Over at Commentary, a nice demolition by D. G. Myers of the pretensions of the too-good-for-commercial-writing smart set:
Yesterday’s New York Times carried a story on “invitation-only” book clubs among “young and attractive” New Yorkers with “impressive degrees” and the “angst that comes with being young and unmoored,” who, unable to find work in publishing or academe, “huddle” together in book-filled apartments to “trade heady banter” on great (or merely fashionable) writers and hoot at ideas their high-priced educations have taught them to hoot at. I defy anyone to read the story and not to conclude that the collapse of the high-end literary market is a very good thing, and not a moment too soon.
What most of these writers want, of course, is not a job but a patron to indulge their penchant for poetasting. But artistic patronage went out around the time of Prince Esterhazy and his coevals. As Dickens showed, there’s a handsome living — and possible literary immortality — to be made as a commercial writer; you just have to be, you know, good at it. And then:
After the Second World War, the literary market began to dwindle . . . A new form of patronage arose to shield writers from market forces: namely, the national system of creative writing — the Writers’ Workshops — that spread from coast to coast.
What is happening now is the revenge of the market. A high literary culture, utterly divorced from economic realities, was artificially propped up for fifty years. In rather more technical terms, American literary culture is an inefficient market; its products are overpriced, and there aren’t many buyers for them at any rate. As the air goes out of the higher education bubble, the literary life as fantasized by the New York Times’s attractive young literary clubbers is deflating along with it.
Which is not to say that literature will disappear. Young writers’ expectations of a good-paying job (with benefits) fiddling all day on overwritten and unsaleable manuscripts — that will disappear. Most everything else will remain the same.
Welcome to the club, kids. Now, get to work and write something that someone will actually pay to read.
Very, very few people get paid well for writing. You know that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStephenie Meyer says "hoot?" from her limousine and mansion(s).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOK, reading is learning. I Googled "poetasting definition" (no quotes) and learned that a poetaster is someone who writes inferior poetry. The Free Dictionary (American Heritage) goes further and calls it... "A writer of insignificant, meretricious, or shoddy poetry."
Silly me, at first I thought it was a play on words for wine tasting, forced into one word. With this thought I again Googled "two words forced into one" and came up with portmanteau, which is a blend of two (or more) words or morphemes into one new word. A portmanteau word typically combines both sounds and meanings, as in smog.
OK, my initial musing on poetaster was all wet.
I think that literary smart sets are a harmless phenomenon. They are probably mostly young people of equal intelligence and tastes looking for someone to date and eventually mate. Urban America is a great place for this.
As long as buying their Vanity Press offerings does not become mandatory under interstate commerce I am OK with them.
For more on portmanteau see
External Link
I cannot with any felicity make a portmanteau out of time sink. Any help from the trolls?
The internet is a time sink.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem is "high literary culture " doesn't mean today what it once did. Of course writers from the beginning of time always tried to impress their fellow writers, but they wrote out of respect to the writing itself. They tried to tell a story of depth with well-thought out and believable characters, vivid descriptions of the world those characters lived in , some semblance of a recognizable plot. and conflicts that are resolved in a memorable way in the telling of the story. If they were not writing to America at large, their work was often addressed to a somewhat sizable market of literate and fairly well-read fellow citizens interested in reading rewarding books that were a few degrees better in quality than the pulp, or genre exercises such as romance or action that were readily available in train stations, drug stores etc. These hipsters are all about proving how clever they are among their group, and how superior they are to everyone else-in effect their potential readers. They want the trappings of the literary life, with book-filled apartments as the chief accessory. High literary culture? Hardlu.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShouldn't that be "chowderhead"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRobertson Davies, that wonderful Canadian writer, liked to tell this little tale to his students:
"A man spreads a blanket in the town square, sits down on it and places a tin cup near his feet. He begins telling a story to passers-by. Near the end of the story he pauses for moment to pass the cup around, then continues when all who are interested have had time to contribute. If by this means he can earn enough to feed himself, he is a writer. If not, he applies for a Canada Council grant."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe part of the original NYT article that I found most offensive was the writers comparing themselves to the "Lost Generation" of writers in the 1920's. The Lost Generation was lost largely because of the horrors of World War I trench warfare. What happened to these children? High student loan payments? No more participation trophies now that they've hit the real world?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI love how you reference MacDowell Colony. I grew up in the next town. Just turned around in their driveway when the road was closed for some odd reason 2 weeks ago while up visiting the folks. A friend worked in their kitchen when we were in high school. She said that the "Colonists" could eat communally in the dining hall or have their meals delivered to their cottages. The employees were not allowed to interact with the Colonists and were to knock on the door, leave the tray, and scurry away immediately. I still remember that 20-some-odd years later. I guess they didn't want to mingle with the hoi polloi about whom they were so fond of writing, painting, and sculpting.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMakes one wonder why NRO is always asking for handouts. Aren't the writers good enough to get people to pay for their writing?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHarmless? These lines from the Times story stood out to me:
“'We’re reading about ‘failed revolutions’ tonight,' Ms. Rosenfelt reminded the crowd."
"Despite its slacker-revolutionary spirit...."
"Arch and often aggressively leftist..."
And the real kicker: "Mr. Harris, 22, who was sifting through grad-school rejection notices a year ago..., has been called out by Glenn Beck on television."
"Mr. Harris" is Malcolm Harris, who was "called out by Glenn Beck" because he is one of the early organizers of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. More significant, he has called for violent revolution, explicitly acknowledging that Glenn Beck's alarming analysis of the movement has kernels of truth.
At a recorded meeting of Occupy organizers, Harris said: "Well, and I think that’s–that’s one side of what people want, right, ’cause that’s not the only thing people want, they also want to take the banker out of his, you know, f*****g tower and string him up in the public square, right?
Harris also wrote on libcom.org: "Not to go all Glenn Beck on you, but 'The Coming Insurrection' and a bunch of other similar texts did get passed around the autonomist left in America in the last three or four years. We’re not talking about 'expressive' drum-circle denizens here, these are people who have built and are acting according to a revolutionary analysis."
As they say, read the whole thing. These aren't just literary aspirants, they're political revolutionaries. Some of them are actively trying to implement their violent vision of society.
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