This interesting blog post was brought to my attention last week. I’ve seen criticism of bizarro fiction many times since I started to write in, publish in and champion the genre back in 2012 including one now prominent small press publisher of bizarro fiction imprints once dismissively calling the entire genre “retarded” in private.

Most people simply don’t understand what function bizarro fiction serves in literature, much as they didn’t understand the function of horror comics back in the 1950s.

Worse, no honest criticism of bizarro fiction has ever been allowed inside the protected walls of the genre community without the author of said criticism being ceremoniously discredited and excommunicated. (I don’t know the history of this particular author’s involvement in bizarro fiction, but it is safe to assume he was ridiculed, discredited and then excommunicated as that’s always what happens.)

Since you all are still coming to MY blog with surprising frequency, I figured I would take this opportunity to present you with some contrarian views of bizarro fiction, followed by my own commentary, both positive and negative. In other words, we’re going to have an honest look at bizarro fiction criticism.

What sets this particular critique apart from most is that the author, whom I’d never heard of before being linked to his blog, seems to fundamentally understand the machinations of the genre community, while completely misunderstanding the spirit of the genre itself.

I’m going to link directly to Dr. Joseph Suglia’s blog post titled “Against ‘Bizarro’ Fiction” which you can find here. And then I’m going to pull out quotes from the text and add my commentary under them. I encourage you to visit Dr. Suglia’s blog and read the entire piece in context before you come back here and read my critique. Sound good? Let’s get started.

“A “bizarro” is a self-published fiction writer who pays very little attention to language.”

As this article was published in 2013, I find it puzzling that Dr. Suglia would use self-publishing as his first jab, right out of the gate. He certainly makes his disdain for bizarro fiction authors known right away. I would guess that he saw bizarro, as many academics do, as a quick publishing credit. Just some literary junk food to throw out into the world, use on a resume whenever appropriate and then disavow as soon at it becomes convenient.

And then his manuscript was rejected. That’s just speculation on my part. I have no idea who this dude is, but I have been personally on the receiving end of a verbal shellacking from academics whom I’ve rejected as a publisher. They do not stomach it well. To them, bizarro is the literary equivalent of sugary breakfast cereal (and they’re not wrong.)

What they fail to realize is, if Mozart had attempted to audition for a punk rock garage band “just for the musical credit” he probably would have sucked REALLY bad at punk rock guitar. Even if he was competent on the ax itself, his attitude and personality would have probably turned off the punkers after they’d gotten just one look at him.

That’s what happens when snobbish literary types “lower” themselves to bizarro fiction. They should know better. They are not like us. They are not our kin. They do not belong here.

Anyway, so that first jab, the self-publishing insult coming in 2013 is very weak. By 2013, if you were a serious writer looking to publish and publish often, you would have been a fool not to be exploring self-publishing. That fact gets only more true as the years march on.

I personally know more authors who make a living as writers self-publishing than I know authors signed to small presses making a living as writers. In fact, aside from the owners/authors of the small presses themselves, I can’t think of a SINGLE non-self-published small press author making a living writing fiction today in 2016.

So that insult falls super flat. It’s just a non-insult. Self-publishing is where the money is and as a result, where the readers are.

“S/he has no literary background, is generally undereducated and semiliterate, “reads” comic books, plays video games, and gawks at the cinema of David Lynch and Takashi Miike.”

Dr. Suglia goes on past this with a long-winded parenthetical rant trying to make David Lynch sound like high art, which he’s not, so I’ve omitted it from this quote as it is just Dr. Suglia’s way of trying to sound like he “gets” cool cult films. He clearly doesn’t as he is FAR too intelligent to waste his time on crappy B movies.

Same with the criticism above, if you’re a cinema snob, then don’t even bother to slum it down here with us low-level douchebags who consume trashy art. We don’t want you down here anyway. David Lynch is ours.

So what he’s trying to get across here is that without literary degrees, one could not possibly be literate enough to take on the high art task of WRITING PROSE. He makes sure to point out that most bizarros are not college graduates. I’m sure as fuck a college drop out, and so are most of the dudes and chicks that I run with. And we write a shit load of books.

That fact really grinds the gears of people who spent years inside the stuffy, boring walls of academia before they felt or were seen as worthy enough by their academic mentors to try their hand at something as clearly complex as fiction writing. Think about how frustrating that is. To spend your whole life being told that you’re not good enough to write books until you’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours of your life reading 19th century Russian poetry. I’d be pissed, too!

Anyway, on to the next part. He throws up his snob quotes as he mocks bizarros for “reading” comic books. He and I agree here. Look, I love comic books. I’ve got the first volume of The Superior Spider Man sitting right next to me. But it is absolutely true that editors at the top of the game of bizarro fiction publishing houses have an OBSESSION with comic books and seemingly no interest in bizarro fiction outside of their friends’ books that they publish and make money off of.

Rappers listen to rap music. Metal gods listen to heavy metal music. Film directors obsess over film. Bizarro editors… read comic books.

I’ve just straight up asked them before on social media during some HUGE comics discussion threads where they drill down into this insane minutia of comic books spanning decades, “Dudes, why the FUCK are you not in the comics business?”

They always answer me the same way. “Comics are hard to break into.”

Which always left me with the impression that the ONLY reason they edit bizarro fiction is because it’s too hard to edit comic books and make a living. I personally find it unsettling that the very gatekeepers of the genre I adore have very little interest in it themselves.

So Dr. Suglia and I agree on that. Bizarro editors should read more bizarro fiction and lay off the comics. Or switch to the industry they’re actually passionate about. Let’s continue.

“You will never hear a bizarro intone the names Jan Svankmajer or Fernando Arrabal (“Who?”). Nor will you listen to them twittering over the work of any serious literary artist. I doubt any one of them has ever penetrated the oeuvre of Jose Donoso or Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio (“Who?”). Perhaps after reading this review, they will.”

So he’s right. I have no fucking idea who any of these people are. But before I Google their names, I’m going to guess that they’re 19th or 20th century surrealist poets. Before I get into a rant on surrealism, let me check my facts.

From Wikipedia:

“Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists…”

Yep. Ok, next one:

“A friend of Andy Warhol and Tristan Tzara, Arrabal spent three years as a member of André Breton’s surrealist group.”

Yeah ok. I get the point. Dude names some 20th century foreign surrealists to make it seem like he has even the slightest fucking clue about what bizarro fiction is, but succeeds only in proving my above statement true. That he spent WAY too much time and money on his literary degree and can do nothing more with it than to misinterpret what function bizarro fiction serves in literature.

Bizarro is NOT surrealism. Surrealism is surrealism and nobody likes it because it doesn’t make any fucking sense to anyone. Not even to the pretentious douchebags who make it.

Some bizarro fiction, yes including Carlton Mellick’s early work, contained heavy doses of surrealism. But that fact does not define the entire genre any more than zombies or vampires define the entire horror genre. Surrealism is a literary device. Bizarro is a genre of fiction. You don’t need a doctorate in literature to figure that out. You just need to, you know, pay attention.

“Bizarro cannot be accurately described as a literary movement, since it is neither literary nor a movement, precisely understood.”

I only include this quote to show how big an arrogant douche this guy really is. Wow. Heavy stuff there, doc. Just how many manuscripts did you have rejected before you wrote this? My guess is exactly 1.

“The bizarros write for one another; the primary readers of bizarro fiction are other bizarro writers. This, among other things, makes bizarro more of a cult than a movement.”

He really nails it with this one, though. This statement makes me wonder if he wasn’t part of the initial wave of bizarro authors. Maybe he went to school with the founders and believed he was participating in an avant-garde surrealist writers club before the other authors broke out. Maybe his experimental “just for fun” stories didn’t catch on like some of the others did? I smell sour grapes from this dude.

But yeah, he’s totally right.

One of the most frustrating parts of being a bizarro author has always been the sense that I’m only writing for about 20 other people who also write bizarro fiction. I’ve often described (but never publicly till now. Sorry guys, this one’s gonna hurt! I still love you but this is an HONEST review!) Bizarrocon as a gathering of Carlton Mellick fan-fiction writers. And I don’t say that to be insulting. I say that because it doesn’t seem like the damn genre penetrates beyond the walls of that hotel!

I don’t write my books for a hand full of writers. I write them for readers who are looking for the literary equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons or 80s horror flicks. It has frustrated me to no end to find that no matter how I phrase it, market it, design it, or sell it, I always end up writing for other writers who are writing for other writers who read and review bizarro as a networking tool to gain notoriety amongst other bizarro fiction writers. It’s maddening!

It also lends itself to the idea that bizarro fiction is a cult of writers who worship Eraserhead Press and can think of NO OTHER goal in their literary careers than to be published by the sacred cow of bizarro fiction.

I’ve personally never felt the need to be published by anyone. I’ve never drank the cool-aid. I think most of the people who work at EHP are awesome and a couple of them are total douchebags. Just like any other business.

“Much in the same way that cigarette addicts claim not to be addicted to cigarettes, the bizarros habitually claim that they are not “trying to be weird,” that their fiction is not ‘weird for the sake of being weird.'”

There’s a lot of other crap around this quote. Dr. Suglia thinks it’s an insult to point out that the bizarro collective jointly decided to coin one term to describe their different styles of weird fiction. They did so as a marketing tool and it was successful enough to draw a flock of reader/writers to their movement so I don’t see the problem with it.

But then he throws the classic zinger out there. Truly lazy and unimaginative for a guy who spends a lot of this article crowing about bizarro writers being derivative and unoriginal.

I hate the idea that something is something for the sake of something. Because that’s true for everything. Religion is religious for the sake of religion. Dogs bark for the sake of barking. Scary movies are scary for the sake of scariness. Romantic comedies are romantic for the sake of romanticism.

Which is to say, weird for the sake of weird is a meaningless insult. A dumb play on words. Of course the point of weird writing is to write something weird. This idea that purity of art exists and that a trope or a style should only appear as an afterthought is complete bullshit. It’s nonsense. It’s one of the lamest literary or artistic insults there is and that’s all that needs to be said about that. Brevity for the sake of brevity, friends.

“To them, bizarreness is a false bizarreness, an ungenuine bizarreness, a programmatic bizarreness. The bizarros stylize what they consider “weird.” But nothing is “weird” anymore. That which was once considered “weird” is, paradoxically, the ordinary and the average.”

Dr. Suglia is running out of gas as he nears the end of his criticism. He’d said in an earlier paragraph that Lady Gaga is the new weird and since she’s pop culture, then all weirdness is pop culture, therefore weirdness is ordinary.

Yeah. Ok. By this nonsensical mental masturbation publishing a phone book should be the “new weird” since weird is ordinary then by definition ordinary is weird and what could be more ordinary than a list of people’s phone numbers? Nonsense.

“A diluted and unlettered absurdism, bizarro is a silly, infantile fetish. Much like sexual urination, it is a fetish that I do not appreciate and is therefore of purely sociological interest to me. An ornithologist is not a bird.”

Bizarro is a fetish. I agree with that. It’s a literary fetish and to those who wish to indulge in it, it is an exhilarating, euphoric experience. Who is this fuck to judge others for what they get off on? I used to manage a porn shop.

Pee porn was a great seller. Piss all over each other for all I give a fuck, as long as it pays my bills. An ornithologist is not a bird but he sure as fuck wouldn’t be looking at them if he didn’t love them. Books require an active effort. You don’t have to read bizarro if you don’t want to, brother. Its very existence as a genre is not an affront to your literary degree.

Then he finishes his hit piece off with this whammy:

“The bizarros ought to learn that language matters, that narrative matters, that literature is not a playground for the talentless, that writing should have to do not with the writer’s insecurities and vain desire for difference but with writing.”

There are two types of reader/writers. Those who read for language and those who read for story. We all fall somewhere in this spectrum. Dr. Suglia is contradicting himself here as language and narrative fall on different sides of this spectrum.

A reader or writer who has difficulty forming visual representations of words may find the cadence and patterns of poetic writing extremely fulfilling to read while a more visually based reader/writer will find that conjuring up imagery takes the smallest of literary cues so a strong, twisting, clever narrative is what gives them brain boners.

To call a writer with a strength in one area and not the other talentless is to discount the entire range of literature. For someone with (I presume this where the Dr. in Dr. Suglia comes from) a doctorate in literature, I find it shameful that he does not realize this.

Throwing insecurities in there out of thin air is clearly projection on the part of Dr. Suglia. He no doubt throws around his intellect as a way to mask the insecurity he feels when trying to create imaginative prose.

No amount of money and no amount of time spent in a class room can teach creativity. It must frustrate him to no end to see pure imagination flow out on the pages of great works of bizarro fiction, knowing that his photographic memory of Russian poetry is useless in the realm of the bizarre.

-Kevin Strange, college drop out, bizarro fiction author