Alt Lit Gossip

Savior, Antichrist or Irrelevant? An Interview With Jack Serge

When I was alone sometime in 2006, I looked through the screen of my computer at a strange constellation of writers sharing ideas through blogger comments and facebook posts and online zines and saw a kind of beauty in their collective efforts. I sensed the shape of a group of people connected to one another through online networks and irl literary events and there was really nothing to call this ‘thing’. In 2011, someone created the term ‘Alt Lit’ and to me that seemed an appropriate name to the group I had been observing and trying to participate in for the past 10 years. 

Since 2011 the term ‘Alt Lit’ has increased dramatically in use. Query it on google trends, or twitter, or tumblr tags or within facebook search and you’ll find hundreds of references. It has a wikipedia page, it has self proclaimed writers, it has a torrent of haters and it has this site. 

Everything seemed great until in 2012 something strange started happening. Alt LIt began to develop a need to ‘define itself within itself’. Anything defined is essentially dead, and quickly a host of writers began to emerge demanding attention out of Alt Lit in the name of Alt Lit with the express purpose of subverting Alt Lit towards their own ends. 

I don’t think Alt Lit is a ‘thing’ so much as it is a party of ideas and experimentation of writers of all walks. I think the less it is talked about the better it is, the more the focus is on the writing and the literature and the sharing, the better. 

Athens is burning, America can drone-kill anyone they desire, the mayor of Toronto is supposedly a crack head, but the story we’re focusing on today is Jack Serge, a writer who has seemingly stumbled into the Alt Lit community in 2013 with a highly controversial stance that exemplifies this new trend of egocentrism in alt lit. 

Jack Serge wants to change everything. 

“I am aiming to never relent, just keeping on Doing my Do and Being my Be. I am Jack Serge.”

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Sitting in a Nevada airport watching a blurry haze quiver off the tarmac, upon booting up my macbook I noticed a name appear increasingly throughout the Alt LIt Gossip (Spread), a facebook feed with an average of 50-100 comments per posting. The name ‘Jack Serge’ popped up over and over again, linked and macro’d and commented upon.

 I spent the next few days trying to piece together just who Jack Serge was and what was going on. 

The first piece I came upon was a link from the website “Alt Crit” a kind of schizophrenic-anarchist version of this site. 

The piece made claims about Jack Serge being bigger than Tao Lin, being a saviour of Alt LIt etc, etc. I was generally confused by the content as it seemed to have no sourcing or contextual background. The only telling section of the post was this:

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Upon inspection, Jack Serge is reminiscent of Andrea Coates. Both are demanding of attention and use seemingly random capitalizations throughout their writing. Both are seemingly famous before the fame.

Some examples: 

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To extend the comparison, Serge and Coates each have less than three  independently, non-self published pieces of fiction/poetry available on the internet. Both of them are antagonistic to current trends in alt lit, and both are self-proclaimed geniuses. 

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I sat down with Jack Serge to try and find out a bit more about his aims/who he was. Below is our conversation. Hopefully it serves as a way to better understand. By times endearing and others frustrating, Jack Serge is nothing short of insightful.

Here is our discussion. 

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Frank Hinton: Who is Jack Serge? What was your impetus for pseudonymity?

Jack Serge: People assume it is a pseudonym well maybe it’s not the Exact name on my passport but add a hyphen and a name and it’s me. People who I know irl could find me here, or deduce it was me, if they wanted. I think Jack Serge is me being me <doing my do>, maybe for the first time in my life.

FH: That’s good. I think the weird thing about certain online anonymous personalities is that there is a genuine authenticity the mask brings out.

Do you consider yourself a writer? On message boards you talk a lot about your brand. What kind of ‘brand’ are you trying to cultivate? Why is a brand important to writers?

JS: I think that is true, Frank. Conversely, some of the most contrived brands in the Community <in my analytical stance> have been from people who use their real names <or certainly appear to be doing so>.

Yes, I am a writer. But I talk of having many threats. Writer, content producer, brand consultant. I think my BRand is one that is all about Empowering Honesty in a POSitive Motion. I think that I have something credible and artistic to say; certainly my inbox of personal messages seems to concur, if not some of the reaction in the COmmunity. Conflict is something I have learnt to manage. It boils down to this: as upbeat as I am, as full of hope, if you come after me it’s probably not a great idea for you right now.

Brand is important as it is who you are: why demure? Why try to place yourself in the market without a usp? Let people love you and get to know your work, be honest: as a writer you want your work to be read.

FH: So what are some of your goals, both individually and within the community?

JS: I would like to be Solicited for a chapbook, I am open to who can sell themselves to me in the most attractive way. My goals for the community? Put it this way, if people want me to be some kind of leader, I’m not sure… it’s been brought to my attention that there is a lot of resentment, a lot of factions <some of which might surprise people>. Will the community split? I can honestly see that happening. When a prominent establishment figure messaged me to say that they would ensure I would never be published by anyone it kind of felt to me like ‘this is a community that needs some kind of timeout or do-over’. Luckily, Stephen M-McDowell reached out and he put together the Mammal PRoject, which was a huge success in terms of hits and also the feedback I received.

I think the community has benefitted from my arrival: certain activity be it re-launching a brand off the back of ‘hating Jack Serge’ or feeling compelled by my heat to try something new has given them a boost. So even if it doesn’t feel good to hear it, I’m glad to be creating a cause for people.

FH:The traditional path to publishing has been that of submitting your work to a series of publishers and taking the acceptances and rejections as they come. Even with the exponential development of online journals and litmags, the submission process has remained relatively unchanged. Some people wait years before being solicited if ever. Why do you want to invert that process?

JS: For me, the process is somewhat archAIc. Here I am, producing content, a complete brand. Approach me, talk to me, let’s figure out how this can work for both of us. Okay so that’s what I’m saying on one hand. On the other hand I worry, Frank; I worry that certain publications are an absolute closed door to anyone new. Not everyone is ready with a fully birthed brand. I have on average maybe 15-17 conversations going at one time, maybe 75-85% of those will state a similar concern. It’s difficult.

FH: It’s sterling confidence. It seems to me though, writing is more about your work than you in the beginning (not your writing, but all writing in general). When I started writing in 2003, it was deeply frustrating to have noone noticing me and I racked up maybe forty rejections before getting accepted. Even then it was small. Now, in 2013 I feel like, maybe three steps ahead but any success I have I attribute to my struggle physically writing. Do you worry you’re going to put people off by demanding solicitation?

JS: Frank, I admire your work and respect your product journey. I am all about work ethic, I guess I’m just trying embolden a kind of fusion approach whereby the time is split 80-20 <writing-promotion> instead of 99-1 (writing-promotion>. Is this to the detriment of my content? I don’t believe so, but in other words - only time will tell. I don’t worry with the reactions of others; I can’t control them. When I was a junior at high school I was punched in the mouth by a rival ten minutes before going on stage for a battle of the bands. My band came second and I couldn’t stop crying for maybe a half hour. I guess for me the only thing that matters is the end result.

FH: So let’s talk about your style. Talk about some of the things you use. What is the story behind your intentional capitalizations/isolated prefixes…

JS:I guess the capitalizations just come out of a sense that every word <like every breath> is vital in it’s own way. I used to read a lot of Chaucer and it was remarkable to me how loose his English was <you could also site CuMMings here for me>. WHy accept the rules that you have not set, especially when this causes trauma potentially? I think Andrea Coates is a great writer, and a great exponent of this stance. 

FH: What is your take on the alt lit scene? 

JS: We are in the Third Phase of Alt Lilt. Phase one was Tao’s Age; but there will be a time, approaching very soon <if it hasn’t happened already> that someone will join ALG-Spread having never heard of him. They will join because of Steve <Phase two>, but the reality of the situation is that Steve has vacated the community, he exists on his own as a self contained BRand (which he’ll know is due for renewal). His position has not been filled, and the community is rudderless. For me, the biggest difference between Phase one and Phase threE is that Phase one had a supporting product list that was SERiously talented and serious over their ARt. Is that the case now? I don’t know.

I think the Community works perhaps in the same way as a movie franchise or Tv Franchise; cast members will graduate, go in different directions, leave, some seasons will be iconic, some seasons will be less so, some cast members will stick around way too long, some former cast members will disappear completely. We need a Bold New Direction.

FH: I think my views on alt lit/ the make-up and nature of the community may differ from yours. I feel a kinship with a lot of the writers and I enjoy reading a lot of things, big and small, shared on the spread/tumblr. I think I’m addicted to online literature in general, before ‘alt lit’.

Continue the discussion on the Alt Lit Gossip (Spread)