The Clan

The New Criterion once attacked Keith Gessen and his crew at n+1 by asking, “is your journal really necessary?” My answer is yes. In April of 2004, Foetry.com launched; its mission: to expose fraudulent poetry contests (Jorie Graham came under fire). In a way, n+1 approximates a model for addressing the grievances behind Foetry, and behind literary nepotism in general. I say “approximates a model” because the true model is the Wu-Tang Clan.

If you haven’t read the AllMusic.com biography of the Wu-Tang, you should. This is from the beginning:

Turning the standard concept of a hip-hop crew inside out, the Wu-Tang Clan were assembled as a loose congregation of nine MCs, almost as a support group. Instead of releasing one album after another, the Clan were designed to overtake the record industry in as profitable a fashion as possible—the idea was to establish the Wu-Tang as a force with their debut album and then spin off into as many side projects as possible. In the process, the members would all become individual stars as well as receive individual royalty checks.

Incredibly, this plan worked. In five year’s time, Method man, ODB, Raekwon, GZA, and Ghostface Killah had all debuted (to varying degrees) commercially successful and critically acclaimed solo albums. In 1997, the Clan returned with Wu-Tang Forever, which entered the charts at #1. Wu-Tang had not only become a brand-name, they had become an industry. As the second round of solo-projects began, the Wu branched out into clothing and video games. Here is RZA on their business plan:

We reinvented the way hip hop was structured, and what I mean is, you have a group signed to a label, yet the infrastructure of our deal was like anyone else’s …we still could negotiate with any label we wanted, like Meth went with Def Jam, Rae stayed with Loud, Ghost went with Sony, GZA went with Geffen Records, feel me?….and all these labels still put “Razor Sharp Records” on the credits.. ..Wu Tang was a financial movement. So what do you wanna diversify….? ..Your assets? [from www.wuforever.com]

By 2000, however, the Wu had spread itself thin (one is reminded of the last days of the Roman Empire). As AllMusic puts it, they were “suffering from inconsistency, overexposure (they’d spawned a clothing line, a video game, a comic book, and more), and a flood of musical product that even diehards found difficulty keeping up with. The Clan had become too expansive, too prodigious, too prolific.”

There is something to be learned from the rise and fall of the Wu-Tang. N+1, arguably, has already learned it. I’m talking about the concept of the Clan, the Collective, the Support Group during a time when literary journals, both print and electronic, have flooded our generational colloquy, hands out begging for alms.

I took the following from n+1’s submission guidelines (I’ve included a link to their full disclaimer here):

Writers interested in contributing to n+1 should note that we come out only twice a year, and that most if not all of the slots available for a given issue will have been filled by the editors many months before publication.

That doesn’t sound like an open forum for art, does it? That’s because it’s not. One of the major differences between n+1 and a lot of other publications is that they openly disclose the fact that they operate more like a clan than a submission-based literary journal. I’m not advocating the elimination of this time-honored tradition. I’m not saying that all literary journals should operate on the model of Wu-Tang. There are, however, a plethora of start-up journals, local journals, and even established, widely distributed journals that are limiting their potential by trying to maintain the façade of being an open community. We need a few more manifestos (did I really say that? I guess I did). We need a few more arrogant assholes (like the n+1 clan, like Flatmancrooked) to embrace bravado and self-promotion, to become a brand-name, to branch out into solo projects.

What will this do? Well, it’s a start towards achieving RZA’s goal in the world of literature (to reinvent the way it’s structured). Foetry.com wouldn’t have to exist if poets weren’t attempting to participate in a system that holds up the mask of open competition. If nepotism gets embraced, if the Clan mentality gets embraced, it might do a lot towards getting good writing in people’s faces; it might move us past stagnant traditions, and it might just put the onus of getting published on the authors themselves so they have no “Literary Establishment” to blame. One is reminded of what Marianne Moore said of Wallace Stevens (and I’m paraphrasing here): Stevens’ relative isolation protected his unique gift; had he been a part of the ‘world of poetry,’ his brilliant individuality very well could have been squelched or homogenized.

I’m not advocating that writers completely isolate themselves from the literature machine (an MFA may still be valuable). However, the Clan mentality may provide a nice middle ground, a way to participate in the grand colloquy without falling prey to the homogeneity that large, established, supposedly ‘open’ journals foster. Of course, the Clan mentality is only part of it. We’re going to have to collaborate. And were going to have to make people angry.

Next Time: The collabo, the crossover, the guest appearance. Why every journal of new literature should feature classic work (if they can get their hands on it). And the value of pissing people off.

Hip-Hop, Part I: Straddling the Line

Hip-Hop, Part II: Hip-Hop and Vaudeville

Hip-Hop, Part III:Practical Lessons in Attitude

Hip-Hop, Part IV: The Hip-Hop Business Model

Hip-Hop, Part V: Lil Wayne’s Digital Self-Promotion

By Christopher Robinson