber, jabber, and more jabber.

Sunset over Shit Lawn

by G. Tod Slone

The mob inside pushed me outside—
the Hispanics wheeling their carts
bellowing in Spanish as if in Mexico.
A lawn of wrappers and shit lay before me,
where I sit on a bench seat in front of
Walmart in Salem, New Hampshire,
soaking in the last sun rays of the day.
Obese people waddle around the lot
with backwoods air and voices.
A large six-foot long snow and ice turd,
blackened with crap and wrappers,
lies to the right of me, winter’s end
surrounded by melt water, butts, straws,
plastic pieces, bubblegum hockers,
papers, and even a few pinecones.
When you’re my age, if you don’t
have a crew cut and wear a suit
they inevitably say, hey you look like
that guy in Back to the Future.
The sun shoots at me horizontally,
very pleasant warmth and light,
straight over the roof of Wendy’s
on to this stretch of shit lawn.
Cars, cars, I wonder if these people
even contemplate the universe.
Behind me is shit woods also strewn
with wrappers, plastic strawers, boxes,
bags, empty bottles, and crushed cans.
J arrives wheeling a basket full of stuff,
says she’s going to have the girls over,
so bought all kinds of nuts and shit.

Dudes My Age

by G. Tod Slone

Out there in the motel lot,
I see them scrubbing away
on their shiny Corvettes—
reds, blues, greens, banana.
About 10 of them are parked
in a perfect line,
their proud owners scrubbing
and polishing over and again,
all morning long.
One of the guys scowls at me,
a big coot with shiny bald head
and CORVETTE written
in big letters across his tee-shirt
—must have been a marine
or maybe even a state copper.
Seniors in bliss or almost,
they are the successful ones
of my generation,
the retired fellows dressed
uniformly
in khaki shorts.

This Poem Is Taboo, and If You Don’t Know Why (You Forgot about the Dog House Out Back)

By G. Tod Slone

One day on the Internet, I read a brief interview featuring Sam Hamill,
poet and founder of Copper Canyon Press.
(Now, if I were Charles Bukowski, I would have written Jack Camel
and Nickel Creek Press, but evidently I’m not him.)
Wisdom, unsurprisingly, was not to be found in Hamill’s discourse,
only phrases typical of those bathing in the limelight:
“Poetry is a very large house with many rooms, closets, attics,
basements, bedrooms and kitchens.”

The interview had resulted from an invitation by Allison Hedge Coke,
Endowed Chair of Poetry & Writing at the University of Nebraska.
Thus, I contacted her—that’s what I do—and suggested she invite me
to read or speak or whatever because, well, I likely stood
at direct antipodes to Hamill, an established-order fellow,
pumped up with hefty sums of public monies thanks to the NEA.

To my long email, Coke replied briefly without addressing my query:
“How could you possibly be against Sam Hamill, a dear friend?”
The same, of course, could have been argued for any “prominent” one,
witty wordsmithy thriving in comfy buffered cocoon.

So, I was critical of the fellow because he accorded himself the title
of Director of Poets against War, though evidently not against
PC and its smiley-faced literary established order.
For democracy, I argued that he and all luminaries should not
be shielded from valid critique,
teeming about in their hermetic backslapping circles.
Coke, an Iroquois, though of the Women’s Studies variety, replied briefly:
“Maybe white/Western democracy, certainly not indigenous American
democracy, where true democracy was lifted from.”
Could the good woman simply not “hear” what I had to say, that it was
so easy for Hamill and friends to criticize distant wars, while ignoring,
much closer to home, the corrupt academic hands feeding them so royally?
They’d hammered away at Bush’s war, but now it was Obama’s, yet
nary a word about that.

Coke again replied and again oh so briefly: “Some of us have to work
to feed our families versus attacking people who are working…”
Always the excuses abounded for turning a blind eye, I reminded her
and of my invitation query,
but she simply refused to address the latter and wouldn’t acknowledge
that students in higher education ought to be exposed to all points of view,
not just to hers and those of her “prominent” buddies.
Always inspired by the sealed doors of academe, I sketched a cartoon
featuring Hamill, Coke, and Others, and sent it to all those concerned.

There, of course, was no further response… from her or any of them.