Brandon Scott Gorrell, the Electrowars and the New Sincerity (Part I of III)

I.

During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present (2009) by Brandon Scott Gorrell (or BSG as he is also called in abbreviated internet slang) came in the mail last week. The chapbook is a sleek little number that manages to showcase Gorrell's strengths as a writer, particularly in relation to evoking mood and the subtleties of tonality. He articulates the tiny, trivial and not-so-trivial elements of modern life in a 'refreshing,' 'humorous' and 'unique' perspective.*

Though Brandon Scott Gorrell's writing merits distinction on its own, recent events first necessitate a discussion of his publisher, Tao Lin's Muumuu House. As with many of Lin's projects, Muumuu House releases have earned a respectable amount of equal parts ire and accolade. Muumuu House exercises considerable influence on the ephemeral internet publishing circuit. Most recently, Muumuu House elicited a swelling shitstorm of unprecedented velocity over on HTMLGIANT, eclipsing other notable battles such as Tao Lin vs. Gawker (re: Tao Lin vs. the internet [the Internet]) and 4Chan vs. Ark Music Factory.

The most 'current' feud happened when Jordan Castro posted "Some Thoughts Re Muumuu House," an article profiling a few writers who had been published by Muumuu House. Rather than charge you with the task of sorting through the 400+ comments on the post, I'd like to point out the buzz highlights. Namely, shit first started going down when commenters applied the term 'emo absurdist' to the style of writing popularized by Muumuu House. The 'absurdist emo style' 'seems' to encompass writers who have a penchant for the drama of recounting ordinary elapses in time, savoring occasionally noncommittal wordplay and demonstrating an interest in social computing.

Shit really hit the fan when a user named P.H. Madore typed, "Herding them into one moniker will definitely make them less appealing to people who are actually socially alienated" and will "perhaps stop them from spending their parents' money on supporting these people's drug habits." #crispyburn

Not surprisingly, this comment unleashed a maelstrom of shit in a whoosh of a few hundred comments. Some of the discussion could be classified as typical shitty-shit, but other onslaughts provoked the thought 'hmm... shit...' in a benign kind of way. The thread that followed P.H. Madore's comment proved intriguing in the later way. Eventually, the hive mind arrived at conclusions not unlike those the Frankfurt School would have reached had they had wireless. The mention of Muumuu House and money ending up spawning a larger debate about the myth of art, or how art is supposed to be a 'pure expression' of human condition but its existence (production) depends upon the values of capitalism. Nowhere is this tangled relationship more present than within the realm of avant-garde art.

Other avant-garde artists, such as performance artist Laurie Anderson, have long since been critical of the reification of art and often use the guise of pop to address such concerns. As discussed in Philip Nel's "Pop Goes the Avant-Garde: Laurie Anderson's and Leonard Cohen's Music for the Masses," Anderson is one artist who protests the very circumstances that allow her to attract a following.

Nel suggests that by acknowledging that she is implicated in the structures she critiques ("if you were in the art world, the big money wouldn't be too far away"), Anderson is able to turn popularity to her advantage. As Jonathan Arac writes, 'Mass culture is our element, neither a sudden and welcome liberation from a worn-out high culture, nor the threat to corrupt all that we most treasure' (314). Anderson, too, realizes that we are all involved in mass culture, so -- her work asks -- why not use it to our benefit?

In other words, if by participating in art you are by extension participating in the culture industry, then there will always be some artists who acknowledge, accept and attempt to use this aspect of the art world to their advantage. Before you cringe or cry, consider what the Muumuu House writers who most actively engaged in this debate suggest in their work. They posit the idea that the relation of art to money is inextricable so you might as well not be a purist. It's a message that's comes across as both grim and casual, like someone putting their hands in their pockets and walking away.

Tao Lin, Megan Boyle and Jordan Castro were the most visible in their treatment of the culture industry, as seen in this exchange:


P.H. Madore and what will be referred to as 'the opposition' then took a typical anti-house stance of anti-gimmickry. I don't necessarily see them as 'opposition.' They play a sort of devil's advocate role within this debate and help spur the discussion. They engage in various degrees of trolling and are plagued by their own delusions of grandeur, but they ask the questions that start the conversations. The most popular argument that comes up with mention of Muumuu House is always one about style. The logic goes as follows, if said house has a style of formal innovation, then said house is lacking in content. People who adopt this rationale often criticize the hallmarks of Muumuu House style: subjective relevance, scare quotes, noncommittal language, aversion to declarative statements and choppy, clipped poetry. People feel like they need to 'know' something from this group, something that has to do with questions that ask about 'meaning.'

Here is one discussion of scare quotes:

As you can see, there's the literary gesticulating that make these kinds of threads fascinating, such a display of language. The comments sections aren't just a pissing contest for the erudite, these discussions will be influential in the way that literature is going to be defined in internet publishing cycles, humanities in the academy with increasing attenuation to the digital and the version of pop culture that is sold to the tweepies.

II.

The next exchange occurs when an HTMLGIANT user by the name of dh goes on to criticize Jordan Castro for his use of scare quotes and implementation of the response 'seems sweet.' This is another stylistic gripe with Muumuu House; people can't stand the indecisiveness of the statements. The position, if you will, of purporting to take a position on not taking a position by neglecting to articulate any position except opposition to normative standards.

dh ponders,


dh may have a point about how the elusiveness that characterizes the writing of the group could come off as a strategy, but Jordan's response is also illuminating.


While much of Muumuu House's press could be seen as preserving/ presenting the group's camaraderie, Jordan makes a valid suggestion that these ideals aren't limited to his immediate peer group. He closes the conversation with the assertion that his subject of inquiry is not relegated to his friends or conceivable environment. This brings to mind some of the work done by digital theorists that suggests that the rise of public space coincides with the merging of public and private spatiality. This occurs in tandem to increasing social technology. Is it any wonder young authors are obsessed with technology as a means of understanding their immediate environment if this is not only how they evaluate themselves but figure out themselves in the absence of public interaction?

III.

Some time after this, a commenter by the handle of kmmitchell penned a review in what was supposed to be a mockery of gimmicky 'book reviews' of Lin et al.


Facetiousness aside, Kmmitchel does make an interesting point when xie notes that the group does not incorporate fantastical language in the text. They prefer to describe their realities in ordinary language. The emphasis that Muumuu House places on a simple, cut style reminds me of something like Burroughs' work with the mutation of language. The cut-up technique is a predecessor to Twitter. When Burroughs chopped up pieces of sentences and glued them back together in random places on tapes, he was conducting a fascinating study of the fragmentation of declarative sentences. The profound, the playful, the pedantic -- all of those human speech patterns and emotional expressions -- intersect like the twines of the Twitter timeline.

V.

Unfortunately, the opposition dismissed the author's attempt to engage in a discussion and elaborated that,


After the commenting section rode the shit-waves for a couple more posts, it started to address the more interesting points made by kmmitchell et al. The direction the comment section took after the shit-slinging is the most interesting because it revealed the larger systems at work within the literary community, namely the divide between old style (MFA track success) and new style (renegade internet publishing). Since both of these schools are producing the content and styles that will shape a commercial audience, it makes sense that you will see this conflict manifest itself on sites that publicize the works of both sects.

The HTMLGIANT user Adam summed up the relevance of Muumuu House the most aptly in the following thread:


Muumuu House does not exist on the internet as an entirely neutral entity that is devoid of the same pressures of context, production and sociocapital concern simply because the medium of publication has changed from print to the internet. The house is not separate from its own need to generate material sustenance, audience, and other areas that concern the business element to writing. Can this community continue to exist as a somewhat independent outlet and welcome relief to traditional publishing routes despite its concerns for sustainability? Who is this 'certain kind of person' that Jordan Castro describes?

* Scare quotes here used to denote disdain for these 'tired' terms rather than disdain or ironic criticism of Gorrell's perspective. Re: Shitstorm Alberto.

* Here I use the term, 'current' loosely given that this event occurred almost 2 weeks ago, which on internet time is approximately 2903912039e339 internet light-years ago. This makes yours truly appear, possibly, to be like some sort of internet-dinosaur-meme-laggard-machine generating controversial stories about the internet for Dateline or something with the purpose of frightening the elderly about the nefarious antics of millenials 'on the loose' 'on the internet.'