The Beginning of a New Era in American Letters, or, A Call (for submissions) to Destiny

Now that it’s summer, we know what you’re thinking: “Finally! No more school to interfere with my drinking!” But let’s be honest. School didn’t make much of a dent in that drinking habit of yours. What school’s really been interfering with is your thinking.

The New Era of Hope demands that we Ask More of ourselves this summer. In this spirit of Hope, Change and Diet Pepsi, we have decided to start a literary endeavor. We realized (after participating in a most excellent collaborative Choose Your Own Adventure project) that we need more projects, we need more adventure, and we anti-social writers certainly need more collaboration.

We want YOU to embark with us on this literary odyssey, this Oregon Trail of Oratory. Let’s circle the wagons, people! Let’s march onward, stake new terrain and call it whatever we want! Let’s run this fucking metaphor into the ground!

The theme of our inaugural issue? Manifesto Destiny.

Let’s think long and hard and deep [1] about the world we always thought we should be living in. Don’t wait for law students and hipsters [2] to define the zeitgeist of the Obama era. Write that manifesto you always assumed would write itself. Manifest, finally, the ideas, the dreams, the visions that drove us to write in the first place. Answer (if not once and for all, at least once and for now) why we do this to ourselves and what we want to say through all of our blood, sweat, and occupational stress injuries.

Why are we here and what do we want to do about it? What did you imagine for yourself when you were 17, before you realized you were too cool to air-quotes “believe” in things? Surely it didn’t include sitting in cubicles and stuffing cash into the couch cushions of what would turn out to be an imaginary 401(k). What, in your wildest moments, do you believe is possible? Let us do all that is possible to remember all that is possible!

Don’t worry. This doesn’t have to be a giant feat-of-strength undertaking. We’re only talking about everything, including the impossibility of talking about everything. But to do so, we require input from everyone. It’s not that we’re lazy, it’s just that we have an honest and humble understanding of our ontological and epistemological predicament [3]. We must put our proverbial heads together to forge one huge reminder of all we can do if we just, oh, I don’t know, do it.

We know, we know. Finishing things is hard. Do you know how long it took us to write this email? [4] But finishing doesn’t have to be hard if we get over ourselves a little bit. Remember how excited we got about reading each other’s Choose Your Own Adventure stories, how cool it was to end up with a perfect little hilarious book of our friends’ work? That was so easy!

Our most important readers are always each other. We don’t have to wait for the New Yorker to notice or for our glorious futures to arrive before shouting our thoughts, however half-baked and dangerous they may seem. We don’t have to wait until we’ve edited the three novels sitting in our desk drawer. We will no longer settle for creating works So Postmodern that they do not Actually Exist [5].

Each of you has been granted two pages to fill with “brilliant, mordant and witty observations about American life,” or “hilarious satire of cultural vacuity,” or “weirdly conceived sketches of urban hipsters,” [6] or any combination of text, image or pop-up storytelling you want the world to be/hold. Be ridiculous. Be emphatic. We are at the border between now and the future. What do you have to declare?

You are here. The Infinite (tm) is just over that next ridge. Walk 20 paces and make a left at the sign. Breathe deeply. Smile. Write something. Then send it to us! It’s time to RSVP for the Summer of Everything! [7]

Here’s to Revolution, The Universe and Everything Else,

Chris and Sarah

[Endnotes]

1. No, not about that.

2. Okay, other hipsters.

3. See our drunken conversation until 4 AM the other night. Oh wait, you weren’t there for that.

4. Too long. Longer even than it’s taking you to read it.

5. See also Bigfoot and the Great American Novel.

6. Who said that?

7. Oh yeah, please do RSVP (ASAP and other acronyms) to us as well. Let us know if you plan to send something along. We’re collecting all your little scraps of everything by Wednesday, July 1. That’s just four short weeks from yesterday, so let’s get manifesting!