The Interstitial Manifesto

It’s no fair that all of the good literary movements are from the early half of the last century, and that the trend to support your literate leanings with a manifesto have fallen by the wayside. Good literary movements insofar as they’re “cool,” in the slangiest sense of the word. The Dadaists, Futurists, Surrealists, Modernists, Post-Modernists, Post-Colonialists, Post-ists, and Ist-ists made literature cool the same way the Marlboro Man made smoking cool.

Aside from a slightly abnormal obsession with the Marlboro Man, I have a no-shit policy on literature, effective as of now. I don’t have many beliefs, aside from the very firm belief that I did indeed leave my gloves on the couch in a coffee shop, and that they are indeed no longer there. But, I do also believe that I have the qualifications (said qualifications being a host of opinions that are loudly professed, though infrequently backed up with fact) to make subjective judgments on good and/or bad literature. Publishing houses, also licensed opinion factories, don't feel the same way I do about shit. Some imprints just love shit. Some people like buying and reading shit. This shit trend does not, however, include Harry Potter (which, in my opinion, is good fiction, though poorly executed writing...). It does include, well, shit.

It is entirely possible that I want to start a literary movement simply to have an excuse to say the word 'shit' as much as possible.

More than that, I'd rather like to put words in other people's mouths. According to Jean Baudrillard, Don DeLillo, and Other People, terrorists are the new artists. (I, personally, am of the opinion that it could be the other way around in a very Disney-fied sense of the word 'terrorist.') I also think that terrorists are the new terrorists, because it means I don't have to define any terms.

So, the Interstitialists, had they a manifesto, might ask why is there no ‘pre,’ only ‘post?’ What came before is as important as what comes next, leaving the interregnum unguarded by any well-meaning members of the literati.

All this, I'm afraid, is part of my elaborate plot to avoid having a 'job' at all costs. If I do well at avoiding this, at the end of six years I'll give myself tenure.