From: George Slone
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2020 11:43 AM
To: information@creativenonfiction.org <information@creativenonfiction.org>
Subject: Lee Gutkind satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon
To the Godfather Editor, Lee Gutkind:
You have been satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon. Sadly, the professors I’ve criticized (OMG) at Arizona State U, including the Poetaster Laureate, have chosen SILENCE, certainly NOT debate. I'd ask you to distribute the cartoon to your colleagues and students, as well as request your university librarian to subscribe so the latter might examine such criticism in The American Dissident, but we both know the probability of that to be near ZIPPO...
Sincerely,
Subj: Criticism of and for you...
Date: 8/14/03 1:11:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: Enmarge
Dear Lee Gutkind, Ed., Creative Nonfiction:
Creative non-fiction has always sounded like another educationist gimmick. You seem to add another element to the gimmick, that of, cult of personality. CNF gives educationists reason to hold yet more colloquiums, congresses and workshops. It gives them (you) reason to write more books, hire new professors, beef-up moribund departments, and pay expense lecturers. What thinkest thou, oh self-anointed guru?
What I'd be interested in is for you tell me either directly or indirectly what would not be included under this new gimmick Creative non-fiction. Would an essay mocking creative non-fiction be excluded? CNF is really nothing more than an educationist invention for something had already been invented. Thoreau, Emerson and Orwell, for example, had all written creative non-fiction pieces long before the educationists thought up the term. By the way, I have just written a killer essay, highly critical of poetry and poets, one that makes Gioia's piece look utterly lame and tame. Where to send it? Probably no where, for most literary journals have relegated truth and hardcore critique to the far fond of the bus.
You need to think when applying self-congratulatory terms to your espece, including "respected" magazine, "respected" poet, and "high quality" nonfiction prose. These terms become meaningless because your espece tends to use them right and left to describe essentially academic phenomena, though not always. You need to teach your students this. You need also to teach them to question and challenge all things with regards writing, including the prizes, the grants, the fame-game celebrity writers, cult of personality, and the instructors themselves. RE the Pulitzer, who are the judges, what are their criteria? Do you teach those things? Do any academics teach them?
Best,
G. Tod Slone, Ed.
The American Dissident
www.geocities.com/enmarge
(Professor of French, Spanish and English when employed. Now unemployed because I dare speak rude truth to power... and professor colleagues always hate that more than anything else. Why? Because they don't dare. Because it implicates them as sheepish cowards.)
Subj: More fraud from the ivory tower...
Date: 8/17/03 10:57:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: Enmarge
Silence is always the best weapon for those in power, no matter how minor, so I am not at all surprised by your silence. I've since read the Walcott-Gutkind controversy over creative non-fiction… and find it nothing but a lot of blablabla. Like Walcott, you appear to enjoy indulging in self-congratulations. I know this is rampant in higher education, along with backslapping. In reality, I think you're just another literary fraud desperately seeking the limelight, the floor in Vanity Fair. Do you ever dare criticize the academic hand that feeds you, the functionary deans and First-Amendment indifferent kowtow colleagues? Well, my friend, I have and do. Your creative non-fiction is really nothing more than another diversionary smokescreen for the elite in an effort to drown out hardcore criticism.
Best,
G. Tod Slone, Ed.
The American Dissident
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