Monday, April 14, 2008

A "Nontroversy" - Karl Wenclas

Blogger Karl Wenclas and his band at the ULA (Underground Literary Alliance), including Steve Kostecke and Pat Simonelli, persist with their conspiracy theories about The Paris Review, this even in the aftermath of the NYT Book Review's well-reported essay "The Paranoiac and The Paris Review" by Rachel Donadio (can be found HERE).

Really, there's no satisfying anyone.

Update: I've asked Richard Cummings yet once again to acknowledge, despite his misleading citations, that he has never interviewed me, ever. Over the years I've informed the ULA of the same, but no joy, not even an acknowledgment. Stranger, however, is his suggestion that I'd endorsed a book he'd written, a book in fact I've never read, let alone endorsed.

Wenclas of course is the one who years ago continually propounded a theory that Big Eighties brat-pack novelist Tama Janowitz was a transsexual who'd been born a man, one "Tom A. Janowitz." That one he's still not let go of either, as he recently wrote: "How does anyone know. It was never denied!"

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.

Update, December 2016: It's worth summing up here that over the years I have stated clearly that Richard Cummings never, as he has claimed, interviewed me, nor did I make statements he has attributed to me in his articles.  I've made this point to Karl Wenclas, editors at the ULA, the then-Editor of The American Conservative, to the editor of The Lobster, and to author Hugh Wilford who has cited Cummings "interviews" in a book.  So far, no acknowledgement of this in print or on-line from any of them.