Blogs, Books, and Writings From the Web: Christian Crumlish & Levi Asher
Billectric
The ubiquitous Christian Crumlish is a writer and consultant living in
Crumlish 
Asher
Levi Asher lives in
Three-way Interview:
Bill Ectric to Xian: I've heard it said that self-publishing thru one of the print-on-demand publishers, like Lulu or iUniverse, is bad because (they say) once you do that, "a major publisher won't touch you." This sounds illogical. I would think that a major publisher would pick up any book they thought would sell, just like the major music labels pick up indie CDs. What's the deal?
Xian: I think it all depends. It's true that publishers and agents want to see fresh material and don't want to deal with copyright complications or issues of whether first serial rights are still available, but there are also many cases of books that sell many copies via self-publishing or print-on-demand services and then end up getting picked up by major publishers for second printings or second editions.
Bill: To a person who is new to blogging, the scene can be very confusing. I mean, some blogs are really collections of links to other blogs and/or websites, or collections of quotes, and then these quotes have clickable text that reference still another source - sometimes I don't even know who I'm replying to. Is this something one eventually gets used to?
Xian: Yes, but it is truly confusing at first. One issue is that on the web, context is fluid and many people have trouble knowing "where" they "are." Add to this that many blogs use similar default templates and that blogs encourage that classic alpha-wave flow-state in-the-zone experience of free associating and drifting from an original path, and you have a recipe for confusion. But most of us learn to like it and if we don't then maybe blogs ain't for us.
Bill to Levi: I read your story about meeting Allen Ginsberg. At one point, you say, "I raised my hand and attempted to impress him by tying in Descartes' proof of the existence of God to one of Blake's lines, just for the hell of it, but Ginsberg didn't seem especially impressed."
What was the line from Blake and how did it relate to Descartes?
Levi: I wish I knew what his Blake quote had been. The book was "Songs of Experience/Songs of Innocence" -- a big ancient illustrated book that he laid out on a table in the center of the classroom. I remember that the Descartes concept I was referring to was that it would be impossible to conceive of God if God didn't exist. Blake must have said something similar to this. I'm sure I was just trying to impress Ginsberg with the fact that I am smarter than the average
Bill: Did you get the Moby Dick tattoo before or after you tried to impress Ginsberg with your knowledge of Melville?
Levi: I got my Moby Dick tattoo on my 40th birthday,
Bill, to Xian: You must be incredibly busy. How do you find the time to keep up all this blogging as well as your other projects?
Xian: I am incredibly busy and it's difficult to keep up with everything. These days my consulting work takes up so much of my time that I am struggling to continue writing my novel ("For You, The Stars"), I am hardly ever practicing my ukulele, and I've given up painting entirely at least for the time being.
Bill: The book you edited with Levi Asher, Coffeehouse, is dedicated to Allen Ginsberg. Did you ever meet Ginsberg?
Xian: No, I never did, but Levi did. He told him about his site, Literary Kicks, and Ginsberg either had a hard time hearing him or didn't understand what he meant by "kicks" although the word, I believe, comes from Kerouac and the Beat-transmitted slang of the 50s.
Bill: What was it about Ginsberg that led to the book dedication?
Xian: He had just died and he was an inspiration to both of us. Levi and I met online through a mutual interest in the Beats. He was more into Kerouac and I was more into Burroughs but we both agreed on Ginsberg. My first webzine, Enterzone, was named partly in homage to Burroughs' "Interzone," and Levi was one of our regular contributors. Another Beat-fan online in those days was Mal Humes, and the three-way dialogue among us in email eventually turned into a mailing list called "antiweb" that still exists.
Bill, to Levi: Levi, can you elaborate on what it is you like about Melville and Moby Dick. Why, for example, did you not get a "beat" tattoo of some sort?
Levi: I really overdosed on the beats as a result of the launch of LitKicks. I finally concluded that I like evi:Kerouac, Corso and some of Ginsberg and that's about it. My devotion to beat literature is way overestimated by others. I like Melville because he tried to capture the totality of existence in the form of the book "Moby Dick". Whether or not he succeeded, I respect him for trying.
Bill, to Xian: I like your book, The Power of Many. I read some reviews of it on Amazon.com and of course, there are mixed opinions. One criticism was that you “used too many personal experiences throughout the book" (Betty Burks). The thing is, I believe that’s one of the secrets of good writing, going from the general to the specific focusing on something. So I like the fact that you did that.
Xian: Thanks, me too. You can't please everyone. Interestingly, when Levi and I were editing Coffeehouse, we had written these intros / forewords that drew on our personal experiences. I write something about seeing a Meters show at Tramps in
Bill: I would like to hear your comment on the following statement by Mr. A. Pomeroy. He says, “Ten, fifty years from now, a few people will wonder why the internet didn't amount to more just as today, people wonder why television or radio didn't amount to more than just entertainment, why the telephone didn't amount to more than just people talking about the weather or their day at work."
Xian: Perhaps. I think more likely 50 years from now the Internet will be so deeply embedded in everything we do that it will be entirely taken for granted. I may think this because I'm reading a book now called Everyware that's about ubiquitous computing.
Bill: I have to add one thing that I really kind of expected to hear in your reply: Telephone and TV are important. People call the fire department, the police, and paramedics on the phone. People call their congressmen. People talk to their relatives from far away. Television debates changed history (Nixon & Kennedy was the first). We saw the Vietnam War, the body bags, the protesters. I think TV is more than just entertainment.
Xian: Which begs the question, what was he expecting from telephones? Of course i am disappointed not to have a jetpack by now, but that is swiftly becoming a cliché.
Bill: Come to think of it, why can't we have jet packs? It doesn't really seem fair. Do you think perhaps Levi Asher has a jet pack that he's not telling anyone about, and that's how he gets around to all those literary events?
Xian: That would explain a lot.
Bill, to Levi: Crumlish and I think you have a jet pack. We could be wrong. We could be right. Either way, I think you need to come clean.
Levi: But Bill, I go to like four literary events a year. I'm hardly the man about town. There is no jet pack. There is a 98 Saturn that needs new tires and an oil change, and that's about all there is.
Xian: Really! I have a 98 Saturn, too!
Bill, to Xian: What color is your 98 Saturn?
xian: Dark green .
Bill: Wasn't Saturn the god of something in mythology?
Xian: Yeah, he was a Roman god, equated with the Greek god Cronos, the father of Jupiter/Zeus who tried to eat all his children so they wouldn't supplant him . In
Bill: As the saying goes, 'by jove, you've got it!'
Xian: A 'saturnine' temperament is gloomy and moody, the opposite of 'jovial'.
Bill: Do you have a gloomy temperament?
xian: At times, I'm melancholic .
Bill: Ahhh, that's appropriate for a writer.
Bill, to Levi: Did you know that Xian also has a 98 Saturn?
Levi: Wow ... that is very funny, but not even surprising because I think Xian and I have always thought alike.
Bill, to Levi: Xian's Saturn is dark green. Tell me about yours.
Levi: My 98 Saturn is dark blue, and I like the car very much. I think I have an affection for Saturn because way back when I was in the robotics business, the company I worked for (Robotic Vision Systems, Inc.) designed the robots that placed car doors on Saturn cars and sprayed sealant on the chassis's. So I guess I have some sense of connection to the brand.
Bill, to Levi: Between your lack of melancholia and your alleged jet pack, how did you become such a good writer? And why aren’t you melancholy?
Levi: Why am I not melancholy? Well, some people suffer from depression, others suffer from rage. I generally have lots of rage.
Bill: That'll work..
Xian: I have no tattoos and no piercings.
Bill, to Levi: Tell me about how you and Christian Crumlish decided to publish Coffeehouse:
Writings From the Web.,Why is the book out of print? Because it is a very good book and should still be in print!
Levi: Well, thanks, and I think so too. We decided to do it because a friend of mine named Len Dorfman who worked for Manning Books, the publisher, came up with the idea and approached us, so it was as easy as Xian and I saying "yes, we'll do it". I wish that would happen more often. This would have been around February or March of 1996. There was much less writing on the web at the time ... it was still basically an unknown frontier, and there was very little overlap between web-based literature and print literature. There was already a "literary scene" on the web then -- InterText, Word, Urban Desires, Alt-X and of course LitKicks and Enterzone -- and it was great fun to pick the best pieces from each of these sites for the book. I think the book is a great time capsule, and has at least ten or twelve truly excellent pieces (as well as a few that, looking back now, were too long and not really "webby" enough for the book). I think the book was a learning experience for me and for Xian -- I guess you could say I tried again with Action Poetry in 2004. Maybe my third attempt will finally reach bestseller status. I'm not giving up.
Bill: How do you two see the internet as a means of promoting world peace?
Xian: I'm far from a utopian, so I hesitate to ascribe any magickal progressive powers to the interweb, but I suppose it's possible that the Internet might help foster world peace, perhaps indirectly and in a small way by enabling people to understand strangers a little better without getting up off their asses to travel to foreign countries.
Levi: Well, I'm surprised to see Xian putting this in such tentative terms. I always thought of it as a slam dunk that the internet would gradually improve the prospects for world peace by making communication between individuals around the world easier and faster. I don't have any brilliant or poetic words to offer here to back this up, because I don't want to sound trite. But the world we live in now is shaped by historic divisions -- geographical, linguistic, ethnic, historical, religious, political. This feeds the deeply ingrained culture of war. By helping to undercut the divisions between disparate peoples, the internet will certainly make it harder for propagandists and politicians to sell their wars.
Why hasn't this happened yet? Well, I think mankind is still shivering from the unbelievable botch-up job known as the 20th Century, and the change will take longer to settle in.
Xian: But doesn't the internet also allow people to form enclaves and echo chambers and invent new imaginary lines between themselves and the other? Look at online politics.
Levi: Yes ... many enclaves, many echo chambers, many intersecting lines. In the past a single enclave or echo chamber could sit undisturbed and unchallenged for 500 years, 1000 years. That's the legacy our planet is still buried in. Maybe a more connected world will develop new kinds of problems and horrors and disasters ... it is possible. But the breaking down of linguistic and geographical barriers will have to make a very positive difference, and hopefully future idealogues, greedy politicians and militant fanatics will not be able to manipulate connected people as easily as they can manipulate isolated ones.
Xian: I tend to agree with all of this, i am just suspicious of any project that promises to deliver world peace. That's why I wrote that blog entry a few years ago about how the search for peace in the middle east was possibly making things worse, as an unrealistic goal.
Bill: Well, let's not give up on either goal - a bestseller and world peace!
Article submitted Sunday, June 11, 2006 & read 799 times.
Bill Ectric likes to erase the line between science and mysticism. He is the author of Tamper, a coming-of-age novel about a young man obsessed by unexplained mysteries. Bill's interview with legendary jazz musician David Amram is featured in the LitKicks book, Beats in Time: A Literary Generation's Legacy.
On the internet, Bill's work has appeared on Literary Kicks, Candlelight Stories, Red Fez, Empty Mirror Books, Mystery Island, The Beat, Syntax of Things, Dogmatica, and Lit Up Magazine.
Bill appears as a commentator in the Steve Aylett film, Lint, the Movie .
He lives with his wife in Jacksonville , Florida . By day, when not writing, Bill mows the lawn and complains about the heat. By night, he sneaks around in the back yard, convinced that the garden gnomes are "up to something."
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