:EIE:BJ":E:A..er:JB: TJB:E -.::1:aT:I'.:J)ER..G-JALO"D"N":D FERAL HOUSE Beneath the Underground© 1994 by Bob Black and Feral House All Rights reserved. 10 9 8 7 6 543 2 1 ISBN: 0-922915-21-0 Book design by Linda Hayashi For a free catalog of Feral House books, send to: SASE Feral House PO Box 3466 Portland, OR 97208 Beneath the underground Contents Foreword by Dr. Kirby Olson..................................................... vii Chapter One: Beneath the Underground Introduction..... ... 1 Beneath the Underground ......... 3 A Bar Room Brawl In Print....... 13 Bullsheet.... .. 16 Son of the Return of the Bride of Beneath the Underground ....... 23 Top Ten Reasons to Blow Off the Marginals Milieu....... 29 Chapter Two: The Sphinctre Of Anarchism Introduction. .....31 Empty Magazines....... 35 The Anti-Anarchist Conspiracy....... 36 The Match is Rigged ....... 42 Something Is Happening But You Don't Know What It Is, Do You, Mr. Jones? ..... ..44 You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship ... But You Can Have Fun Trying! ....... SO Chapter Three: Pullers Of Wool: The Church Of The SubGenius Taking The Low Road To High Weirdness .......56 Terrorism As Performance Art ....... 59 Excerpts from the SYZYGY lnterview .......62 Chapter Four: Left Bankruptcy Introduction .......64 The Bad Magazine With An Attitude .......67 Contending With Culture ....... 68 Let The Quips Fall Where They May ....... 72 Rapping Rapping .......78 Wasted Postage....... Sl Chapter Five: Looking Back On Leaving The Twentieth Century The Realization and Suppression of Situationism .......85 Quit While You're Ahead .......94 A Situationist Bibliography..... lOG lV Chapter Six: 104 .......In troduction Marginals Demigods 105 .......The Marginals Marco Polo 107 .......Hell, I've Even Laughed llO .......A Jack Of All Tirades 114 .......A Real Texas Twister 117 .......The Night They Forgot the Alamo 126 .......On lnordnance by Ed Lawrence Chapter Seven Culture Wars 130....... Ma ybe Not Well-Hung But Well-Endowed 136....... The Reyes Question 139....... Americas, Americas 143 .......The 12-Step Shuffle Chapter Eight 144 .......I ntroduction The Panic Catalog 145 .......The Best Book Catalog In The World 15l.. .....Whatever It Is, I'm Against It 152....... Thus Spake Mitty 153 .......If You Do Go Against Nature, That's Part Of Nature Too 155....... The New Dark Ages Chapter Nine And Now For Some Things Completely Different 157 .......I ntroduction 157....... A Sense Of Place 159 .......Crayons of Infinity 16l.. ..... God Of Mockery, Fill Me With Your Force Chapter Ten Ta king Culture With A Grain Assault 164 ...... .lntroduction 164 .......Taking Culture With A Grain Assault 186 ..............................................After word by Dr. Al Ackerman v Beneath the underground Vl pore word Foreword Bob Black: Hunter of Butterflies by Dr. Kirby Olson I only met Bob Black once: in a bar decorated like a teenage delinquent's bedroom. The bar was in Tacoma, Washington and was shaped like a coffee pot. Known as the Java Jive, the interior of the bar was all funked out with fake leopard skin and psychedelic memo­ rabilia; two monkeys gazed glumly out of their cage (animal activists have freed them in the five years since then); there were tattooed cowboys all around us, and 50s hits on the juke box. Black surprised me: I had expected, from his vituperative writings in the marginal press, the equivalent of Big Daddy Roth's Rat Fink­ blood shot eyes, and a pink tail wrapped around cloven feet. Who was this intelligent, clubby chap wearing a light blue arrow shirt, blue corduroy slacks, black shoes, a gold-colored watch? Though nearly forty, he had soft brown hair with no noticeable gray, a large but pleasant face with a slight overbite of his upper teeth; he cleared his throat often; had large thick glasses; big, well-groomed hands, was rather polite, smiling often. He said to me, "You're shy, so I intend to dominate you." But while he was extremely articulate, he was also a gifted listener. While he did most of the talking, I got to arrange the conversation according to my interests, so in fact I was the master, he the slave. He spoke of the Albany Regency, a powerful political machine of the 1820s, whose star was Martin Van Buren. Van Buren, Black explained, was to Jackson what George Bush is to Reagan. He asked in detail of my obsession of the late 1980s-the forgotten surrealist Philippe Soupault. He told me of his various friends such as Zack Replica-for whom, he explained rather loudly in front of the various rednecks in the bar-it was necessary to hold his huge dick when he took a whiz, because Zack had lobster hands! Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he spoke of Anarchism. By the end of the night (10 hours and 7 Northwest micro-brewery Vll Beneath the underground beers later), he spit when he talked, a bit of dribble on his chin. I was in a better state, because I had stuck to tomato juice, but he was still voluble and dynamic. [He makes it sound calculating, but he's a teeto­ taler], whereas I, at 4:00 in the morning, was technically asleep, as I drove him back to his Law Conference. [I 'd been flown out there by my then employer, the unspeakable Albany Law School.] that was Black live. But what of the immortal Black, the Black that writes, a member of the community of the undead? This Bob Black is an onophiliac, a connoisseur, tasting among the micro-brew­ eries of avant-garde literature. What he likes-Gerry Reith, Ed Lawrence-has a certain vigorous body-but I think it is ultimately the style that Black favors over the politics, the hue over the cry. Naturally, the one cannot exist without the; other, as style is politics, but the emphasis given ought to be noted, even over Black's stoutest objections. Black's two main bloodlines can be traced to the French Situationists on one side, giving him a certain theoretical density and obscurity, and on the other side to Ambrose Bierce, giving him a rabid bite. While the theoretical Black is intense, and eloquent, it is Eris in Black which I find fraught with the richest Black humor. That Bob Black misuses his gifts in a way such as the Gods of ancient Greece misused theirs-tossing lightning bolts, causing wars, death­ often for petty reasons of revenge. Black does just this-apparently without remorse-bringing everything he has to bear on his enemies-delighting in his superior education. Sometimes he disguis­ es these personal attacks by putting them into a historical and intel­ lectual framework-to give the appearance of objectivity, but for Black, the ad hominem attack is a given-as many of the works in this volume will attest. It is a tribute to Black's genius that, in the explosions he metes out to these lesser writers, he does illumine their thoughts-perhaps the only positive social value Black confers on them? I've scratched my head for years, trying to figure out what Bob Black believes in. In spite of his belligerence, there is a mirage of utopia flickering in his head somewhere. This mirage consists of intermittent moments when he romanticizes Ned Ludd, Maypole dancing, or Mediterranean culture (in spite of being genetically a Scot). Perhaps his values could be discerned in his scholarly writings? [No more than anywhere else.] A close look at Black's legal literature Vlll pore word might reveal something, or it might not. Revealing in concealing. Black's true economics, the one he operates on without thought of recompense among the marginals ephemera, is Slash and Burn, and he is probably the most sophisticated exponent of this philosophy still extant. Like Tamerlaine, he lays waste to whole fields ofthought, fig­ uring that the act of writing is the closest equivalent one can still reach, within today's law, to an intellectual bloodbath. He has put to rout countless anarchists' paper tigers with his fe rocious hilarity behind which lurks some mysterious meta-anarchism, which he terms Watsonian. Which Watson? I've tried to Sherlock to the bottom of this, but have never quite made it. Perhaps the shadow play of fisticuffs is enough for me, this conflict of tiny factions among the intellectually neglected fields of the remnants of urban insubordina­ tion. It is here that Black excels, where he finds and gives his kicks. Black never retreats, or concentrates on one front, but is always expanding his affronts-not only do we find the mighty SubGenius Foundation, the Small Press Alliance, or Processed World under attack, but there is always some fe llow marginal, some easy victim such as an old hippy or some socialist kid with rich parents, publish­ ing his first magazine. The only time I can bear to read what they have written is when Black cites them. It may be their one chance at immortality because of having been caught with their eyes open and their pants down in a volcanic explosion, and frozen in amber. Why must Black pick on the little guy? Though his writing is as luminous and savage, as well-turned as Oscar Wilde's, Wilde picked bigger foes, fo es who could fight back, such as Whistler, who could whistle as he turned out nocturnes with one hand and with the other, the sort of murderous commentary collected in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Perhaps Black is turning those he picks on into artists, ever so slowly-as they must rise to their own defense, but there is no evidence of this.