Everything’s Ending Here…Literature in the 21st Century

The Guardian books section is no stranger to proclamations on the death of literature. Last year Edward Docx made an ass of himself saying that because people weren’t reading literary fiction, language was dying (though I’m sure he doesn’t feel that way). The photo above comes from a post about 2011 Christmas as “The day of the Kindle” The other week they had a horrible article about the death of literature that I won’t bother linking to because it was no different than some of my love letters as a teenager - that is it was nothing more than a bunch of quotes strung together with unreturned longing. The point was, the death of literature has been predicted from the moment the novel began. Usually the killer is that old idea that “everything’s been done before.” 

Are they the only ones who laughed, at your jokes when they are so bad, your jokes are always bad, but they’re not as bad as this

eReaders will not kill literature, they will not kill the novel, they will not kill reading. Literature does not have to embrace eReaders, but it sure as hell can’t ignore it. 

I’ve had a Barnes & Noble Simple Touch Nook since this summer. I love it. I’ve read more books in the last 6 months than I had in the previous two years. And I used to read a lot. The Nook managed to break the stranglehold that my iPhone had on my leisurely reading…which meant the majority of my reading was consumed by the news and comics and humor websites (I’d always been on the band wagon for eReaders even before that, I waited for a touch one since I just seem to instinctively try and use my friend’s Kindle as a touch device until I it dawned on me the damned thing didn’t work that way.)

The US bestseller lists have always been topped with a mixture of what some people consider schlock or only genre work along with more “serious” literary pursuits. Frankly, it should all just belong to the sort of rich tapestry of the whole thing. I do recall awhile ago hearing an author refer to reading the mystery novels of Janet Evanovich as a “guilty pleasure.” I was furious. No reading should be a “guilty pleasure.” Ever (Well, except for nonfiction written by any celebrity where the book seems to have no purpose other than to make money. This includes all books written by political pundits left or right that seem to serve no purpose, I’m including Jon Stewart’s Naked Baby Photos, but exempting the Daily Shows textbook parodies). 

The best seller lists might gravitate between Toni Morrison to John Grisham to Jonathan Franze to Nora Roberts. So? Why is there a problem with that? Truly, why? 

Now, in the eBook realm, these fluctuations still happen, but there is something going on in genre fiction that I’d like to see happen more often with literary fiction. Successful self-publishers and books priced below paperback. 

First of all, self-publishing in literature can have much more of a stigma, after all self-publishing used to be no different than a vanity press. Which has always been odd to me considering that in film and music, DIY efforts were considered more authentic and more artistic. 

I would love to see at least one author break through as a selfpub for eBooks/Lulu in the literary fiction scene. This means the scene itself would have to herald such an author without snatching them up into a publishing house. But I think it needs to happen. The stigma needs to break. 

As far as eBook prices goes, this is more a beef with the major publishing houses than the authors or the independent houses (and it goes for all books by major houses, not just literary fiction). When a book is in hardcover, I can understand an eBook price that would equal the paperback, I really can. However, once the book is in paperback, reduce that damn price. 

You want to encourage reading, not have a barrier to it. More reading means more sales. Sure, it can take time to put together an eBook, it absolutely can. However, the formatting is not as exact or fine or pretty as traditional printing, and the only costs associated with the eBook specifically is the formatting. One time and your done. We all know it costs you next to nothing to put out, that all the money you get from it (after distributor percentage) is pure profit. 

So why make price a barrier to entry? 

Literature will only die in the 21st century if you make it the playground of the elite. If you strangle it. 

Oooh, I’m in a book.

New Minneapolis publishing press, Skullduggery is publishing a book of selections from the writing group Bitter Enemies, entitled Decadent Selections. A group which I’m honored to recently have joined and even more honored to have my work included in their anthology of the first year of work (See, look that’s my name at the bottom, the last one - there are three stories in there of mine).

Someone yesterday asked me what the book was like/about not having been in the group for the entirety of it’s existence I could only say “I have no idea.” But that’s really not a bad thing. 

Over the course of a year, the Bitters have been writing pieces in response to a weekly prompt. Sometimes these prompts are well defined, sometimes they’re quite open. The work in the book is all over the place in the best way possible. This collection will most likely surprise you at ever turn in the best ways possible. 

The book and two others went on pre-sale on Friday, November 4th for Skullduggery publishing. The other works are A Ground Too Hard to Bury by Michael Hoolihan and Embracing Solace in the Fanciful & Weird by Nick Oskey, the man behind Skullduggery. If you pre-order all three, you get a discount  Just saying. Digital editions are also available. Interestingly, it sounds like if you were to combine Michael and Nick’s book, you’d get my novel that I’m still shopping around. 

Nick is hand making these bastards. He’s doing this the old fashioned and embracing the new at the same time. 

I know I’ve been quiet this week, you might no here any more from me until Friday, at which point I’ll be launching a new online fiction tumblr, that I’ll always update you about here. 

Oh damn. Three weeks ago, I said it, now it exists. 

(Shut up. It has not been around for over a year. I willed it into existence. Quiet, you.)

I now return to silent contemplation. 

Discombobulated: I just spent five seconds looking for a USB port on my typewriter. On... →

sniffyjenkins:

I just spent five seconds looking for a USB port on my typewriter. On my 1950s manual typewriter. Five seconds. Looking up and down its sides, running my fingers across its grey back, testing its corners, sure that the effing thing was there somewhere. I felt confused. For five seconds. It doesn’t…

You know, that’s a good idea for a new product: a USB enabled typewriter that outputs rtf or txt files.*

Additionally, I’d like something like the Wacom Inkling as a pen for writers. I am familiar with Livescribe, but it’s still my understanding that it requires special paper. I just want a pen that will output what will easily output what I write on any page as editable text. It seems like Livescribe may make too many steps to get there, thought the notebook function is kind of cool as well. Plus, they do have a lot of stuff that while potentially useful, may not really be necessary. C’mon Livescribe, how about a budget model that just does the pen and notebook thing (no audio and no apps)? You can make it slimmer, I’m sure. 

*if it did txt files, I’m envisioning that it would lead to “code offs” between programmers. Timed contests wherein the contestants need to write perfect code with no mistakes. The winner is the one with the program/page that runs the best when the txt files is moved back to a computer. 

The Tangential: I Found Something More Evil than Facebook →

thetangential:

 

No, I’m not about to say Jennifer Egan is evil. What bothered me was how infrequently authors sit onstage and talk about how you actually become an author. No it’s not about thinking of your story as a “constellation” or “a series of concentric circles” and going from there. That kind of theory is cool, it doesn’t have much to do with reality. When the audience started clapping at her confession that she “couldn’t see the benefit of Facebook,” I thought, Facebook isn’t what’s keeping kids behind. It’s the constant stream of vague drivel being thrown at us in every way. People, for whatever reason, seem to have an absolute aversion to being specific. Why?

[…]

It seems like oversharing, or taking away some illusion we’re all participating in together that God is good, love is about sweet kisses, success is about confidence and sadness is just rain and grey clouds. The specifics of reality are crude and sometimes laborious, but they’re also educational, gritty, sexy, surprising, interesting and memorable.

Becky Lang (above) and Jay Gabler had some great thoughts on a recent visit by Jennifer Egan. Jay tackles the tech angle (Egan’s books is highly tech-phobic, and surprise, so is she) while Becky voices her frustrations. You should read them both before reading what I have to say. 

Becky’s point is pulled out of something she found frustrating about Egan’s talk that wasn’t specifically mentioned (as the tech was), but it sort of hinges on the same point in my mind. 

How many times have you heard someone older than you talk about how when they were younger people were more discrete? It doesn’t matter what it was about. It doesn’t really matter how much older they were.

The past was full of secret shames, unspoken abuse, dirty lies, closed doors, closeted skeletons, and hidden atrocities. 

Why the fuck would you think we would want to do it the same way you did? Greatest Generation? Lost Generations? Boomers? You oldest Gen Xers? Stop telling us your way was better.

In the spirit of what Becky is saying, just tell us exactly how you did it. We’ll figure out what’s good and bad. 

As for looking to author’s to learn how they write, I’ve only ever paid attention to the ones who are unafraid to share. The ones who, just like me, talk too fucking much. 

There are probably three types of writers when it comes to talking about craft:

A) Those who are so fucking gifted they don’t know how to talk about craft because they can’t understand that you don’t instinctively know how to do it.

B) Those who are so insecure about their position that they hold onto their process as a trade secret. 

C) Those who worked so fucking hard and made so many mistakes that they don’t want to have other writers, our family of writers, make the same mistakes they did, so the new writers can concentrate on what’s actually going to help them. 

Type C kind of sounds like a good parent, don’t they? The kind who tells you about their mistakes and warns you not to make the same ones. Instead of just warning you about mistakes and not telling you why. Of course we make those mistakes, anyways don’t we? But at least they’re trying to help. 

As writers, Becky and Jay seem to “overshare.” In a good way, in the specificity way that Becky is talking about above. They’re fearless to say what they’re thinking at that moment in time and attach their name to it. They take risks and don’t hide behind semi-anonymous blog names that imply risk without actually doing anything risky. 

Hmmmm. 

Seems like I might want to think about that for a little while. 

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Full Moon over Lake Michigan/Lake Shore Drive

My tastes and interest in Art has a lot to do with concepts in negative space: the idea that humans, and are expressions of ourselves, are full of the empty spaces that define us. 

Last week I mentioned the Lacanian lack at the center of an individual’s existence and it’s relation to black holes at the center of galaxies. 

Similarly, the space between individuals or between an individual and society, is akin to the space between celestial bodies. 

It is the emptiness of space that makes the appearance of a planet, a star, a comment, or other phenomena striking. 

Somewhere in my house, I have a copy of David Foster Wallace’s little book about then history of the concept of zero. 

In that book, I would expect to find ideas that mathematical “nothingness” was an important concept in defining what was mathematically “something.”

Not everyone thinks in these terms.

One graduate professor told our class that an overabundance of white space on your page, especially because of long sections of dialogue, was indicative of an unskilled and possibly untalented writer. 

This was stated as an unwritten, but important rule of the litterati.  

Yet, I’ve had a tendency through out my life to be mystified by those empty spaces: 

Hemingway’s In Our Time

Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Ellroy’s American Tabloid

Hammet’s The Thin Man

Or works that seemed smaller and with more breathing room than some of their more famous epics:

Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

DeLillo’s White Noise 

Kerouac’s Dharma Bums

I will continue to write sparsely. In a way, it is the one thing I know how to do best. 

I’m never going to write like Kerouac or Fitzgerald or Joyce or Pynchon or DeLillo or Wallace. 

As a younger writer, I tried. I became board within my own writing.

If I’m bored by my own writing, what can I expect my reader’s reaction to be?

The moon in the photo is nothing without the blackness between it and its reflection.

The dark sky isolates the moon as a light different from those in the city, it draws your attention to the moon through triking contrast. 

The passive, natural moon is brighter than any of the lights man has made to shove away the darkness of night.

It’s reflection is so bright that it turns the boats into blackened objects on a white sea. 

Man’s light is meekly reflected off the boats, giving you the barest glimmer of their white hulls on black water. 

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Damn you internet, this is your fault. I hope you enjoy it. 

Yesterday I mowed the lawn and dug up some horribly regenerating wild onion roots in the early, sunny afternoon. I guess in my mind since it was no longer 90% humidity outside, I’d be ok.

After 90 minutes I needed a shower. I smelled like I was formed from the earth, but I looked like a young nerdy, suburban dad. 

I also needed a beer. I needed something cold and refreshing that would make me forget that somehow I had wrenched my shoulder using a self-propelled lawn mower and that it was my own damn fault for not mowing for four weeks.

I decided to have my beer and my shower at the same time. 

When I brought the can upstairs to the bathroom, the thought popped into my head: “You should take a picture.”

Why would I think that? I puzzled over it as I raced downstairs to grab the camera. I knew exactly why. 

It’s the internet’s fault. You’ve changed the way my mind works, you little fuckers. The way I methodically went about trying to get the best picture of a can of beer in my shower with running water, you’d think there was a Fuck Yeah, Beer in the Shower! tumblr that was giving away prizes. Or money. Or free showers.

So, damn you internet. I hope you enjoy it. 

"I believe that you should always aim to write the best book that you possibly can, and that alone should be motivation enough to take your time and get it right. Aim high, be patient and see if you can create something that’s truly great. If what you’d prefer is a quick turnaround and to make an even quicker buck, then for me there’s something wrong. And you don’t sound like a writer that I want to read."

Can you really write a book in seven weeks? | Write for Your Life

I did a bit of a controlled rant.

(via iainbroome)

Click the link above to see Iain’s full piece at his site, writeforyourlife.net.

Iain invites readers to share their thoughts, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. After all, his comments are motivated by the comments of an eBook author, and we all know that I have no dearth of opinions, calculations, superstitions, irrationalities, facts, and heresies about eBooks and the new mode of self-pub. 

I think that Locke is definitely playing the part of huckster here, since he’s turning his “formula” into another eBook, one that will possibly eclipse his first one in sales, How I sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months. This to me, is the equivalent of an infomercial touting proven keys to wealth that can be mine alone for $99.95, but only if I act now. One could argue that it is no different than a “craft” book. They might be right. But it doesn’t feel like it, does it? Craft books are called  On Writing or The Half-Known World or an essay such as “The Simple Art of Murder.” 

Looking at his website and the covers to his books, I’m wondering if one of the steps in John Locke’s plan for success is “Put a sexy pair of legs on the cover that seem to have no relation to the title of the book.” I’m waiting for his next book, Christmas at Mom’s With My Wheelchair Bound Aunts and seeing the pair of disembodied sexy legs next to those words.

I also think John Locke will go the rest of his life being asked to write LOST fan fiction.

A book turned out in seven weeks may not be worth reading. Many people will probably agree with that. 

We won’t let freaks of nature like Jack Kerouac and Edward P. Jones influence this conversation since those men are outliers.

Then again, there’s always been an audience for thrillers quickly written to make a cheap buck. 

The people who turn out books that fast were the authors of the penny dreadfuls, then the pulps, then the genre books, which is where they stand today. These were the middle class of authors who wrote the stories that intrigued the middle class audience when everyone was supposed to be talking about whoever had a short story in The New Yorker or Esquire, or even Playboy (though Playboy ran stories by “elevated” pulp authors - Bradbury, Ellison, Vonnegut, Fleming among others - as well as literary giants). 

Transformers 3 can make shit loads of money because people want some form of mindless entertainment, and often people want that in book from as well (Not just the novelization of Transformers 3, which the studio turned down my spec outline for “deviating from the plot,” I guess they weren’t interested in marketing Transformer’s vibrators). This stuff usually sells more books combined than the literary fiction catalogs. Their paperbacks are cheaper than literary fiction, and most do not merit hard cover editions. 

The people who write these books, a number are extremely talented, but because of the amount of books they have to put out, there isn’t always the time to refine the hell out of the book. 

Hell, it’s quite possible that many literary fiction authors are given too much time to fiddle with their books. So much time spent fiddling with the middle that the ending is completely unsatisfying. Dan Chaon’s You Remind Me of Me is so particularly egregious in this manner, that I’ll probably never read anything else by him. 

So,  let’s recognize the self-pubbers who have 40 books on Amazon Kindle store as the modern equivalent of the pulp authors, the guys and gals who had to be fast. Turning out as much as they could so they could get paid and move on. Not to make millions, but to literally put food on their table. Some of them were never going to get any sort of contract from a publishing company that would in anyway allow them to do something as say, quit their menial job and write for a living. They may not be selling a million books in five months but that’s ok. Think about if you sold 1000 books at $2.99 every month. 12,000 in sales spread out over multiple books in one year. If you can manage such a figure, as a young single person, or part of a two income couple, that is not a bad a mount of money to be making. 

The secret to all this is, of course, that the more books you have, the more money you make. Not just because you have a chance to sell more, but because for some reason, the market currently favors authors with lots of moderately priced eBooks. 

So…as a way to turn a quick buck, if you’re writing one book and sitting and waiting to watch the cash roll in, that’s probably not going to happen. The people who have no stomach for writing a second one, who don’t want to improve on what they’ve done, who are not inspired in anyway to try again and are disappointed that they failed the first time out, those are the people that never would’ve been writers anyway.

As J.A. Konrath, another successful self-pubber, willing to dole out advice for free, just said, the most important part of any writing, not just self-pub, is “DON’T WRITE CRAP.”

I guess Iain, that’s what you’re saying, too. Let’s just hope Mr. Sexy Legs put it at the beginning of his book as well.

(via iainbroome)

"It was nothing like that. Nothing at all."

Gordon Lish, during an unforgettable evening at KGB Bar (via fwriction)

I’ve had about a week with Paper Darts, Volume 3. Since I’ve been talking up the magazine, quite a bit, I wanted to give my impression or a review of it. 

(I want you to know both Vol 2 and 3 are available at Paper Dart’s magcloud page and also available in a digital copy. Buy the print copy and you’ll get the digital copy as well. Magcloud has a sale through March 17th, so both issues are just under $10 at the moment)

First off, the quality of the magazine is stunning. I’ve put Vol 2 next to Vol 3 and really, it’s weird how the perfect binding makes the damn thing seem more well crafted. Yet the layouts, paper stock and printing on the inside show that the two magazines are the same. 

On every level, this magazine continues to be impressive in its quality. It is a Lit AND Art magazine, so it is of course important that the visual presentation represent a focus on art as well. 

For the money, this is a better visual product than the three issues of Zoetrope that I have seen (and the one that I actually own). I will also say that I enjoyed the written works more in this magazine than the issue of Zoetrope I have. 

In the Lit department, the editors have definitely stepped up their game. Disturbingly in some ways, as there is an interesting subtext of…umm…fleshiness running through the poetry and fiction. Sex, death, and house pets in all their gooey glory, it’s the distinct impression I’m left with after finishing all the poetry and fiction. But it’s all good, high quality stuff.

My only disappointment is that I really want to hear the band that is described in “Glam Cowboys,” yet I don’t think it exists. 

As far as the Art featured in the work, there’s a great kick in the magazine deciding to feature the two page layout for fellow tumblr onethirtyfive as it’s tumblr page. Which, frankly is an obvious, but possibly overlooked decision. The artists at onethirtyfive clearly chose that theme as the best way to display their mix of photography and writing, so why not allow the artists choice of presentation be carried into print?(Speaking of which, they have a gallery showing coming up in two weeks, check the tumblr for more details). 

And as for the rest of the work: stunning. Andy DuCett’s drawings are crazy and bright, drawing you in to study every detail. The spreads showcasing Ronald Cueppens and Dominique Vangilbergen were chosen and arranged well, allowing you to focus on individual pieces, but also see how they relate to other parts of the artist’s work as well. 

The only area I felt was a little weak is that onethirtyfive’s photos were the only artistic photography featured. Try as you might to consider Louisa Podlich’s photos on their own, they’re married to Christian Dahlager’s words. It would have been nice to see a spread of photography similar to the Cueppens/Vangilbergen layouts where the visual art is forced to speak to itself. 

On that level, I found it important to look at the work of every artist and writer interviewed in the magazine prior to reading their interviews. After all, you don’t necessarily want the artist to spill the beans on their work before you have any chance to contemplate it.

The interviews were insightful, and overall show Paper Darts ambition to be more than just a typical literary journal. This is The Believer plus McSweeny’s plus Some Art Journal I Have No Expertise To List Here. 

So, go buy your copy. Look at how attractive that damn thing is. It’s going to look good on your shelf and seduce you into reading it.

Ultimately, that may be one of the highest compliments you can give Paper Darts, in that they have Style AND Substance. 

Here’s to hoping they’re soon at a point where they can publish multiple volumes a year. 

(Also, for those on tumblr, Paper Darts now has one too, follow here)

(Source: paperdarts.org)

Self-Publishing, Kurt Vonnegut, and Writers as Family

I was alerted today to this Jezebel article about a 26 year old writer in Austin, MN making a bit of money at writing eBooks, Amanda Hocking. I’m not going to call her a “millionaire” or “rich,” because it seems to me that those terms are being used to denigrate what she has done so far. 

The article points out the detractors and defenders of Hocking’s work. I’m really not going to go there. I’m not because of something Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, which can be found in it’s entirety at Letters of Note. He was writing a response to a letter from a long time fan, who had just written a novel: 

The fact that you have completed a work of fiction of which you are proud, which you made as good as you could, makes you as close a blood relative as my brother Bernard. The best thing about our family, our profession, is that its members are not envious or competitive. I was with the great Nadine Gordimer recently, and a reporter encouraged us to speak badly of a writer who made one hell of a lot more money than we did, Stephen King. Gordimer and I defended him. We thought he was awfully damn good at what he did. Long ago, I knocked the schlock novelist Jacqueline Suzanne off the top of the Best Seller List where she had been for a year or more. She was a sweet, tough, utterly sincere lady, and, as I say, a blood relative. She sent me a note saying, “As long as it had to be somebody, I’m glad it was you.”

Writing a novel, and getting it into any form that anyone actually wants to read, is extremely difficult. No matter how crap you might think the end result of what other people like to read, no novelist can just dash that off. It takes effort. Blood, sweat, and tears, as they say. Even if you don’t think it looks like it did, it took a lot of effort. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to try, and not to give up until you’re done. Because the world does need more writers. I truly believe that. 

It’s clear that Amanda Hocking has an audience. A group of people that were looking for exactly what she had to say. Awesome. And she’s making a living at it. Even more Awesome. 

In backtracking the Jezebel article, I came across two posts at defending her and self-ePub at this site Novelr.com, which I’m now going to have to pay attention to, and one sort of inane interview at the Huffington Post which I’m not going to bother linking. 

The HuffPo piece, notes that JA Konrath is frequently used as an example of self-publishing success, and just as easily struck down because he had publishing deals in the past. One of the Novelr posts addresses this as well. And points out that’s a bunch of bullshit. I like the other more recent post though, “Good Enough is How Disruption Happens.”

One thing I don’t think was properly addressed about the Konrath issue, is that Konrath is making more than he would now under a traditional publishing deal, but that’s sort of ignoring the whole picture.

Konrath has laid out the numbers himself before, and recently talked about running a friend of his the numbers when she was offered $400k for a two book deal.

Now, yes, that’s a bit of money. Spread out over 3 years. Indeed. However, do realize that by the time your second book is released and if it starts earning out royalties, the money’s probably gone. And your actual earning are something like $57k a year. Konrath goes in detail on the math, so I won’t. And he doesn’t even get into self-employment tax, which would cut in more.

Konrath’s point though, is you basically can earn $53k a year by selling 1600 copies a month at $3.99 per eBook (after Amazon/iTunes percentage of course).

That’s good enough, right there. 1600 copies a month will probably not get you another book deal at that big publisher. But it is a living wage. Writing books.

Which is what we want to do, right?

Konrath can point to a lot of previously unpublished authors, like Hocking, who are making more than he does in sales. And the thing is, it’s not like Konrath has turned himself into a multi-millionaire. But he’s earning way more than $50k a year right now, and in total control of his art.  

That’s “Good Enough is Disruption,” right there. People can and are making living wages writing what they want to write by self publishing online. Like the music business, the publishing business has no use creating a middle class of writers. They need writers who make them fucktons of money (perrenial bestsellers), or writers who are partially dependent upon their income and promotion and give the publisher “prestige” (any contemporary lit writer). 

But let’s be honest, most writers would settle for being middle class writers. Most people do not need to earn more than $100k a year (not saying it wouldn’t be great). And I think most of people, either as a single person or as part of two income family, $53k a year would be more than fine in most places (I have no idea how far $53k goes in LA, SF, or NYC, but I’m guessing much less than it would even go in Chicago). 

One caveat I have, is that due to the “prestige” of publishing, and possibly a fear of ePub, most contemporary lit writers don’t seem to be thinking of going the self-pub route. Or at least, previously unpublished authors who do contemporary lit don’t seem to be selling as well in eBooks. The primary consumers for eBooks are really genre audiences so far. 

I’d like to see that change. Or I’d like to be wrong in my assumption. 

But honestly, if you’re a genre writer of any sort sitting on a book and not having a contract, there’s absolutely no reason not to put your book out there right now and try and turn yourself into a working writer. No reason. 

Konrath’s site is a good guide on how to go about it. 

Did I mention I was writing a detective novel? 

Yeah, so, maybe you’ll here more about that in a couple of months when it’s done. 

Pattern Recognition

Last night, it occurred to me that writing fiction is pattern recognition.

It’s connecting dots between seemingly unrelated things to make a story. There can be many patterns, and usually the path you choose will be your own unique one. 

This is true for all good writing. Whether it’s good contemporary literature or good licensed Star Trek novel. 

This applies to everything: plotting, characters, relationships, themes, metaphors, and the like. 

See the pattern. Write it down. Take another look. See the pattern better. Rewrite it. 

I guess I knew this. I was probably told this. I probably read this. It’s just something I forget from time to time. 

Oh, Damn

Somewhere I got this link, “On Bad Reviews” from someone on Tumblr. I swear. They talked about loving the Norman Mailer quote. Now I can’t find who I got to it from. Dammit. The article is really great, and honestly makes me want to read the book of the author, just because of how she approaches the whole subject: with a level, but human and occasionally flawed, head. Which is sort of the space that I think all writer’s should occupy under criticism. 

I always wonder about reviewers like Kakutani, and the need to eviscerate in print an artist’s work. At some point, you wonder why Kakutani is allowed to review certain types of novels when it’s clear she is not in any way a good fit to review that artist’s work. You also wonder why, overall, an editor chooses to print scathing reviews. Sometimes, the work merits it. There are indeed artistic works that completely fail and the artist needs to be made aware of it. Mostly, they need to know why they were not effective in communicating at all what their idea was. Or that their idea was so reprehensible that it any attempt at communicating it ultimately fails. 

But these works, these horrible, utter failures of art, really are not as frequent as one might think, not at the level of the NY Times book review or PW. 

Anyways, Tumblr person who posted this that I can’t remember, thank you very much for posting. I’ve got a new author and anew website, themillions.com to check out.

Unsurprisingly, Warren Ellis said something interesting today

The article post is here. The specific post I’ve linked, and only that post, are Work Safe. Please remember that Warren Ellis’s website, in general, is in now way Work Safe. It’s probably not Human Safe. I’m pretty sure that Warren likes showing people things that make them want to scratch out their eyes. Why? Possibly because he needs to share the darkness within him (he calls it spreading his disease). 

Anyways, mostly his post has to do with him restarting an email newsletter, which I would once again join, just as I had Bad Signal But, here’s the part that really interested me: 

“Blog structure has stopped working so well.  This was the drive behind the recently-discussed Gawker redesign: the big, new-content posts get pushed down the page by the churn of amusing but less-meaty “look at this” posts, linkblogs, even music postings.  Very active blogs are now in the business of having to curate their own content.  BoingBoing hit this too, and it can’t all be solved by clever design.  Sometimes I have to choose not to blog the idle thought (that nonetheless doesn’t fit usefully into 140 characters) or the piece of music that’s nice, but maybe not nice enough to add to the page churn (I’ll often post those at the facebook page instead).  Or this place would be getting twenty new posts a day.  And things would get lost.  Probably do get lost.  I do, however, value the attention-economy part of this site, and wouldn’t give it up.”

Personally, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. How the hell does one stand out? How the hell does one balance quality with quantity. Fuck. I’ll probably be up to 300 posts by the end of February, that’s in 8 months. In an attempt to drive traffic over to the fiction side of things, I’ve been consistently reposting links to it. It was not something I wanted to do, but I was worried that it was getting lost. I’d move the fiction off of this site because I felt the blog was developing a different voice and me personally, if I were a reader, would not want the flow of this to be interrupted by 500-750 word fiction pieces. 

And of course there’s my disappointment that it seems like no one ever listens to the music anymore. I may have failed in that one. 

Ideally though, the best thing to do would almost be to have 5 sites. Fiction, Links/Ideas, Photos, Music and one Central site that aggregated them all. 

Of course, that’s silly. If I were a better tagger, and if Tumblr allowed for RSS subscription to specific tags on a blog, that might be the way to go. They may do that already, or I might be able to hack that through feed burner,  I have no idea. 

It’s something to stew on to see what I’m going to do with this next. 

Last time with Docx

Alright, one final thought on this sham of an article

“I’d love to end this piece by dealing with the fallacies of relativism, exposing the other misconceptions surrounding both genre and literary fiction (class needs tackling) and then round the whole thing off with a series of extracts from any number of fine contemporary novelists whom I love – Franzen, Coetzee, Hollinghurst, Amis, Mantel, Proux, Ishiguro, Roth – to illustrate again the happy, rich and textured difference. But there’s simply not enough space. Our culture is ever more congested – for lots of good reasons as well as bad. There’s huge pressure on books, particular pressure on fiction, and the most pressure of all on literary fiction.”

-Edward Docx

The list seems narrow - Docx’s favorite authors. A lot of these authors have had major books that dealt more with the past than with the present. Maybe that’s what he means though, preserving language. Saving doesn’t just mean keeping it away from the prole masses that will abuse it with words that shouldn’t exist, but stultifying its existence. So the English that exists is however Mantel’s recreation of Henry VIII’s court reads. Or Ishiguro’s conversations between post-war Brits.

But maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Or I am. 

Docx is denying us the privilege of reading as escapism. The thing that gets people hooked on reading in the first place. “Airport” books sell well, just like say, The Transformers makes more money than…oh, for argument’s sake since it’s structured like short story, Sideways. Escapism equals more money. Period. It does. 

But I imagine that the books that people want to read on the train, on the metro, on the tube, on the El, on the whatever, are the same ones they want to read on airplanes: the books that take them out of where they are and allow them to forget about their day to day worries. No one wants to read The Corrections on the train. Or Freedom. Those are books you settled down to when you have a long while to contemplate, to savor. 

That’s like starting your work day by watching 30 minutes of Lawrence of Arabia. On your iPhone shaking up in down in your hand while some one drums on your leg. Is that going to be beneficial to appreciating the art in anyway? Even if we grant Docx’s premise about language (which we don’t), is that really the best venue to read the book?

Here’s another silly thing about the books above. I bet you anything, these books are checked out of libraries more than they are purchased. Why? Because how many times is the average reader, truly meaning average here, going to reread each work of literary fiction? Probably not more than once. There’s a reason so many Oprah Club books end up in used stores. 

Maybe Docx will be happy to know, that at least here in Minnesota, people who would not normally go near a book like it, are reading Freedom all over the frigging place. Maybe it’s because of the Oprah endorsement (which he finally, smartly accepted), or maybe it’s because it’s set in my town of St. Paul (and boy do we love to claim anything as our own, it’s statewide inferiority complex). I’m sure some people read it on the bus or the LRT, but most consume it quietly at home, and don’t much talk about it.

Because it’s a big, expensive hardcover, most people I know got it from the library or read it on their Kindle. 

I’m sure that everything I’ve stated above and previously in attacking Docx’s article is filled with wild misconceptions stemming from my lack of familiarity with all the books he talks about. Just as Docx’s article is filled with wild misconceptions about what genre and literary fiction can and can not be. 

Small case in point: Stephen King is filed in the literary fiction section in the US. Not horror, not mystery, or sci fi, or suspense. Not GENRE. In libraries and bookstores, he can be found in the same section as everyone listed above. 

Now, Stephen King has sold more books than everyone listed above, than everyone listed in Docx’s article. Stephen King has sold what can only be described as a shit load of books. Rowling beats King. She has sold a fucking shitload of books. You know who else does? Sidney Fucking Sheldon and Danielle Goddamned Steele. They both beat Rowling.

Now, tell me: Exactly what impact have these authors had on the various modern forms of the English language?

As a post script, it should be noted that the best selling authors of all time are Shakespeare and Agatha Christie at an estimated tie. Given the size of their collections and the longevity of their work in print, I doubt Larsson and Brown will be unseating those any time soon. 

And it should also illustrate that the popularity of “poorly written” escapist literature should really not be underestimated in anyway. It has always been there. And it always will.