Literary Ramble VI: Writing Against the Counter-Culture: A Wowser Literature. | Welcome to the Soberdome.

Apparently we have a writership of mums and dads with two and half kids, a mortgage and a Citroen which lives counter to the counter culture; that is, which stands for conformity, for being ‘inside’ in its content …

… [A literature that should be] on principle, refusing to use trigger warnings, knowing that offence-giving is vital medicine to vaccinate the population from the censorious tyranny of umbrage taking. A literature to which the notion of a ‘safe place’ would be repugnant if it weren't so hilarious. There should be no safety to, or from, writing. That's why though not of my politick, I was always going to love our own James K. Baxters and our irreverent, drunk, Sam Hunts ...

It is unsurprising I don’t have a big readership – freedom is passé nowadays, a busy-body bossy command state the accepted model for society (again): my most read post against Big Brother’s tax surveillance operations and the barbaric fallacy of the common good used to justify the tax take, has just over 22,000 reads, and my literary posts normally score around the 2,000 mark. Literary Ramble IV has been the top literature post at (currently) 3,264 page visits, albeit with continuing reads of about twenty to thirty per day – significantly, mainly out of the US. With that post weighing in over 18,000 words, I’m chuffed with that.

What I’m not so chuffed about is that every day the disappointing premise of Literary Ramble IV is borne out: today I find its correctness at a surprisingly mundane level.

To remind you of that premise:

State funding of the arts is leading to the stultification of western literature under the reactionary establishment of Left-Liberalism, also called Progressivism, which has largely captured the means of production via the agents and publishers, and quietly indoctrinates the authors toward a homogenised literature via creative writing courses in progressive saturated tertiary institutions. Ours is no literature that will seed Le Guin's resistance and change, or that can be ‘disturbed by power’, as Solzhenitsyn feared, because it’s a literature which embraces the ethic of that power, the supremacy of the state over the individual, and incredibly for the arts, a collectivism over individualism, with at its base, the tax take which funds a complacent publishing channel, while eviscerating our private lives, our digital innards disemboweled and served up in the offices of government officials.

A dead and dying literature, supplicant to the tax surveillance state for its victuals, no fight left in it.

From this premise, it will further not surprise that I am a writerly romantic. A lover of the rebel. I lov(ed) the rock and roll counter culture of Rolling Stones drunkenly wrecking hotel rooms, and Keith Moon throwing a tantrum over his drum set, then throwing his drum set at his audience.  I couldn't listen to their dreadful noise anymore, but I lov(ed) the punks of the 70s and 80s - my era - the glorious Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joan Jett, Blondie, and let’s not forget those anarchic lads, Sid Vicious/Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, Dead Kennedys and Ramones. Go to one of those concerts and get all jazz hands and you’d rightly be thought retarded - and if you want some potent symbolism of the death of counter culture look at pop culture today: tailored, clean living boy bands, rap pap, and pop princesses.

Flowing from this and extending my literary manifesto of Ramble IV, I view literature as a necessary counter culture, also, produced by the outsiders and outcasts who are able to look in, quite possibly intoxicated, high or tripping – perhaps because of it - and then report back, steadfastly on principle refusing to use trigger warnings, knowing that offence-giving is vital medicine to vaccinate the population from the censorious tyranny of umbrage taking. A literature to which the notion of a ‘safe place’ would be repugnant if it weren't so hilarious. There should be no safety to, or from, writing. That's why though not of my politick, I was always going to love our own James K. Baxters and our irreverent, drunk, Sam Hunts.

This is literature and art as the outside. The other. A literature questioning and poking and prodding its quills into everything that is received culture, every assumption, and all, ALL authority. Literature that is important. Literature that has purpose. Literature that can’t write when its freedom is bounded and won’t accept boundaries. Literature that won't accept censorship. A literature with its progeny traceable directly to the Enlightenment and the rational, individualistic ethos arising from that rebellion against the ancient regimes. A literature that knows collectivism means controlled lives lived inside the prison of each other's minds, which is the Gulag.

This when the Gulags of the twentieth century are still visible on the arms of living humans, not just in the history books, thus there was no excuse for this crumbling of resolve.

Concomitant with this – free living is a package deal; stay with me … - on the intimate, mundane details of traipsing through a life, I love booze. I love wine. I love martinis. I love whiskey, brandy and gin. I love these things also because nanny state would control them by admonition, rationing or prohibition, along with sugar, with salt, and with fat - all, of course, for my own good. Noting that to say I love booze is not to say I’m some type of raving alcoholic, I most certainly am not - well perhaps raving - but I have to make that qualification, because along with the ascendency of that gender and racially divisive politics and segregation known as identity politics, spawned by progressive collectivism, has come the busy-body, judgemental age of the wowser (and worse, the censoring social justice saint – Jesus Christ, Allah or George save me from the good intentions of the earnest eyeing my money). Thus my attacks on Labour MP Iain Wowser-Galloway when he had his wowser blood alcohol limit passed this last twelve months: I wrote then this would only punish the responsible, while those that drink to excess and drive would be oblivious to it, meaning the road toll wouldn’t be changed. And I was right; the road toll has gone up, dramatically, as rural hospitality and community are being destroyed – (don’t panic, this comes back to literature soon enough):

Guess the wowser blood alcohol limit was a waste of time - as I said it would be @IainLG   Only punished responsible. http://t.co/BrPRUqhFtL

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 27, 2015

I thought this tweet the end of that. I’d made my point, knowing the clock would never tick tock back toward freedom: it only does that after revolution. However, needless to say - getting back to first premises - I wasn’t expecting this:

@MarkHubbard33 @IainLG RTC deaths are only small part overall societal cost of alcohol - misses morbidity, violence and crime

— Going West Festival (@GoingWestFest) May 27, 2015

@GoingWestFest But the wowser blood alcohol level is only about road deaths. Hence, my point. As 4 the rest, so you would have prohibition?

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 27, 2015

@GoingWestFest And why is a literary festival account taking up a wowser argument against alcohol??

— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) May 27, 2015

Told you I’d get this back to literature.

The @GoingWestFest Twitter account is the account of an annual literary festival, namely, quote: Going West Books & Writers Festival is an annual literary festival that takes place each September in West Auckland. And in case you just missed it, this literary festival account just admonished, nay, lectured me about the harmful effects of alcohol. If I have to explain my point, even to the post punk generation, then you, dear reader, are beyond the point, certainly of hope.

Move along, there's no counter culture to be found here. I would know our literature was in better shape if the Going West Festival had tweeted me this: Charles Bukowski drinking on the set of French television program Apostrophes - those were the days (hattip Steve Braunias - Twitter) ...

I had not fully understood, even in my Literary Ramble IV, the extent of the fail of our twenty first century progressive-centric-big-brother-state-wowser literature. Apparently we have a writership of mums and dads with two and half kids, a mortgage and a Citroen which lives counter to the counter culture anymore; that is, which stands for conformity, for being inside in its content, and I have no doubt backs the abuse right of the all-powerful state to prohibit alcohol from me, plus good times generally – no guesses as to what such a writership’s attitude to drug legalisation is, (and within an historical literary context what a tragedy that is).

Twenty first century literature has crumbled in all its strait-laced sobriety to this: the gutter of normalcy (and it ain’t looking up at the stars. It’s not dreaming at all, and is the last three-bedroom-toilet-and-en-suite you’ll find freedom loving peeps having a good time expressing themselves in.)

It’s all gone. Read my Literary Ramble IV.

There remains only to end on an ill-founded request I know will be ignored: will the boring-bound-prohibitionist-bureaucrat running the West Literary Festival Twitter account please put it carefully down. Take a step back from it. Another step. Now fuck off to Nanny and turn in early with your milk hot chocolate and butter short bread. You shouldn’t be anywhere near such a noble, important art, as this art of rebellion to authority, and today’s unprecedented abuse of the state’s authority with its regulation upon regulation, law upon law, snoops, spies, officials and IRD auditors inveigled into every intimate sphere of our private lives, where even language is being determined for us by those social justice thugs as between what is acceptable and what is not. Yes, we live in a near total surveillance State and our writing community, incredibly, is on the side of It, worshipping at the altar of redistribution and taking the rich pricks down, along with the right of each one of us to be left alone - I know that; but please, I don’t need your haughty lecturing on the harms of a ruddy drink reminding me of it.

The. End.

Of. Everything.

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