Belief in the cause needs to be our strongest asset, as Emerson labeled it, the "genius" of belief in a cause.  We believe that art, as history, is a process and that the artistic genius is a process of which we will decidedly become part.  Treating art as such does not allow us to set stylistic and creative guidelines, only to demand new ideas, to further develop old styles which seem to be left prematurely, and to create genius (yes, genius) in the process.

        With a style not to limit the writers' creative demands, we understand the most important part of a creative piece is communication.  Self-expression can only exist so far as it is effective, because at a certain degree it retracts from the cause of great literature.  The value of translation is astronomically higher than the value of emotional response.

        Pretense nowhere enters into equation.  Calling any of a number of things pretentious is a defense mechanism.  Nothing is pretentious.  The cause speaks for itself.  A strong and vehement belief is never pretentious, but this is to say it cannot be contended.  It can and it should be contended until we reach a polemic, dialectical kind of aesthetic medium.

        A violent but constructive and insightful competition is the key to development.  We must demand that we are great writers and a new generation will disprove us and we will disprove them again until literature reaches its apex.  Politeness and modesty have no place in beautiful art.  Some things are, simply stated, better than others.  There exist good and bad literatures.  An elite class dominates, as in all things, and elitism, for our purposes, is nothing more than an educated and attuned taste and concept of literature.  The artists of a great movement demand that theirs is the finest work.

        They believe it as if it were a metaphysical certainty.

                                                 Brian Becker

                                                 le culte du moi