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Observing some of my classmates in action...I've noticed a pattern, and
was wondering whether you could tell me...is this commonplace:

Someone from one of the grad-school cliques decides to start a press.
They first publish themselves. Then they publish the rest of the clique.
Then someone else from the clique becomes an editor at some 300 print-run
journal, and then pipes over some other clique-y's work into the
hopper...etc etc etc ad infinitum...

Totally true. This is why the "vanity press" rap is such a crock -- most small presses ARE the same, though they don't bear the consequences of the 3rd party ones. (I've never understood why musicians who bring out their own CDs are cutting edge entrepreneurs and writers who publish themselves are trashed.) I think this "game" is more prevalent now than 40 yrs ago because of the demise of the "literary novel." In a sense, OLR can be accused of being part of this game -- my primary motive was to give a home to new music but certainly I've been soliciting work from playwrights in my "clique". It's an old game. Virginia Woolf's hubby started a press for her. Etc etc etc. The game reflects a response to a serious problem, that there is no real audience for high art in this culture -- or rather, that high art is defined politically by certain powerful critics and institutions. Abstract art is the best example, which became "in" by CIA-paid critics and CIA-sponsored journals during the early Cold War when America was trying for international artistic respect against the Russians, and this form of art, having no "content," was politically "safe." (I'm working on a screenplay about this CIA activity.) There have always been more artists of worth than the culture knew what to do with and the rise of the MFA in the 50s has mushroomed the problem. Writers want to exist. Existence = being out there. If no one else will put you out there, you put yourself out there. Makes perfect sense. I think every literary magazine in America started this way to some degree, with putting out friends or selves. The last journal for which I had high respect, THE NEW AMERICAN REVIEW, began with the New York crowd (Mailer etc) and quickly expanded to include fine writing from all around the country. Most journals, however, are mostly read by those who are in it, and their friends. This has always been true. The bottom line: too many good writers, not enough outlets, too small an audience for serious work. (How the hell did Joyce, esp FINNEGAN'S WAKE, get published if not by friends?).

Should you be irritated or jealous? They are not mutually exclusive ha ha. Write something for OLR! and send it to the clique.

Most writers hate marketing. If you go the traditional route but can't get an agent, well, you give up or you create your own hospitable environment. What the hell else can you do? We don't live in a culture that respects literature. There's a lot of claims that we do but the facts speak for themselves, we don't. The most important class I ever took as an undergraduate at UCLA was "19th Century Popular Literature" where we read the best-selling novels of the 1800s, none of which was written by anyone heard of today, none of the books known today. It puts everything in perspective.

I think there are more writers who want literary respect than want fame & fortune, though of course they will take it. The latter is probably easier to get than the former!

Well, on a similar vein, for some reason I have a good agent right now, though perhaps not for long, and during break I'll print and send him what I think is the best thing I've written, my old men road story KEROUAC'S SCROLL, but I'm not confident he'll find it "marketable," which means I can always plug in to my own clique, a "literary co-op" in Texas (there's a camouflaged term for you) or look for another agent, probably both at the same time ... it's an endless cycle. I've been doing this for half a century, think about that. You'd think I would've quit by now. I think it's a madness.