The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

So disembodied yet so appropo. Post everything but now. There could be no post post now for there would always be post post post. Not allowing victory to even merely exist was not as thorough a victory as believed before, that is, when victory on a somewhat naive level was still believed in and lived through.
The dream was always to create the story outside of the story’s knowledge while remaining inside the story’s core. The dream was to sidestep each new passing word to get away from having to be “nailed down.” Acrobats all yet all were fooled by fools for no act of acrobatics, no swerving aside, no soul-looking down-looking away-looking otherwards, could take the post post modern to post post post modern without allowing the entering of the fourth then the fifth etc. etc. etc.
We fight, for lack of a better word, for the better word, because we were taught to by those who were taught to by those who were taught to because some before them could not simply do. The rest of us deem it insane and leave it. The good children wear black and move to new york and never disobey unto death. There will be some great comparison someday we are all so sure about that. Those who know and those who know. All will line up and each will bat an eyelid in a certain way and the other will move a finger just right and one will say to who? God? Ourselves (Capital O)? What? We don’t know. For then we are dead. But we’re not. We’re not! We’re not.
We were called slackers. We were called generation X. Some of us were called Baby Boomers and some of us are simply old now. Was it, after all is said and done, merely insanity? Was the desire to create something new we felt as children a biological necessity that refused to allow our lesser aspects, our minds namely, to have any inkling of? What of the wasted years? What of the pages torn, the words strewn about computer landscapes to no avail, pitiful responses from the leaders of the pack who only know what will sell, who don’t know any longer their own reasons for living, for creating, for being, in a way resounding of non-being, simply to know what it may be like? What then of the hoardes who hold our consciousness captive in books the likes of which will never see our names. Why no socialism of publishing?
Because we do not warrant such gifts of life, such easy planes upon which to sail into better knowledge of ourselves which provide smooth gaits down placid avenues at dusk where light lingers yellow downward upon us like in movie screens where angels of light linger as well but are light and because we are too young to know know in our knowing place that angels contain light, are light, and yet why can’t we? Why can’t we?
Where are the rescuers? We all know that Dante’s Inferno is a metaphor for the deeper recesses of the mind. Our hells are inside of our heads. Whether or not any of it has actual place other than inside creative representation is anybody’s guess. In mythology they recommend that when in the land of the dead please do not stop and help the wretched souls which may cry out to you and, of course, have a nice day. We scream for aid us here in the purple seas where fires boil our knees as our hands red and peeling reach for the only sight we have ever seen. We are the magicians of gore soulical.We are the torch bringers, the lappers of flame, the underwater scarecrows floating like bubbles up to you to be known, to be lifted out of this place and set aloft.
In mythology when things got really bad for a particular person a god would often raise that person into godhood his or her self. That’s what we’re like when we want to be published. At times, those of us who know that much of our writing impetus was spawned originally by mirely muck, lucklessness, downward grins, black nails, quiet lunches alone staring at nothing in particular, deem it necessary to continue our quest for the non-dying of the light. As students we often lay on our beds prostrate in utter dread without even knowing it, for death is symbolic of all that is wrong with our lives and we non-students of mythology are never quite made quite aware of quite the way we should quite handle this quite unseemly and unsettling knowledge quite other than in our veins so that we may become upstanding and, hopefully, quite overly-employed American citizens.
But some of us don’t know how to be this. We don’t know, have never known, how to “join in.” Luckily, we are not in power and since we are the weak link we tend to die off quicker than most. Sometimes, one or two of us is shown appreciation for our intense and seemingly accidental relationship with the darker aspects of, say, (oh, why not) personality. When this happens the rest of us light up like the Fifth Dimension going way up high on their beautiful balloon. But then we come down because we realize it was all just a cruel joke. Every now and then the others who are born with the ability to count numbers, to care in ways useful, throw us a bone because they recognize our humanity. Unfortunately, those bones usually are thrown to those of us creative, darker types who have died of our personal maladies. The Kurt Cobains. The Marilyn Monroes. Do you see just thinking about this how much bullshit is actually inside of us? We are the post moderns. We’ve pushed creativity to its very limits. We’ve accepted that our lives are more important if they can become symbolic. Yet the world has grown so large that we are beginning to recognize that we will die unnoticed and without meaning anyway. Even if we do all the right things artistic. No apologies necessary for rushing here, but there needs to come an end to these words unless somebody takes notice of them soon. For without my reflection I am but a vampire, and being the non- vampire sort of guy I am, simply non-existent and the world being what it is, so quick to withhold pity anymore except for those with the physical type of ailment, I deem it necessary to do what you would have me do anyway: transform.
But if I do this you lose. Better to kill more of the light than to have to take it upon yourself, to add it to your own store of light and thus lose yourself. It is the river that I have almost drowned in, the river that, if I can survive, will have taught me something that you will never know for fear of the overflowing.

The Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite

Welcome to the very first Fargo Kantrowitz’z Literary Campsite. This used to be a radio show in Santa Barbara when I lived out there among the barbarians. What I did there was simply read my novel on Monday afternoons to kids in the dorms who weren’t listening anyway. It was a practice radio stations that went into the dorms only. This way the rest of the world was spared the novices who might say things that nobody wanted hear anyway. It was a great excercise in mental masturbation. This is something I have found that I am quite adept at.
When I got tired of reading I would simply talk to the kids. I have no proof that I ever had a single listener. I never received a single phone call or a single comment from anybody at the station where I worked. I was live dead air. I think that is about par for your average writer anyway so I am not ashamed. All I can say is that is where the literary campsite was born and now it lives on in written form. It has a life of its own, tentacles stretching out across all boundaries that would keep it down, simply because it has this: the word “literary” in it’s title. Anytime you use words you enter the realm of the literary. I don’t care if you think that this word should be reserved for only the greats. I don’t buy this because so many people want to be great themselves that they will never allow others to be great and therefore nobody at all gets heard. Here at the literary campsite I am here to proclaim the liberation of the “word”.
Let’s start with A. Abacus: a counting machine. Abcess: a bleeding wound. Absent: not present…

“They presented the idea of being a writer when I was still a teenager, something I’d always had success at as a child. It was the one thing I could ever do where people thought it was okay. Everybody. I could write. It came from being a dreamer growing up. Now you’re just weird. Anyway, this is for all those others out there who kept on playing even when told that recess was over.

I am back from the howling hills of the places where the hills roll and the wind blows. Out there there is no here here. In here there is no there and vice versa although you could check with my agent first and i doubt that he’ll tell you anything because he’s in florida anyway visiting his sister, who is sick or something. I don’t know. Figure if your stuck in here that you might as well make the most of it. Till Kantrowitz gets to you. That Kantrowitz. Who are you? You don’t know till Kantrowitz tells you who you are because its his book. Make a living as an idea, they say, because they need you and you know its the only thing you’re really good at, but the work is hell and you miss where you came from and its just all around not that great. The work is not all that great.

the work is not all that great by Albert Jones 2013

there is a multipllicity of numbers with which to multiply. this fact alone made me want to hide in fantasy of play and literature as a child. Even as a grown up i didn’t really trust the number’s guys in school. Sure, they had “important” work to do, but I wasn’t allowed into it. I had to be “cool” instead, and I tried and tried to become a daredevil writer and tried this and then that until finally, I said, f*)k it and chose to write the way i wanted to write, in other words, dump your chosen audience and let your words find it’s own audience. Just write and expose your past writing and you will be alright. You will not be left alone to wither and die, you, me, rather, the ever-failed writer, the guy without the plan. The rejectionist. We fall and fell and will fall again without a basic plan. Before, there was no way. Publish or self-publish and the self-publishing route promised no real victories. People were afraid of being considered too basic for having published their own works. Other writers, realizing that the marketing of those self published books was what really mattered made good however. Whitman, Carslyle, Thoreau, I believe, some of those who self-published. The life of a writer is difficult, but hopefully we will be able to gather an audience for our works by throwing our nets out wider. Now we must catch only a sliver of a larger world pie. And in so doing we are creating a better world, for the literary campsite, is and will hopefully always be erring just this side of the positive. We know all about existentialism and calling ourselves “we,” but how can we mope forever? I like looking for the hope in the situation. Sometimes I can’t find it and all seem bleak. I get weak and I fall. The writer falls and falls again. Look at me, he asks meekly to the “editor.” No. Says he, the victim to the writer’s scraggly scrawl…

hello world. we hope you enjoy the show. there are novels and stories and other junk on here that was written by fargo kantrowitz and later there will be other stuff written by others about other things. well, anyway, thanks for stopping by the fargo kantrowitz’z literary campsite and we hope you enjoy the show.