Behind the Scenes
Touch Me How I Want to Be Touched
@grahamfoust responds like a human being to the Paris Review retroactive rejection on twitter: “I’m actually not that upset–they’re giving me fries with my kill fee, and the poems were all just shit I took from Google anyway.”
@ the Observer, Christian Lorentzen gives the most evenhanded coverage of the thing in full: Dead Poem Society.
But really, if we’re going to talk about this, which I guess people insist upon, here’s a question: as a writer do you feel entitled to careful handling?
Is this handling different, say, than the care you’d receive at McDonald’s? If it is different, how is it different? Because McDonald’s is a service you are buying, and selling writing is a service you are offering, shouldn’t the quality control be more on the McDonald’s end than the other?
If kill fees are common in all other art, including journalism, why should poems carry different weight? Even outside of art, why more than any other object? If I buy a table from Crate & Barrel, then decide I can’t use the table, for whatever reason, I take the table back no questions asked.
Why should art be given special treatment? Should it?
Am I wrong to return a book I don’t like to Borders after reading part of it? What if I read the whole thing? Have I consumed?
Furthermore, why are the most popular blog posts online always about topics such as rejection, submission, balance, all things that pertain wholly to the self? Are we a consolidation of 8 year olds, looking for fingerpainting time? Where is fanfare needed more?
Tags: christian lorentzen, graham foust, self
At McDonald’s they don’t take your happy meal toy away from you while you’re rolling it along the table.
Do writers feel entitled to careful handling? Maybe the question is why don’t you?
I find the Paris Review thing troubling and so distasteful but it’s not the end of the world and as you and others note, it happens all the time, that writing is unaccepted so is the literary world immune, I don’t think so.
Still, it’s okay to care, isn’t it? It’s okay to be disappointed when one of the most renowned literary magazines tells you, sorry, it’s not going to happen. I do understand where you’re coming from, Blake and I respect your position, but at the same time, you seem very uncomfortable with human fallibility and our awkward desires to be, if you will, carefully handled.
Is there anything more about the self than writing? We enjoy looking at our navels because they are interesting and mysterious.
With each post you make on the topic of rejection, submission, balance etc you seem to lose a little more empathy for people without multiple books under their belts
the act of the self is for the self. the sharing is not on the same terms as the creation. i love digging as much as anyone, and i love digging into others’ digging. that is the whole thing, for sure. but, do i have to love it, because it is? should i be handled with care because i care?
sure, it sucks to get your writing pulled after you thought it was going to be published. it’s happened to me more than a few times. but, do i have the right to the publication? contracts break. it sucks. it’s life.
the self of the self is in the making. the business of the self is outside the writing. business is part of the game, but subject to different rules.
of course you care. but you also continue on. groveling wins nothing.
sure. i certainly lose my ability to speak my opinion after a certain amount of publication. that’s another part of the process. it’s fine.
i would have said this exactly the same 5 years ago.
i would bet that the majority of the authors “affected” by the paris review thing have multiple books under their belts.
Is the focus on writers wanting to be carefully handled or expectations that magazines will handle what they do carefully? If you put all your shit into writing, is the expectation mags will put all their shit into editing? and does that include being careful with their primary resource, their contributors? but yes, also, don’t be so fragile, i see your point. eds and writers should talk straight shit, do what they need to do, and no one needs to get so many feelings hurt.
It’s strange how Blake and other admins on this site always stick up for crappy treatment of writers. Other than his criticism of Narrative, Blake Butler enacts the jump circle defense around abusive and unprofessional lit mags and essentially tells writers to “know their place.” And his criticism of Narrative was more about his dislike for the journal’s aesthetic than anything else.
is someone who puts all their shit into writing really considering how much shit the magazine is going to put into the editing?
is someone who puts all their shit into writing thinking about editors?
is someone who puts all their shit into writing shitting?
does it require more of an ego to say that people should care less about their creation outside the creating? or does it require more of an ego to care more about oneself?
am i incapable of the thought ‘writers are not god’s gift’ because i have editing experience. am i not a writer first? because i’ve published a book can i not remember how it felt to send work out? did my skin turn into leather?
hell yeah. if you have a good book you want a good editor to handle it.
and if you ate right you’d shit. that’s what my grandma used to say in response to a non sequitur.
if anything, this post is an argument in FAVOR of the writer. for their creation. not the theatrical end.
i feel fucking nauseated
I think everyone should be handled with care, actually–writers, editors, and readers. I am truly not a Pollyanna but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be kind and caring and generous.
And again to be clear, I think the Paris Review hysteria is a bit absurd, but I also know that most of the reaction is about disappointment and a fear that hey, it could happen to me. I don’t think most people are like you and can be so… philosophical about these things. This “we won’t be publishing you” thing just happened to me last week actually with one of my dream publications and yeah it sucked and I’m already over it but for a couple days, I was really upset about it and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I guess I don’t want to ever be in a place where I don’t care. I think it’s asking a lot to have people get over themselves so much that they become detached. But I also think it is about balance and that calling for a boycott of TPR, for example, is beyond the pale as well.
totally. of course people care. i’m not saying not to care. but is it worth a furor? no.
maybe i’m just making more furor by talking about it. i don’t know.
but for me this whole thing is an example of the privilege of art. i am subject to privilege, and reap it, but i think to remember that it is a privilege, and that you do not have blood rights to publication, can actually be a good thing. for the self.
Your sentiment seems pro-art but not necessarily pro-writer. I share your opinion about getting over-worked about the process of publication but I also have multiple books. I feel it is important to remember empathy in times like these. (And re: your above comment, you’d cracked Ninth Letter by ’05, hadn’t you? Would you have said the same thing when you were still telling your mother about your acceptances?)
I will agree with you on that last part. All this stuff we do, is indeed a privilege, and it’s not something we are owed, even if some days we feel that way. I think this is very interesting to talk about.
But why are you so insistent that they care less about their creation?
i am not pro writer. i am not pro me. i am pro creation. business is business.
i don’t know when i “cracked” anything. i sent out things i made. i have 10x as many rejections as i do stories out in the world. probably 20x. it is learning. being hurt is learning. i am thankful for how i was mistreated. it taught me who to trust. or how to trust. in context.
i never tell my mother about my acceptances, never have. even when she asks. i don’t know why. i used to tell my blog, which i thought of as a body organ.
what does it matter. make.
i wonder when the last time any of the people angry about the paris review read the paris review.
Not sure I follow you–I don’t know many serious writers who send out regularly who consider themselves special or God’s Gift to Letters.
Let me see if I got this straight–you think writers who are upset at The Paris Review’s decision to yank previously accepted work off the table are “egotistical” and need to grow a tough skin? Seriously? That’s a nice little strawman that reminds me of some of the neocon conservative arguments offered on Fox News that always put the blame on the most vulnerable to distract from the problem’s primary source.
maybe not care less, but have less ego about it. be balls out and take slaps to the face when they come. take both in equal stride. get beaned with the pitch and walk to first. strike out .700 of the time. hit a hit. go to practice. eat a sandwich.
umm, I feel like I have to interject here. I don’t think this has anything to do with how a writer wants to be handled. Fact is, lit mags have set forth a standard, which is: you get accepted, then we publish you (particularly in the poetry realm). When one of the big guns dicks out on the contract, people are going to get upset. I think this is generally due to the magazine acting in bad form, and it has less to do with kid gloves. Granted, writers are notoriously fragile and precious, but I think that’s a different discussion altogether.
no. i am saying, that day is over. go for it.
More strawmen…..
I can’t believe you’re trying to pass off this “raise yourself from the boostraps” nonsense in regards to this particular topic.
Do you really think writers who were able to have work accepted at the Paris Review need you tell them about the necessity of owning a tough skin as a writer?
yes i think getting your writing pulled sucks. yes it happens. yes be upset if you want. now what.
Likewise, if you have a good publication, you want good writers to fill it. So what’s the problem?
I’m really looking forward to a month from now, when all this is blown over. Almost feels like we need a mean week around here to clear the bowels.
Speaking of, tell your grandma that she was thinking of that post hoc ergo propter hoc one, about the pooping.
Blake,
With each post, you prove that it doesn’t always require smarts to be talented. You’re not very bright, or you’re just a lazy thinker. It’s unfortunate because nothing’s deadlier than a writer with talent and smarts.
*i wonder when the last time any of the people angry about the paris review read the paris review.*
There you go.
Also, I remember one time you posted a photo of your rejection letters, like actually things you had mailed out for. I was pretty impressed.
its requireds a bit of the dumb to be goods a lot or some im think
I don’t like mean week.
the paris review should offer republication to the authors they rejected if they mail in a receipt from a corporate bookstore showing they own the entire life’s work of john updike.
that’s why i’m not talking about the paris review here, really.
LOL. Seriously?
So writers who were dicked over by The Paris Review shouldn’t complain because they don’t own a subscription to The Paris Review, or haven’t purchased the latest issue off the newsstand?
What in the hell does that have to do with The Paris Review dicking over writers? Did they look up the writers beforehand in the subscription or back issue databases?
Some mind bogglingly dumb logic here.
mean week 3 coming very soon
Yeah, that’s how I feel about it too. But not everyone values the whole “let what is unfair teach you” thing. And by the same token, stoic obduracy is strictly its own reward. Likening those who don’t react to ill treatment in that “I am thankful for how I was mistreated” way to 8yr-olds playing w/ fingerprint seems like seriously bad juju.
if you had more intuition you wouldn’t need logic
I have plenty of intuition–enough to know when someone is BS’ing.
i think john updike is probably the very best solution to our little dilemma. other “now what’s”: not a I got nuthin’. we’re really just stroking our own boobies here. unless, of course, the paris review decides to act like the mama jellyfish that it is and extend its tentacles into the magnanimous void.
“Things refuse to be mismanaged long.”
yes, let’s get back to talking about tao lin and paul madore, for crying out loud.
What confuses me about post like this one is that it seems really important to you that people not overreact to anything magazines do, but I don’t see you or anyone else applying this same ethic to writers. If it’s acceptable for magazines to behave this way (and personally I don’t think it’s immoral so much as amateur-hour) then why not for writers to do all the things we’re always ragging on them for here?
I am okay with the fact that you don’t have my attitude about / approach to these things, but shit, I’m just getting out there, and honestly I don’t want to be treated the way these people are being treated. I wouldn’t do that to somebody. I don’t want it done to me. That’s not because I’m weak or not a person or stupid, it’s because I’ve been working on this shit for as long as I can remember and someday I want that to be acknowledged.
I want to sell my novel, too — this one is my sixth and I’m going to spend the year revising it. It’s important to me.
want in one hand? get what you get?
no one is talking about what i had hoped to talk about in this post.
it remains about the self.
Did any of you actually read Blake’s post?
To be honest, I just don’t understand that part, Blake. Your talk about the self is (and I am not being funny) way above my head. I don’t understand what you’re getting at I guess.
at what point do you make the switch. blake? i mean, the object and the author have to be the same during creation, yes? or not? or as soon as you send it out? when do you push back the self?
as soon as you start talking to someone outside your own pants.
tho actually i try the most to throw the self out before i sit down at the machine.
Yes, unfortunately. Did you read it? It’s a pretty stupid post.
don;lt know what that means.
Blake,
Did you take a lot of drugs this morning?
I did. Can you tell me exactly what is “stupid” about it?
I take a lot of drugs every morning. Pick me.
Do you think personal insults elevate the discussion? Courteous disagreement is generally the better way in my opinion.
daniel bailey sent me drugs
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jfJ10O_FTg
ALL THE TIME, BRO.
that’s what pants are.
How about the idea that writers shouldn’t feel entitled to “careful handling” in response to The Paris Review’s poor treatment of writers, as if entitlement is the same as not wanting to be treated like dog shit, as if writers complaining about The Paris Review are going to stop writing and sending out simply because they choose to discuss the topic online.
As a writer, I don’t expect any treatment at all, really, good or bad. I am always prepared for indifference, and pleasantly surprised when I receive something else.
As an editor, I think respect for each writer — accepted or not, “promising” or “established”, familiar or unfamiliar — is key, and that its my job to make the editorial process as transparent and collaborative as possible.
For example, IMO its not really good editorial practice, unless you are really willing to offer a substantial critique, to try and “explain” why you or your outlet will not be publishing something.
And I’ve always felt this to be the case, even if I could never fully think my way through that intuition. I guess it does have something to do with it being so hard to convey the proper tone in a short note, much less an email. The larger, enfolding issue as far as I’m concerned — and here I reveal my roots in Southern gentility (which often is just a highly inflected form of passive aggression, i.e., “Well, bless your heart!”) — is that offering what was never asked for can be the worst kind of presumption. And if someone is submitting work for publication, they clearly see the writing as somehow “finished” and are not looking for feedback. (Or are they?) So even to aim to be constructively critical, to “help”, is, at another level, self-aggrandizing in that you, the editor, are re-asserting the authority of your tastes, your sense of shapeliness, how you believe affect works. The editor, like the teacher sitting at the head of the
table in workshop, is the one who delivers ultimate discernment, cuts through the chatter with his / her appraisals, and must be recognized as the literary arbiter of record. Mastery as the role-ing out the people around you, and the active prevention of their ever getting out from underneath the vigilant shadow of what you project for them.
But that is not quite what editors do. They don’t serve the writer; they serve the text. Or so I think / have thought.
It’s not quite a conundrum, but I am occasionally stopped in the tracks of my proclivities by my uncertainty… as an editor, shouldn’t I be more forthcoming about why I hit the reject button? I put myself
in the position of the submitter (submittee?), and imagine (there’s only a little stretching involved) that, when I do receive that rejection, I ascribe character to it. “I bet they didn’t actually read what I sent.” I presume that little time was spent with my work, or that attention completely disproportionate to the attention I, writer, lavished on crafting this glittery, insubstantial object has been given, or that I am the victim of some political or cabalistic order of relations whose gestures are in full view even while their
significance remains utterly secret, or that this journal / agent / publisher jut doesn’t do business “the right way.” Acceptances, by contrast, are almost completely free of psychological content. But, as an
editor, I know that rejections are not really all that automatic, really a matter of pressing a button and sentencing a work and an author to the doom of the undifferentiated mass. Rejecting a piece can take an inordinate amount of time, re-reading, stepping back paces and paces from your reading self,
questioning much of what you believe about your own pen-in-hand experience. Acceptances can be and often are much more reflexive. You “know.” There is no need to explain. The fitness / right-ness / admiration / whatever exists and proposes its own presence so forcefully you could almost believe that it (the feeling of yes) never had to come into existence.
Generally I agree, until people begin to insult my intelligence.
“Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise.”
“Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated.”
I quite liked this post actually. I think it raises a couple of interesting questions, mostly unrelated to the PR thing, which everybody realizes is a pain in the ass and a kick in the teeth (or vice versa) for the writers whose work has been pulled. I guess Blake’s point is that barely three weeks go by when there’s not another such scandal to harp on about, valubale energy that could be expended actually writing the thing you’ll get published, or sending the pulled thing elsewhere.
I found interesting the taking a book back to the shop thing. If you read a book, didn’t like it, thought to yourself that perhaps that book wasn’t for you after all, you couldn’t see you and that book making a permanent life together, or that book annoyed or bored you so much you just want it out of your house, then you might want to take it back to the shop. Is that legit? I think it sounds silly but is a pretty interesting issue about how reading works, and the status of art objects in relation to other objects . Can you read the book but not sort of commit yourself to consume it? I could never take a book back, btw. I can’t take anything back. too shy.
thank you.
I don’t see how one can separate the PR situation from dude’s post. The article leads off with two quotes responding to the unique PR situation.
No one here needs to hear yet another Blake Butler Lecture about how writing is tough.
I didn’t mean to insult yr intelligence, even if you’re insulting Blake’s.
misdirected energy, yes, that’s definitely a part of it. thanks colin.
i find it hard to return books but i do. if something is big press and doesn’t follow through on what it promises, i have returned it. usually i have to not be able to finish it to do this, which i usually don’t let happen, as i like to finish most of what i start. i think it is ok to return things if you don’t feel you got utility out of them, being honest with yourself. i wouldn’t return a book if i did read it and enjoy it but knew i would never read it again.
I would expect you to agree with this post, based on your posting history and conservative views on literature and publishing.
Man I would still like to know why there is this difference in expectations between publishers and writers, but I guess that isn’t what I’m supposed to be asking about here.
hehe. this guy.
I see Blake’s POV. Okay, PR unaccepted you. You’re pissed. Feel pissed. Say you’re pissed here, whether you were one of those writers or not. Is this going to stop happening because you’re pissed at PR or any other magazine that does this? So send your work out somewhere else. The McDonald’s analogy is hilarious. You get stiffed at the drive-thru, so you go inside for the toy neglectfully missing in your Happy Meal, or you stop eating at McDonald’s. Pretty simple. How good, really, is McDonald’s? Filling, empty calories.
hehe.
If this kind of Rock Balboa junk is all you have to offer, then I’ll find some other site to read.
clearly it’s all we have to offer.
can i suggest dadsorphandonor.com?
“why are the most popular blog topics online always about topics such as rejection, submission, balance, all things that pertain wholly to the self? ”
From the point of view of a reader (me), all this ‘talk’ about submission, rejection, slushpiles, etc etc is mildly interesting to me as it pertains to how works get written, edited and published (or rejected).
I must admit, though, that I can not, and do not read these whole posts/comment threads. It is all just much too much. These blog topics are popular with the writers/editors amongst us. (Sometimes I get the feeling that there aren’t too many ‘just readers’ here.)
One thing I will say for sure, I am glad that I am not an editor (I wouldn’t like the job and I wouldn’t like giving up my precious reading time to reading bad slush. I do have great respect for those of you with the fortitude to do so). And I am also glad that I do not write in order to be read by anyone but myself. (Note: I do not say that I don’t write.)
I like to read HTMLGIANT for its great mix – to find out about books, writers, poetry, journals etc etc that I might not otherwise find out about, for the other cool cultural stuff (film/video, music, design etc etc) like Ken’s posts and Reynard’s posts, Sean’s Friday words of drinky ‘glow’ etc etc etc and all the insightful and funny stuff from a great ‘cast of characters’ (ZIPPY! I mean YOU!) writing posts and comments.
they feck you at the drive thru, everyone knows that, thanks to leo.
shitstorm, bros.
This was my immediate thought, it didn’t really have anything to do w/ the writers’ feelings — it was abt the “big gun” position Paris Review occupies, and how this decision seems to violate what some folks think is a generally agreed-upon norm in lit journal publishing. I’m not really sure how I feel ab it (tho I thought Joshua Corey’s response seemed pretty sense-making and measured), but I think if the conversation is interesting, what is interesting abt it is whether this constitutes and.or will lead to a paradigm shift in a broader community/industry/field/set of institutions, whatever, not the part abt writers’ emotions.
(Altho generally and in other contexts, I’m super down with Roxane’s practice of creating space for folks to feel okay by publicly voicing emotions most folks keep closeted, but maybe I’m just a big lesbian processor like that).
It’s easy for you to complain about McDonald’s because you’re like a real cook. What about wannabe cooks like me who can’t make stuff as well as you can? Shouldn’t I demand unreasonable things from McDonalds?
big lesbian processor is the shit. you should name a book that.
MFBomb—yes, exactly. If you don’t support the Paris Review financially, if you’re going to be divinely aggrieved when Lorin Stein decides he wants to publish poets he likes, and he chose, not poets that Philip Gourevitch liked, and Philip Gourevitch chose, then you have no right to complain, because what do they owe you? It almost worked out with those poets. Unfortunately, it didn’t. But Stein’s got to make a magazine that he wants to read, otherwise he’ll go under just like past editors. The problem here was in the Paris Review accepting work they had no space for, and having such a long waiting period between acceptance and publishing, and hopefully, what this drama will serve to do is teach them a little lesson about how much poetry to accept.
Whoa, this discussion is heated, but I wanted to point to some economic realities. Kill fees and poems being unaccepted are really two different beasts. You receive a kill fee because a magazine or newspaper has accepted your pitch but then cuts the story you write after you successfully pitch them. You’re basically writing the story on assignment at that point, which is not like writing poetry on your own. And it sucks, but it’s still money. A journo friend of mine used to make upwards of $1000 on a single, murdered story, which is still not a lot but he could live off kill fees when he had to. I don’t know if the PR pays an honorarium, but it’s probably not as much as a kill fee. Plus, the time spent working on these poems is probably not quantifiable (or as quantifiable), like it is for a journalistic piece. Last, speaking from an academic standpoint (if that matters to anyone), publication in the PR can literally mean the difference between getting a college teaching job and not even scoring an interview. These things all suck and are unfair, but I think it’s important to point out that this isn’t just about bruised egos and whatnot.
hahaha
i totally agree. it is partially about jobs. and that makes it even lamer.
Thanks for the head’s up. From now on I’ll cover all of my bases by “financially supporting” more journals.
no, that’s what moms are for.
Yes.
We’ll always have Paris.
Look, I’m new to this whole game, I’m a young guy, but what I don’t get—and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, light me on fire with your internet magic, whatever—is why Stein’s name doesn’t come up more in this debate, why all the criticism and artillery fire is just being lobbed at the mythical “PARIS REVIEW”. It was Stein’s call. I understand. Dude wants to publish poetry he likes; dude was given the prerogative to do so when he was named editor. And I understand the idea that new editors should respect/defer to the magazine’s tradition and past editors’ decisions, but when these things hamstring you, what are you supposed to do, walk around hamstrung? It seems like this situation, where the magazine and it’s immense history defines you, is different than the situation with some smaller journals, where the staff is fewer and you’re the only editor there’s ever been and it’s your journal, you define it.
They hired Stein to make the best magazine he could, he’s trying. Isn’t this the point? Or is the point the aggrandizing of writers who, like Blake said, have mostly probably already been published (again, correct/kill me if I’m wrong, but this is the Paris Review, not some magazine that somebody’s running out of their basement or backyard—this says nothing about the quality, but what it does say is that they have more options to choose from in publishing writers, and more of these writers probably have books published, fame, experience, oh boy, TEH GR8T WRITERZ!!!). I feel as bad as the next guy/girl over the writers that had their pieces given back to them, and that sucks, but at least they received that affirmation, or vote of confidence or whatever, of their skill, that Paris Review affirmation, and now they move on, and one would think that if the Paris Review, cause it’s the best, right? right? would accept it, other places will too.
All this means is that Stein better be on his game with the poetry in his Sept. 15 issue, like he says he is. If he is, then everyone’s gonna forget about this. And god knows there are plenty of people here who aren’t gonna give him a chance, anyway.
Please do. I know that sounds so terrible.
how is mcdonald’s a service? they provide a product, not a service.
i really don’t want to go read all the scene bullshit about the Paris Review. Can someone sum up the issue in one sentence for me?
We’ve already had the discussion about how writers who are already responsible for 99.9% of literary journal support should do more to support literary journals, or are to blame for lack of literary journal support. We did that one on the Tin House thread.
Yeah, the McDonald’s analogy is a laugh at loud example of unintentional irony.
*out
But if any of those unaccepted poets are attempting to score teaching jobs, I really feel for them. The way academic hiring happens is shitty and unfair enough. I wouldn’t fault them for being excited to get a potentially life-changing bite like this and then being really upset when it didn’t go through. But I don’t know who any of the poets are, so: speculative.
The Paris Review got a new editor and the previous editor(s) had accepted too much poetry so the new editor, lorin stein, notified some of those previously accepted poets, that The Paris Review was no longer interested in their work and then some people voiced displeasure while others still got a bit hysterical and then baby Jesus cried.
Blake, I’m holding you to that–MW3 in the heat of summer.
…and then Blake Butler used this as yet another opportunity to pitch his Fight Club For Writers.
I still think a fine solution would be for an intrepid editor to buy all these bought-then-rejected poems and publish them as an anthology. Call it: Too Good for the Paris Review.
huh? what the fuck are you talking about?
i was confused by the analogy which is why i asked. nothing else was affixed to my comment. so i’m not sure what you are agreeing with here.
btw, i think it’s “laugh out loud.”
btw, btw, true irony is never intentional.
hahaha, thank you roxane.
So excited not to comment on this thread!
good poem -> no wait, bad poem -> wah wah
Not sure why you’re all huffy. I was agreeing with your point re: service vs. product
Fuck you, asshole.
btw, I corrected my typo immediately
btw, btw, the “unintentional irony” was a playing off the common saying,” unintentional humor.”
*was playing off
In other words, the fact that he would compare the relationship between writer and editor to Big Mac consumer-seller.
i guess i am confused why people are crying over their work being pulled?
is the real catalyst here simply the big name journal? would there be such a tantrum if this were to happen at a lesser known journal like PANK?
Was PR mean about rescinding? Did they send emails out saying: “WE MADE A GRIEVOUS ERROR. NOBODY WANTS YOUR PUSSY HERE. YOU SUCK. GO DIE IN A FIRE.”
your shit got accepted once. that should be validation enough.
stop being a bunch of titty coddled bitches.
hey, yo, jereme,
UR so tough, dude! Man, I wish I were as tuff as you!!!!!!
btw, “tuff” was intentional.
as a writer do you feel entitled to careful handling? i feel entitled to handling in the sense that i am a human being.
Is this handling different, say, than the care you’d receive at McDonald’s? i havent been to a mcdonalds in a long time. i drove thru maybe to get a coffee early in the morning the last time i remember, i think the lady smiled and seemed nice. so, sure.
If it is different, how is it different? its not different. humans work at mcdonalds and im a human too, so thats how we treat each other.
Because McDonald’s is a service you are buying, and selling writing is a service you are offering, shouldn’t the quality control be more on the McDonald’s end than the other? i dont know what that means, “the mcdonalds end.”
If kill fees are common in all other art, including journalism, why should poems carry different weight? i dont know. i guess i dont think they should. or i dont care enough to think that hard about it.
Even outside of art, why more than any other object? If I buy a table from Crate & Barrel, then decide I can’t use the table, for whatever reason, I take the table back no questions asked. well, art consummation is maybe different than things that are commodities. commodities have more practical worth. you cant go watch a movie and somehow erase the movie from your brain and return it to the box teller so that someone else can now enjoy it. although this does happen in a sense, its called a library.
Why should art be given special treatment? Should it? no. it doesnt, anyway. when someone’s books dont sell enough, dont they sometimes have to return advances or pay something extra? maybe im wrong.
Am I wrong to return a book I don’t like to Borders after reading part of it? What if I read the whole thing? Have I consumed? yeah, you consumed. you should actually give the book to a library. people want brand new things when they go to borders. the problem with this analogy is it doesnt involve the writer. borders didnt write the book, someone else did. you arent going to the author’s house and handing them back the book in person. is borders going to the writers door and saying, these didnt sell, you have to take them all back now and sell them some other way.
Furthermore, why are the most popular blog posts online always about topics such as rejection, submission, balance, all things that pertain wholly to the self? Are we a consolidation of 8 year olds, looking for fingerpainting time? Where is fanfare needed more? i didnt think this topic was gaining traction until this post and your pressing of the issue. there werent that many comments on mikes or your previous post with the elephant. maybe im not reading the right websites. although, i believe people are innately selfish, or at least veer to that side of the fence often enough, which i think is fine.
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2008/12/paris.html
MFBomb probably thinks Blake works for the CIA.
Nah, not really. He’s not that important.
hahaha, moron, if you think not crying over writing being unpublished is “tuff”, then I would like to thank you for affirming the pussy writer stereotype.
quick question, are you going to be passive aggressive all day or are you going to assert yourself with an actual declaration of worth?
there was nothing to agree with. i broached a question. you appended your passive aggressive slap to it.
it was a limp wristed slap at that.
It’s important to understand that there is a difference between “granting of first rights,” and “work for hire.” I am a probate lawyer, not a contract lawyer, but I would suggest that if you have a contract granting “first rights” (which I assume would be the type of agreement PR uses), it is pretty much unenforceable. On the other hand, a “work for hire” contract is a binding contract that can be enforced in court. For those who don’t know, first rights means that you are granting a publication the right to be the first to use your work on a worldwide exclusive basis, but the copyright reverts to you. A work for hire is a piece that belongs exclusively to the publication that solicited it, with the copyright and all content belonging exclusively to them for the life of the copyright. On a personal note, a while back I received a letter from a very prestigious publication that I had submitted to saying, “Charlene, all of our editors voted yes on your story, but we ran out of room. Good luck placing it elsewhere.” Oh well, life goes on.
i don’t buy this. “what does it matter. make.”
do you say the same thing to the burger guy at mcdonalds? fuck your ego. it doesn’t matter if anyone eats it, but you made that burger real hard, man. congratulations.
That was awesome.
Um, what? You answered your own “question”:
“how is mcdonald’s a service? they provide a product, not a service.”
Sorry, though, for reading that second part written by someone else.
Also, why all of the latent homophobia and misogyny in your posts? Are you 12?
I think if I were one of the poets who was ‘unaccepted’ I would be exceptionally bummed about this, but then, it’s their decision and their journal. This happened to me, a while ago, when I first started sending stuff out, but without any kind of explanation from the journal – acceptance from a ‘big’ literary journal, one that meant a lot to me, then nothing (emails not returned) – I learned much later that this was (likely) because of an editorial change. I remember at the time that it was a big disappointment. I’m not sure why that’s bad or unusual. I suspect most people would feel this way, and because it’s the Paris Review, it doesn’t surprise me that people want to talk about it.
As for this question: ‘Why should art be given special treatment? Should it?’
I don’t know the answer, but I’m not sure it’s productive to compare poems to Crate and Barrel tables or McDonald’s sandwiches. Maybe they are no different, that writing at this point is just Product, like frozen Big Mac patties, but I (maybe optimistically) don’t like to think of writing as a commodity, even if in reality it has largely come to this. I know that many publishers think about books as Product (Glenn Beck books, Twilight, etc.) and understand why, but (again, optimistically) I’m not sure I’m ready to lump Paris Review poems in with Big Macs. Does that mean that the Paris Review shouldn’t be able to do what they want with their journal? No, but I don’t think it means that people shouldn’t be angry or upset about it, either.
I’m not going to read all of the above comments until later tonight after Sportcenter and over beers, but I think it’s an OK response to be pissed if the Paris Review pulled a poem they said they would be publishing. Wouldn’t most of this crowd glow for days over a PR publication? It could lead to things, maybe things more than ourselves reading it (and maybe not), but it isn’t like the poet published in some rag stapled together in my basement (though I like those mags too).
No one has lost their mind here, I don’t think, but it’s OK to call bad taste bad taste. Everyone says magazines do it all the time–they do NOT.
It’s a punk-ass move. I don’t know all the details, but assume the new editor is enemy camp of the old? It’s a FUCK YOU, right? I’ll erase all the judgments you just made, your residue, etc. I could be wrong, but maybe then again I use to work in office spaces…I’ll admit to not knowing all the details.
Anyway, my 2.4 cents, it’s punk-ass. It’s not tipping a bartender territory. Almost DB country.
Why not cough up a double issue, PR, then let the new dude stamp/stamp/stamp his “vision”?
[That felt good–haven’t gone Tao Lin quotes in weeks]
carp and beer, I say
At McDonald’s they don’t take your happy meal toy away from you while you’re rolling it along the table.
Do writers feel entitled to careful handling? Maybe the question is why don’t you?
I find the Paris Review thing troubling and so distasteful but it’s not the end of the world and as you and others note, it happens all the time, that writing is unaccepted so is the literary world immune, I don’t think so.
Still, it’s okay to care, isn’t it? It’s okay to be disappointed when one of the most renowned literary magazines tells you, sorry, it’s not going to happen. I do understand where you’re coming from, Blake and I respect your position, but at the same time, you seem very uncomfortable with human fallibility and our awkward desires to be, if you will, carefully handled.
Is there anything more about the self than writing? We enjoy looking at our navels because they are interesting and mysterious.
With each post you make on the topic of rejection, submission, balance etc you seem to lose a little more empathy for people without multiple books under their belts
the act of the self is for the self. the sharing is not on the same terms as the creation. i love digging as much as anyone, and i love digging into others’ digging. that is the whole thing, for sure. but, do i have to love it, because it is? should i be handled with care because i care?
sure, it sucks to get your writing pulled after you thought it was going to be published. it’s happened to me more than a few times. but, do i have the right to the publication? contracts break. it sucks. it’s life.
the self of the self is in the making. the business of the self is outside the writing. business is part of the game, but subject to different rules.
of course you care. but you also continue on. groveling wins nothing.
sure. i certainly lose my ability to speak my opinion after a certain amount of publication. that’s another part of the process. it’s fine.
i would have said this exactly the same 5 years ago.
i would bet that the majority of the authors “affected” by the paris review thing have multiple books under their belts.
Is the focus on writers wanting to be carefully handled or expectations that magazines will handle what they do carefully? If you put all your shit into writing, is the expectation mags will put all their shit into editing? and does that include being careful with their primary resource, their contributors? but yes, also, don’t be so fragile, i see your point. eds and writers should talk straight shit, do what they need to do, and no one needs to get so many feelings hurt.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/“unable-to-process-neutral-statements-as-neutral”-hamster/
It’s strange how Blake and other admins on this site always stick up for crappy treatment of writers. Other than his criticism of Narrative, Blake Butler enacts the jump circle defense around abusive and unprofessional lit mags and essentially tells writers to “know their place.” And his criticism of Narrative was more about his dislike for the journal’s aesthetic than anything else.
is someone who puts all their shit into writing really considering how much shit the magazine is going to put into the editing?
is someone who puts all their shit into writing thinking about editors?
is someone who puts all their shit into writing shitting?
does it require more of an ego to say that people should care less about their creation outside the creating? or does it require more of an ego to care more about oneself?
am i incapable of the thought ‘writers are not god’s gift’ because i have editing experience. am i not a writer first? because i’ve published a book can i not remember how it felt to send work out? did my skin turn into leather?
hell yeah. if you have a good book you want a good editor to handle it.
and if you ate right you’d shit. that’s what my grandma used to say in response to a non sequitur.
if anything, this post is an argument in FAVOR of the writer. for their creation. not the theatrical end.
i feel fucking nauseated
I think everyone should be handled with care, actually–writers, editors, and readers. I am truly not a Pollyanna but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be kind and caring and generous.
And again to be clear, I think the Paris Review hysteria is a bit absurd, but I also know that most of the reaction is about disappointment and a fear that hey, it could happen to me. I don’t think most people are like you and can be so… philosophical about these things. This “we won’t be publishing you” thing just happened to me last week actually with one of my dream publications and yeah it sucked and I’m already over it but for a couple days, I was really upset about it and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I guess I don’t want to ever be in a place where I don’t care. I think it’s asking a lot to have people get over themselves so much that they become detached. But I also think it is about balance and that calling for a boycott of TPR, for example, is beyond the pale as well.
totally. of course people care. i’m not saying not to care. but is it worth a furor? no.
maybe i’m just making more furor by talking about it. i don’t know.
but for me this whole thing is an example of the privilege of art. i am subject to privilege, and reap it, but i think to remember that it is a privilege, and that you do not have blood rights to publication, can actually be a good thing. for the self.
Your sentiment seems pro-art but not necessarily pro-writer. I share your opinion about getting over-worked about the process of publication but I also have multiple books. I feel it is important to remember empathy in times like these. (And re: your above comment, you’d cracked Ninth Letter by ’05, hadn’t you? Would you have said the same thing when you were still telling your mother about your acceptances?)
I will agree with you on that last part. All this stuff we do, is indeed a privilege, and it’s not something we are owed, even if some days we feel that way. I think this is very interesting to talk about.
But why are you so insistent that they care less about their creation?
i am not pro writer. i am not pro me. i am pro creation. business is business.
i don’t know when i “cracked” anything. i sent out things i made. i have 10x as many rejections as i do stories out in the world. probably 20x. it is learning. being hurt is learning. i am thankful for how i was mistreated. it taught me who to trust. or how to trust. in context.
i never tell my mother about my acceptances, never have. even when she asks. i don’t know why. i used to tell my blog, which i thought of as a body organ.
what does it matter. make.
i wonder when the last time any of the people angry about the paris review read the paris review.
Not sure I follow you–I don’t know many serious writers who send out regularly who consider themselves special or God’s Gift to Letters.
Let me see if I got this straight–you think writers who are upset at The Paris Review’s decision to yank previously accepted work off the table are “egotistical” and need to grow a tough skin? Seriously? That’s a nice little strawman that reminds me of some of the neocon conservative arguments offered on Fox News that always put the blame on the most vulnerable to distract from the problem’s primary source.
maybe not care less, but have less ego about it. be balls out and take slaps to the face when they come. take both in equal stride. get beaned with the pitch and walk to first. strike out .700 of the time. hit a hit. go to practice. eat a sandwich.
umm, I feel like I have to interject here. I don’t think this has anything to do with how a writer wants to be handled. Fact is, lit mags have set forth a standard, which is: you get accepted, then we publish you (particularly in the poetry realm). When one of the big guns dicks out on the contract, people are going to get upset. I think this is generally due to the magazine acting in bad form, and it has less to do with kid gloves. Granted, writers are notoriously fragile and precious, but I think that’s a different discussion altogether.
Agreed, Sean. And since you’re a sports fan, here’s a good analogy: it’s like Steve Spurrier not renewing scholarships for certain players when he took the job at South Carolina. Technically, athletic scholarships are renewed annually, and yes, he was in the process of rebuilding the program–but it was still a punk move. Same with Calipari at Kentucky last year, who turned over his roster like he was an NBA GM with access to a waiver wire.
Can it be done? Yes.
Is it ethical? No.
no. i am saying, that day is over. go for it.
More strawmen…..
I can’t believe you’re trying to pass off this “raise yourself from the boostraps” nonsense in regards to this particular topic.
Do you really think writers who were able to have work accepted at the Paris Review need you tell them about the necessity of owning a tough skin as a writer?
yes i think getting your writing pulled sucks. yes it happens. yes be upset if you want. now what.
Likewise, if you have a good publication, you want good writers to fill it. So what’s the problem?
I’m really looking forward to a month from now, when all this is blown over. Almost feels like we need a mean week around here to clear the bowels.
Speaking of, tell your grandma that she was thinking of that post hoc ergo propter hoc one, about the pooping.
Blake,
With each post, you prove that it doesn’t always require smarts to be talented. You’re not very bright, or you’re just a lazy thinker. It’s unfortunate because nothing’s deadlier than a writer with talent and smarts.
I don’t see the big deal. They gave a kill fee and the writers are getting more publicity from having their poems not published then if they had been published.
This has happened to me a few times. I don’t much like it, but it seems standard practice. The worst was when a publisher had my book for 3 years before deciding not to publish it.
To summarize:
“I will agree with you on that last part. This decision seems to violate what some folks think is a generally agreed-upon norm. Courteous disagreement is generally the better way. Generally I agree. I would expect you to agree with this post. i totally agree which I assume would be the type of agreement PR uses so i’m not sure what you are agreeing with here. I was agreeing with your point there was nothing to agree with.”
*i wonder when the last time any of the people angry about the paris review read the paris review.*
There you go.
Also, I remember one time you posted a photo of your rejection letters, like actually things you had mailed out for. I was pretty impressed.
its requireds a bit of the dumb to be goods a lot or some im think
I don’t like mean week.
the paris review should offer republication to the authors they rejected if they mail in a receipt from a corporate bookstore showing they own the entire life’s work of john updike.
that’s why i’m not talking about the paris review here, really.
LOL. Seriously?
So writers who were dicked over by The Paris Review shouldn’t complain because they don’t own a subscription to The Paris Review, or haven’t purchased the latest issue off the newsstand?
What in the hell does that have to do with The Paris Review dicking over writers? Did they look up the writers beforehand in the subscription or back issue databases?
Some mind bogglingly dumb logic here.
mean week 3 coming very soon
Yeah, that’s how I feel about it too. But not everyone values the whole “let what is unfair teach you” thing. And by the same token, stoic obduracy is strictly its own reward. Likening those who don’t react to ill treatment in that “I am thankful for how I was mistreated” way to 8yr-olds playing w/ fingerprint seems like seriously bad juju.
Just out of curiousity:
What are valid reasons for not publishing writing after accepting it? Are there any?
if you had more intuition you wouldn’t need logic
I have plenty of intuition–enough to know when someone is BS’ing.
I think getting published in PR would be cool. But life changing? I don’t think so.
i think john updike is probably the very best solution to our little dilemma. other “now what’s”: not a I got nuthin’. we’re really just stroking our own boobies here. unless, of course, the paris review decides to act like the mama jellyfish that it is and extend its tentacles into the magnanimous void.
“Things refuse to be mismanaged long.”
I agree it isn’t in general a huge deal, just kind of shitty.
That last one actually seems like a huge deal, though — your book? For three years? That’s just not okay. In purely economic terms the opportunity cost alone is maddening there.
yes, let’s get back to talking about tao lin and paul madore, for crying out loud.
What confuses me about post like this one is that it seems really important to you that people not overreact to anything magazines do, but I don’t see you or anyone else applying this same ethic to writers. If it’s acceptable for magazines to behave this way (and personally I don’t think it’s immoral so much as amateur-hour) then why not for writers to do all the things we’re always ragging on them for here?
I am okay with the fact that you don’t have my attitude about / approach to these things, but shit, I’m just getting out there, and honestly I don’t want to be treated the way these people are being treated. I wouldn’t do that to somebody. I don’t want it done to me. That’s not because I’m weak or not a person or stupid, it’s because I’ve been working on this shit for as long as I can remember and someday I want that to be acknowledged.
I want to sell my novel, too — this one is my sixth and I’m going to spend the year revising it. It’s important to me.
I’m definitely interested in the idea that non-fiction and even fiction unacceptances are fairly common and accepted but the idea of cutting poetry is causing such a stir. I’m sure the Paris Review has cut plenty of essays in its time with nary a gust of blowback.
want in one hand? get what you get?
no one is talking about what i had hoped to talk about in this post.
it remains about the self.
Did any of you actually read Blake’s post?
To be honest, I just don’t understand that part, Blake. Your talk about the self is (and I am not being funny) way above my head. I don’t understand what you’re getting at I guess.
at what point do you make the switch. blake? i mean, the object and the author have to be the same during creation, yes? or not? or as soon as you send it out? when do you push back the self?
Well, is what was fucked about that is that every time I would ask the publisher, they would say it was “on the way to the printers”. In the end they offered me money not to publish it!
But this has happened to me with 3 books. The latest one just this year, being repeatedly told “copies are on the way.”
Finally, I pulled it and sold it to someone else – within 24 hours.
So, from this standpoint, having a few poems not published doesn’t seem like a big deal. You just kick some random object, have a beer, and send the work off to someone else.
as soon as you start talking to someone outside your own pants.
tho actually i try the most to throw the self out before i sit down at the machine.
Yes, unfortunately. Did you read it? It’s a pretty stupid post.
don;lt know what that means.
Blake,
Did you take a lot of drugs this morning?
I did. Can you tell me exactly what is “stupid” about it?
I take a lot of drugs every morning. Pick me.
Do you think personal insults elevate the discussion? Courteous disagreement is generally the better way in my opinion.
daniel bailey sent me drugs
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jfJ10O_FTg
ALL THE TIME, BRO.
that’s what pants are.
How about the idea that writers shouldn’t feel entitled to “careful handling” in response to The Paris Review’s poor treatment of writers, as if entitlement is the same as not wanting to be treated like dog shit, as if writers complaining about The Paris Review are going to stop writing and sending out simply because they choose to discuss the topic online.
As a writer, I don’t expect any treatment at all, really, good or bad. I am always prepared for indifference, and pleasantly surprised when I receive something else.
As an editor, I think respect for each writer — accepted or not, “promising” or “established”, familiar or unfamiliar — is key, and that its my job to make the editorial process as transparent and collaborative as possible.
For example, IMO its not really good editorial practice, unless you are really willing to offer a substantial critique, to try and “explain” why you or your outlet will not be publishing something.
And I’ve always felt this to be the case, even if I could never fully think my way through that intuition. I guess it does have something to do with it being so hard to convey the proper tone in a short note, much less an email. The larger, enfolding issue as far as I’m concerned — and here I reveal my roots in Southern gentility (which often is just a highly inflected form of passive aggression, i.e., “Well, bless your heart!”) — is that offering what was never asked for can be the worst kind of presumption. And if someone is submitting work for publication, they clearly see the writing as somehow “finished” and are not looking for feedback. (Or are they?) So even to aim to be constructively critical, to “help”, is, at another level, self-aggrandizing in that you, the editor, are re-asserting the authority of your tastes, your sense of shapeliness, how you believe affect works. The editor, like the teacher sitting at the head of the
table in workshop, is the one who delivers ultimate discernment, cuts through the chatter with his / her appraisals, and must be recognized as the literary arbiter of record. Mastery as the role-ing out the people around you, and the active prevention of their ever getting out from underneath the vigilant shadow of what you project for them.
But that is not quite what editors do. They don’t serve the writer; they serve the text. Or so I think / have thought.
It’s not quite a conundrum, but I am occasionally stopped in the tracks of my proclivities by my uncertainty… as an editor, shouldn’t I be more forthcoming about why I hit the reject button? I put myself
in the position of the submitter (submittee?), and imagine (there’s only a little stretching involved) that, when I do receive that rejection, I ascribe character to it. “I bet they didn’t actually read what I sent.” I presume that little time was spent with my work, or that attention completely disproportionate to the attention I, writer, lavished on crafting this glittery, insubstantial object has been given, or that I am the victim of some political or cabalistic order of relations whose gestures are in full view even while their
significance remains utterly secret, or that this journal / agent / publisher jut doesn’t do business “the right way.” Acceptances, by contrast, are almost completely free of psychological content. But, as an
editor, I know that rejections are not really all that automatic, really a matter of pressing a button and sentencing a work and an author to the doom of the undifferentiated mass. Rejecting a piece can take an inordinate amount of time, re-reading, stepping back paces and paces from your reading self,
questioning much of what you believe about your own pen-in-hand experience. Acceptances can be and often are much more reflexive. You “know.” There is no need to explain. The fitness / right-ness / admiration / whatever exists and proposes its own presence so forcefully you could almost believe that it (the feeling of yes) never had to come into existence.
Generally I agree, until people begin to insult my intelligence.
“Our strength grows out of our weakness. The indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin, and when they would triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than praise.”
“Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated.”
I quite liked this post actually. I think it raises a couple of interesting questions, mostly unrelated to the PR thing, which everybody realizes is a pain in the ass and a kick in the teeth (or vice versa) for the writers whose work has been pulled. I guess Blake’s point is that barely three weeks go by when there’s not another such scandal to harp on about, valubale energy that could be expended actually writing the thing you’ll get published, or sending the pulled thing elsewhere.
I found interesting the taking a book back to the shop thing. If you read a book, didn’t like it, thought to yourself that perhaps that book wasn’t for you after all, you couldn’t see you and that book making a permanent life together, or that book annoyed or bored you so much you just want it out of your house, then you might want to take it back to the shop. Is that legit? I think it sounds silly but is a pretty interesting issue about how reading works, and the status of art objects in relation to other objects . Can you read the book but not sort of commit yourself to consume it? I could never take a book back, btw. I can’t take anything back. too shy.
thank you.
I don’t see how one can separate the PR situation from dude’s post. The article leads off with two quotes responding to the unique PR situation.
No one here needs to hear yet another Blake Butler Lecture about how writing is tough.
I didn’t mean to insult yr intelligence, even if you’re insulting Blake’s.
misdirected energy, yes, that’s definitely a part of it. thanks colin.
i find it hard to return books but i do. if something is big press and doesn’t follow through on what it promises, i have returned it. usually i have to not be able to finish it to do this, which i usually don’t let happen, as i like to finish most of what i start. i think it is ok to return things if you don’t feel you got utility out of them, being honest with yourself. i wouldn’t return a book if i did read it and enjoy it but knew i would never read it again.
I would expect you to agree with this post, based on your posting history and conservative views on literature and publishing.
Man I would still like to know why there is this difference in expectations between publishers and writers, but I guess that isn’t what I’m supposed to be asking about here.
hehe. this guy.
I see Blake’s POV. Okay, PR unaccepted you. You’re pissed. Feel pissed. Say you’re pissed here, whether you were one of those writers or not. Is this going to stop happening because you’re pissed at PR or any other magazine that does this? So send your work out somewhere else. The McDonald’s analogy is hilarious. You get stiffed at the drive-thru, so you go inside for the toy neglectfully missing in your Happy Meal, or you stop eating at McDonald’s. Pretty simple. How good, really, is McDonald’s? Filling, empty calories.
hehe.
If this kind of Rock Balboa junk is all you have to offer, then I’ll find some other site to read.
Man wouldn’t it be cool if this whole thing was a hoax dreamed up by Stein, Chiasson, Nester, Corey, and Foust to drum up publicity for the new issue? Maybe the new poetry editor is actually Banksy.
It’s not that big a deal but it is pretty annoying. If i worked in mcdonalds or when ive worked in pubs and i was expecting X amounts of shifts so that i could do X amount of things with what i got from working those shifts and i went in and they said they couldn’t provide those shifts for whatever reason i’d be pissed at management and i’d feel like they were pricks cause they were fine and still getting exactly the same wheras now all the things i was gonna be able to do with what those shifts provided i wouldn’t be able to do for awhile. Then you get over it, keep working. No one likes wringed hands.
Still this is better cause they got paid.
Then this shit isn’t really money is it? The work is about itself so what do you do when it shuts you out by being finished? The buzz of your own work gets a little creepy and desperate kept in your basement. All these people would rather have their work in the magazine than get paid right? Which is different than how i feel about working in a bar. Meaning credit for work done was not the currency we were dealing in. Still that doesn’t quite sit right either. Not comfortable with the idea that it’s about wanting attention unless it’s attention about the work relatively separate from you.
Is it about getting credit for your work or sharing your work, mixing it back into the world? It’s not an either or but i’d like to think, since i dont ‘know’ i get that option right?, that it probably weighs on the side of the latter. So they’d all rather be read and engaged with than have all this heat/exposure is what im thinking.
Maybe this exposure is the second payment albeit one that’s a little distasteful which is why no one is happy.
i may have misunderstood this discussion. I hope no one shouts at me.
clearly it’s all we have to offer.
can i suggest dadsorphandonor.com?
That’s why I have to scratch my head at the kill fee stuff. “It’s not a big deal since they paid a kill fee,” as if writers actually send to the Paris Review to make money. As if writers are more concerned with payment than being heard.
“why are the most popular blog topics online always about topics such as rejection, submission, balance, all things that pertain wholly to the self? ”
From the point of view of a reader (me), all this ‘talk’ about submission, rejection, slushpiles, etc etc is mildly interesting to me as it pertains to how works get written, edited and published (or rejected).
I must admit, though, that I can not, and do not read these whole posts/comment threads. It is all just much too much. These blog topics are popular with the writers/editors amongst us. (Sometimes I get the feeling that there aren’t too many ‘just readers’ here.)
One thing I will say for sure, I am glad that I am not an editor (I wouldn’t like the job and I wouldn’t like giving up my precious reading time to reading bad slush. I do have great respect for those of you with the fortitude to do so). And I am also glad that I do not write in order to be read by anyone but myself. (Note: I do not say that I don’t write.)
I like to read HTMLGIANT for its great mix – to find out about books, writers, poetry, journals etc etc that I might not otherwise find out about, for the other cool cultural stuff (film/video, music, design etc etc) like Ken’s posts and Reynard’s posts, Sean’s Friday words of drinky ‘glow’ etc etc etc and all the insightful and funny stuff from a great ‘cast of characters’ (ZIPPY! I mean YOU!) writing posts and comments.
they feck you at the drive thru, everyone knows that, thanks to leo.
shitstorm, bros.
Right, but its easy to be heard. Some months ago Adbusters asked me write something. I did, and then I saw the issue my piece was intended for come out without it. So I sent it here to HTLMGiant and they published it. I didn’t get money, but I was heard. And I just bet seeing Blake’s interest in this, he’d publish the post-rejected pieces from the Paris Review.
This was my immediate thought, it didn’t really have anything to do w/ the writers’ feelings — it was abt the “big gun” position Paris Review occupies, and how this decision seems to violate what some folks think is a generally agreed-upon norm in lit journal publishing. I’m not really sure how I feel ab it (tho I thought Joshua Corey’s response seemed pretty sense-making and measured), but I think if the conversation is interesting, what is interesting abt it is whether this constitutes and.or will lead to a paradigm shift in a broader community/industry/field/set of institutions, whatever, not the part abt writers’ emotions.
(Altho generally and in other contexts, I’m super down with Roxane’s practice of creating space for folks to feel okay by publicly voicing emotions most folks keep closeted, but maybe I’m just a big lesbian processor like that).
It’s easy for you to complain about McDonald’s because you’re like a real cook. What about wannabe cooks like me who can’t make stuff as well as you can? Shouldn’t I demand unreasonable things from McDonalds?
big lesbian processor is the shit. you should name a book that.
MFBomb—yes, exactly. If you don’t support the Paris Review financially, if you’re going to be divinely aggrieved when Lorin Stein decides he wants to publish poets he likes, and he chose, not poets that Philip Gourevitch liked, and Philip Gourevitch chose, then you have no right to complain, because what do they owe you? It almost worked out with those poets. Unfortunately, it didn’t. But Stein’s got to make a magazine that he wants to read, otherwise he’ll go under just like past editors. The problem here was in the Paris Review accepting work they had no space for, and having such a long waiting period between acceptance and publishing, and hopefully, what this drama will serve to do is teach them a little lesson about how much poetry to accept.
Whoa, this discussion is heated, but I wanted to point to some economic realities. Kill fees and poems being unaccepted are really two different beasts. You receive a kill fee because a magazine or newspaper has accepted your pitch but then cuts the story you write after you successfully pitch them. You’re basically writing the story on assignment at that point, which is not like writing poetry on your own. And it sucks, but it’s still money. A journo friend of mine used to make upwards of $1000 on a single, murdered story, which is still not a lot but he could live off kill fees when he had to. I don’t know if the PR pays an honorarium, but it’s probably not as much as a kill fee. Plus, the time spent working on these poems is probably not quantifiable (or as quantifiable), like it is for a journalistic piece. Last, speaking from an academic standpoint (if that matters to anyone), publication in the PR can literally mean the difference between getting a college teaching job and not even scoring an interview. These things all suck and are unfair, but I think it’s important to point out that this isn’t just about bruised egos and whatnot.
‘It’s unfortunate because nothing’s deadlier than a writer with talent and smarts.’
Funniest thing I’ve read all day.
hahaha
Brendan: I’m talking about life changing in the sense of a job. A big mag like PR can make the difference between getting a job and not in academia (point of my first comment). Big pub credits like PR are what get you noticed for a job where the competition is stiff and applicants number in the hundreds. That might not be good in some broad or general sense, but that’s how it is. And yes, a job in academia, for those of us looking, is life changing.
i totally agree. it is partially about jobs. and that makes it even lamer.
Thanks for the head’s up. From now on I’ll cover all of my bases by “financially supporting” more journals.
no, that’s what moms are for.
Yes.
We’ll always have Paris.
‘Where is fanfare needed more?’
This is what you wanted to talk about right? The whole furor isn’t useful but it is emotional and while you’re right that too much discussion is given over to these kind of talks that’s probably because there is a practical workaday aspect to literature/art blogs.This seems more like a community than a magazine. Things get promoted on here too, publication is celebrated. People rival with each other and often it’s ugly
Practical isn’t necessarily useful in terms of this going past the self or communal movement…if im right in thinking that’s what you mean though i have a feeling that i may have misunderstood.
Still it’s not as if it’s just this handwringing. On this site and lots of others there are fascinating and engaging posts that explore all kinds of stuff. That’s what im interested in more than the furor around the PR which seems more tabloid and really removed from anything im interested in. So i agree with you that it’s boring but ummm i do have sympathy for it and that. i forgot my train of thought.
anyways.
It’s almost too easy to be heard today, which is all the more reason to be published by The Paris rather than on some blog.
Look, I’m new to this whole game, I’m a young guy, but what I don’t get—and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, light me on fire with your internet magic, whatever—is why Stein’s name doesn’t come up more in this debate, why all the criticism and artillery fire is just being lobbed at the mythical “PARIS REVIEW”. It was Stein’s call. I understand. Dude wants to publish poetry he likes; dude was given the prerogative to do so when he was named editor. And I understand the idea that new editors should respect/defer to the magazine’s tradition and past editors’ decisions, but when these things hamstring you, what are you supposed to do, walk around hamstrung? It seems like this situation, where the magazine and it’s immense history defines you, is different than the situation with some smaller journals, where the staff is fewer and you’re the only editor there’s ever been and it’s your journal, you define it.
They hired Stein to make the best magazine he could, he’s trying. Isn’t this the point? Or is the point the aggrandizing of writers who, like Blake said, have mostly probably already been published (again, correct/kill me if I’m wrong, but this is the Paris Review, not some magazine that somebody’s running out of their basement or backyard—this says nothing about the quality, but what it does say is that they have more options to choose from in publishing writers, and more of these writers probably have books published, fame, experience, oh boy, TEH GR8T WRITERZ!!!). I feel as bad as the next guy/girl over the writers that had their pieces given back to them, and that sucks, but at least they received that affirmation, or vote of confidence or whatever, of their skill, that Paris Review affirmation, and now they move on, and one would think that if the Paris Review, cause it’s the best, right? right? would accept it, other places will too.
All this means is that Stein better be on his game with the poetry in his Sept. 15 issue, like he says he is. If he is, then everyone’s gonna forget about this. And god knows there are plenty of people here who aren’t gonna give him a chance, anyway.
*Paris Review
Please do. I know that sounds so terrible.
how is mcdonald’s a service? they provide a product, not a service.
i really don’t want to go read all the scene bullshit about the Paris Review. Can someone sum up the issue in one sentence for me?
We’ve already had the discussion about how writers who are already responsible for 99.9% of literary journal support should do more to support literary journals, or are to blame for lack of literary journal support. We did that one on the Tin House thread.
Yeah, the McDonald’s analogy is a laugh at loud example of unintentional irony.
*out
But if any of those unaccepted poets are attempting to score teaching jobs, I really feel for them. The way academic hiring happens is shitty and unfair enough. I wouldn’t fault them for being excited to get a potentially life-changing bite like this and then being really upset when it didn’t go through. But I don’t know who any of the poets are, so: speculative.
So this is how the Right and the Left argue when the terms “Right” and “Left” are no longer permitted.
Why? Prestige?
I mean – if I read the same poem here or in the Paris review, is it going to change the poem?
Something that is good does not depend on where it is published/shown.
The Paris Review got a new editor and the previous editor(s) had accepted too much poetry so the new editor, lorin stein, notified some of those previously accepted poets, that The Paris Review was no longer interested in their work and then some people voiced displeasure while others still got a bit hysterical and then baby Jesus cried.
Blake, I’m holding you to that–MW3 in the heat of summer.
…and then Blake Butler used this as yet another opportunity to pitch his Fight Club For Writers.
I still think a fine solution would be for an intrepid editor to buy all these bought-then-rejected poems and publish them as an anthology. Call it: Too Good for the Paris Review.
huh? what the fuck are you talking about?
i was confused by the analogy which is why i asked. nothing else was affixed to my comment. so i’m not sure what you are agreeing with here.
btw, i think it’s “laugh out loud.”
btw, btw, true irony is never intentional.
hahaha, thank you roxane.
So excited not to comment on this thread!
good poem -> no wait, bad poem -> wah wah
Are you really going to make me explain why it’s better for a writer to be heard in the freaking Paris Review rather than the Rat’s Ass Lit Blog?
Not sure why you’re all huffy. I was agreeing with your point re: service vs. product
Fuck you, asshole.
btw, I corrected my typo immediately
btw, btw, the “unintentional irony” was a playing off the common saying,” unintentional humor.”
*was playing off
In other words, the fact that he would compare the relationship between writer and editor to Big Mac consumer-seller.
i guess i am confused why people are crying over their work being pulled?
is the real catalyst here simply the big name journal? would there be such a tantrum if this were to happen at a lesser known journal like PANK?
Was PR mean about rescinding? Did they send emails out saying: “WE MADE A GRIEVOUS ERROR. NOBODY WANTS YOUR PUSSY HERE. YOU SUCK. GO DIE IN A FIRE.”
your shit got accepted once. that should be validation enough.
stop being a bunch of titty coddled bitches.
hey, yo, jereme,
UR so tough, dude! Man, I wish I were as tuff as you!!!!!!
btw, “tuff” was intentional.
as a writer do you feel entitled to careful handling? i feel entitled to handling in the sense that i am a human being.
Is this handling different, say, than the care you’d receive at McDonald’s? i havent been to a mcdonalds in a long time. i drove thru maybe to get a coffee early in the morning the last time i remember, i think the lady smiled and seemed nice. so, sure.
If it is different, how is it different? its not different. humans work at mcdonalds and im a human too, so thats how we treat each other.
Because McDonald’s is a service you are buying, and selling writing is a service you are offering, shouldn’t the quality control be more on the McDonald’s end than the other? i dont know what that means, “the mcdonalds end.”
If kill fees are common in all other art, including journalism, why should poems carry different weight? i dont know. i guess i dont think they should. or i dont care enough to think that hard about it.
Even outside of art, why more than any other object? If I buy a table from Crate & Barrel, then decide I can’t use the table, for whatever reason, I take the table back no questions asked. well, art consummation is maybe different than things that are commodities. commodities have more practical worth. you cant go watch a movie and somehow erase the movie from your brain and return it to the box teller so that someone else can now enjoy it. although this does happen in a sense, its called a library.
Why should art be given special treatment? Should it? no. it doesnt, anyway. when someone’s books dont sell enough, dont they sometimes have to return advances or pay something extra? maybe im wrong.
Am I wrong to return a book I don’t like to Borders after reading part of it? What if I read the whole thing? Have I consumed? yeah, you consumed. you should actually give the book to a library. people want brand new things when they go to borders. the problem with this analogy is it doesnt involve the writer. borders didnt write the book, someone else did. you arent going to the author’s house and handing them back the book in person. is borders going to the writers door and saying, these didnt sell, you have to take them all back now and sell them some other way.
Furthermore, why are the most popular blog posts online always about topics such as rejection, submission, balance, all things that pertain wholly to the self? Are we a consolidation of 8 year olds, looking for fingerpainting time? Where is fanfare needed more? i didnt think this topic was gaining traction until this post and your pressing of the issue. there werent that many comments on mikes or your previous post with the elephant. maybe im not reading the right websites. although, i believe people are innately selfish, or at least veer to that side of the fence often enough, which i think is fine.
“I mean – if I read the same poem here or in the Paris review, is it going to change the poem?”
“Are you really going to make me explain why it’s better for a writer to be heard in the freaking Paris Review rather than the Rat’s Ass Lit Blog?”
yes, the medium changes the message. obviously.
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2008/12/paris.html
MFBomb probably thinks Blake works for the CIA.
Well – their poems are not going to be published in the Paris Review.
And actually, aside from prestige, I honestly don’t see the difference. The only real difference I see is the money. But they were paid.
In one of those links there was a whole interview on the subject. Christ, it’s a few cancelled poems. It is not like the Paris Review burnt an unpublished collection by Lautremont.
As for “Rat’s Ass Lit Blog” – Well, there are an awful lot of us here. We apparently get something from it.
Nah, not really. He’s not that important.
I should also say – If I were hired to edit poetry for a journal and had to deal with a year’s back-log of material, I wouldn’t take the job.
“the medium changes the message. obviously.”
I don’t believe this. It might change the way certain people look at it – but that is more about them than about the work. The words are the same. The only thing that changes is the ego boost.
mfbomb, dont you mean the rats ass review?
hahaha, moron, if you think not crying over writing being unpublished is “tuff”, then I would like to thank you for affirming the pussy writer stereotype.
quick question, are you going to be passive aggressive all day or are you going to assert yourself with an actual declaration of worth?
there was nothing to agree with. i broached a question. you appended your passive aggressive slap to it.
it was a limp wristed slap at that.
It’s important to understand that there is a difference between “granting of first rights,” and “work for hire.” I am a probate lawyer, not a contract lawyer, but I would suggest that if you have a contract granting “first rights” (which I assume would be the type of agreement PR uses), it is pretty much unenforceable. On the other hand, a “work for hire” contract is a binding contract that can be enforced in court. For those who don’t know, first rights means that you are granting a publication the right to be the first to use your work on a worldwide exclusive basis, but the copyright reverts to you. A work for hire is a piece that belongs exclusively to the publication that solicited it, with the copyright and all content belonging exclusively to them for the life of the copyright. On a personal note, a while back I received a letter from a very prestigious publication that I had submitted to saying, “Charlene, all of our editors voted yes on your story, but we ran out of room. Good luck placing it elsewhere.” Oh well, life goes on.
i don’t buy this. “what does it matter. make.”
do you say the same thing to the burger guy at mcdonalds? fuck your ego. it doesn’t matter if anyone eats it, but you made that burger real hard, man. congratulations.
actually i’ve never read anyting in the paris review intentionally. You just want stuff published where people you think might like it or think interesting things about it or be affected by it are. Not just talking to like minded people but putting it out into a community.
“And actually, aside from prestige, I honestly don’t see the difference. The only real difference I see is the money. But they were paid.”
Prestige is pretty important and often leads to more “important” people reading your work, like agents and other editors.
That was awesome.
Um, what? You answered your own “question”:
“how is mcdonald’s a service? they provide a product, not a service.”
Sorry, though, for reading that second part written by someone else.
Also, why all of the latent homophobia and misogyny in your posts? Are you 12?
Yes, that is possible. But if something were published here, certainly many editors would also read it. As for agents: do poets really have agents? I mean, why?
I can understand being upset about having a post-acceptance rejection. That is normal. But a normal person, so it seems to me, would be pissed for a few days and move on. Or use the anger to write something. Make something constructive out of it.
As I said, not long ago something similar happened to me. I turned around and sold the material for more money. I was pissed, but used the anger to do something positive with the work.
But “being heard” isn’t limited to one publication. A Paris Review pub opens doors and gives the writer more opportunities to be heard than a story published on a website with an incestous, niche audience.
Well, it is up to a writer to open their own doors. And, from my experiences (limited it is true) being published in big places doesn’t necessarily lead to big things. It can. But more often than not it doesn’t.
I think if I were one of the poets who was ‘unaccepted’ I would be exceptionally bummed about this, but then, it’s their decision and their journal. This happened to me, a while ago, when I first started sending stuff out, but without any kind of explanation from the journal – acceptance from a ‘big’ literary journal, one that meant a lot to me, then nothing (emails not returned) – I learned much later that this was (likely) because of an editorial change. I remember at the time that it was a big disappointment. I’m not sure why that’s bad or unusual. I suspect most people would feel this way, and because it’s the Paris Review, it doesn’t surprise me that people want to talk about it.
As for this question: ‘Why should art be given special treatment? Should it?’
I don’t know the answer, but I’m not sure it’s productive to compare poems to Crate and Barrel tables or McDonald’s sandwiches. Maybe they are no different, that writing at this point is just Product, like frozen Big Mac patties, but I (maybe optimistically) don’t like to think of writing as a commodity, even if in reality it has largely come to this. I know that many publishers think about books as Product (Glenn Beck books, Twilight, etc.) and understand why, but (again, optimistically) I’m not sure I’m ready to lump Paris Review poems in with Big Macs. Does that mean that the Paris Review shouldn’t be able to do what they want with their journal? No, but I don’t think it means that people shouldn’t be angry or upset about it, either.
This is where we run into problems–the idea that discussing the issue angrily online is also an admission of defeat. This is a tactic people like Blake Butler use to shutdown conversation about institutions (see Tin House and now Paris Review discussion).
Commenter: “This really pisses me off! How can they treat writers so poorly?
BB: “You need to just write and get over it; it’s all about ‘self.”
Feel the spirit, man. Just write. Live free. Yeah.”
Actually, it’s impossible for a writer to open his own doors, unless he self-publishes.
i dont think its a call to shut down discussion, but instead a call to for us as a group to temper some of the wilder, more outrageous responses. if saying ‘get over it and write’ is a problem (which i think is an unfair reduction/strawmanification of blakes op), and if a form letter unacceptance is a problem, then so is ‘parisreview is tacky’ and ‘stein should be on the unemployment line’ and ‘this smacks of imperial arrogance’ and so on, which ive seen on some of the other threads at wwaatd.
Well, by submitting their work to Paris Review, they were trying to.
It isn’t impossible. Most of the writers I know who are successful have made themselves so.
I’m not going to read all of the above comments until later tonight after Sportcenter and over beers, but I think it’s an OK response to be pissed if the Paris Review pulled a poem they said they would be publishing. Wouldn’t most of this crowd glow for days over a PR publication? It could lead to things, maybe things more than ourselves reading it (and maybe not), but it isn’t like the poet published in some rag stapled together in my basement (though I like those mags too).
No one has lost their mind here, I don’t think, but it’s OK to call bad taste bad taste. Everyone says magazines do it all the time–they do NOT.
It’s a punk-ass move. I don’t know all the details, but assume the new editor is enemy camp of the old? It’s a FUCK YOU, right? I’ll erase all the judgments you just made, your residue, etc. I could be wrong, but maybe then again I use to work in office spaces…I’ll admit to not knowing all the details.
Anyway, my 2.4 cents, it’s punk-ass. It’s not tipping a bartender territory. Almost DB country.
Why not cough up a double issue, PR, then let the new dude stamp/stamp/stamp his “vision”?
[That felt good–haven’t gone Tao Lin quotes in weeks]
carp and beer, I say
But I haven’t seen those kinds of posts here–the latter kind. Therefore, the only extreme response HERE has been from the OP, who seems to get off on insulting the intelligence of his readers on a routine basis by playing dumb, introducing strawmen, and/or making embarrassingly reductive arguments.
I am not saying a person should not feel angry. Of course not. I am just saying that there are better ways to channel that energy than making it the latest on-line topic of debate.
The only reason these things are worth making public is if the writers in question feel that people should stop submitting to/buying the Paris Review. I mean, otherwise what is the point? Is the editor going to now publish the work because he feels bad? Maybe he really didn’t like the poems. Should he still publish them? Based on what? Is his loyalty to his readers, or the writers, or to himself?
It’s not an “either/or” scenario–it takes both. So, yes, it is “impossible” for a writer to make his own way completely. That’s like arguing that a child born into poverty can escape poverty with a “little hard work.”
As poets, its our job to make our poems so good that nobody would even consider not printing them. Failing that…
Roxane,
I don’t know if this is the place for it—it probably isn’t—but I’ve been wondering: Have you ever been somewhere when someone said, “Is there a Ms. Gay here?” and you said, “I’m Gay” and you heard some bro in a corner chortle and it made you angry? Thanks.
So if one notices an “injustice” (and I’m not suggesting that this is a life altering injustice), she should just STFU and keep plugging away and not even discuss it?
You’re doing the same thing.
Jesus Christ, the world doesn’t align that neatly, and a writer can’t write around the clock. There is time for both and it’s insane and insulting to keep playing this “just forget it and work” card.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/“unable-to-process-neutral-statements-as-neutral”-hamster/
Comparing some poets who are offended because the Paris Review wouldn’t publish them and starving children doesn’t quite work for me.
I am sure most starving children would be fine with a kill fee.
Most comparisons aren’t equal; often, a good comparison is hyperbolic to hammer home the essential point, which is pretty simple here: “it also takes a village.”
I thought these day people wrote poetry for themselves anyhow. I had no idea that they did it for pseudo-fame.
No, I am just saying “choose your battles”.
This particular battle just seems a little too precious to make me truly outraged.
Well, you can rest easy: I’m not about to storm the streets and set fire to things.
Thank you (and others) for confusing (or conflating) online “outrage” with an admission of defeat. I guess it’s impossible to have a nuanced discussion with some of you people.
Excellent question, Justin. I have heard every response and/or joke about my last name that is possible. I don’t get angry. I laugh because its funny.
Agreed, Sean. And since you’re a sports fan, here’s a good analogy: it’s like Steve Spurrier not renewing scholarships for certain players when he took the job at South Carolina. Technically, athletic scholarships are renewed annually, and yes, he was in the process of rebuilding the program–but it was still a punk move. Same with Calipari at Kentucky last year, who turned over his roster like he was an NBA GM with access to a waiver wire.
Can it be done? Yes.
Is it ethical? No.
I don’t see the big deal. They gave a kill fee and the writers are getting more publicity from having their poems not published then if they had been published.
This has happened to me a few times. I don’t much like it, but it seems standard practice. The worst was when a publisher had my book for 3 years before deciding not to publish it.
To summarize:
“I will agree with you on that last part. This decision seems to violate what some folks think is a generally agreed-upon norm. Courteous disagreement is generally the better way. Generally I agree. I would expect you to agree with this post. i totally agree which I assume would be the type of agreement PR uses so i’m not sure what you are agreeing with here. I was agreeing with your point there was nothing to agree with.”
Just out of curiousity:
What are valid reasons for not publishing writing after accepting it? Are there any?
I think getting published in PR would be cool. But life changing? I don’t think so.
I agree it isn’t in general a huge deal, just kind of shitty.
That last one actually seems like a huge deal, though — your book? For three years? That’s just not okay. In purely economic terms the opportunity cost alone is maddening there.
I’m definitely interested in the idea that non-fiction and even fiction unacceptances are fairly common and accepted but the idea of cutting poetry is causing such a stir. I’m sure the Paris Review has cut plenty of essays in its time with nary a gust of blowback.
Well, is what was fucked about that is that every time I would ask the publisher, they would say it was “on the way to the printers”. In the end they offered me money not to publish it!
But this has happened to me with 3 books. The latest one just this year, being repeatedly told “copies are on the way.”
Finally, I pulled it and sold it to someone else – within 24 hours.
So, from this standpoint, having a few poems not published doesn’t seem like a big deal. You just kick some random object, have a beer, and send the work off to someone else.
Man wouldn’t it be cool if this whole thing was a hoax dreamed up by Stein, Chiasson, Nester, Corey, and Foust to drum up publicity for the new issue? Maybe the new poetry editor is actually Banksy.
It’s not that big a deal but it is pretty annoying. If i worked in mcdonalds or when ive worked in pubs and i was expecting X amounts of shifts so that i could do X amount of things with what i got from working those shifts and i went in and they said they couldn’t provide those shifts for whatever reason i’d be pissed at management and i’d feel like they were pricks cause they were fine and still getting exactly the same wheras now all the things i was gonna be able to do with what those shifts provided i wouldn’t be able to do for awhile. Then you get over it, keep working. No one likes wringed hands.
Still this is better cause they got paid.
Then this shit isn’t really money is it? The work is about itself so what do you do when it shuts you out by being finished? The buzz of your own work gets a little creepy and desperate kept in your basement. All these people would rather have their work in the magazine than get paid right? Which is different than how i feel about working in a bar. Meaning credit for work done was not the currency we were dealing in. Still that doesn’t quite sit right either. Not comfortable with the idea that it’s about wanting attention unless it’s attention about the work relatively separate from you.
Is it about getting credit for your work or sharing your work, mixing it back into the world? It’s not an either or but i’d like to think, since i dont ‘know’ i get that option right?, that it probably weighs on the side of the latter. So they’d all rather be read and engaged with than have all this heat/exposure is what im thinking.
Maybe this exposure is the second payment albeit one that’s a little distasteful which is why no one is happy.
i may have misunderstood this discussion. I hope no one shouts at me.
That’s why I have to scratch my head at the kill fee stuff. “It’s not a big deal since they paid a kill fee,” as if writers actually send to the Paris Review to make money. As if writers are more concerned with payment than being heard.
Right, but its easy to be heard. Some months ago Adbusters asked me write something. I did, and then I saw the issue my piece was intended for come out without it. So I sent it here to HTLMGiant and they published it. I didn’t get money, but I was heard. And I just bet seeing Blake’s interest in this, he’d publish the post-rejected pieces from the Paris Review.
can we get a slow long 80s handclap for MFBomb for somehow continuously commenting on this thread for almost 10 straight hours now? it’s been a real marvel of modern medicine. i’m serious.
clap
‘It’s unfortunate because nothing’s deadlier than a writer with talent and smarts.’
Funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Brendan: I’m talking about life changing in the sense of a job. A big mag like PR can make the difference between getting a job and not in academia (point of my first comment). Big pub credits like PR are what get you noticed for a job where the competition is stiff and applicants number in the hundreds. That might not be good in some broad or general sense, but that’s how it is. And yes, a job in academia, for those of us looking, is life changing.
Eh, go fuck yourself. I had the day off.
Are you trolling on your own blog?
When is he not trolling?
Most of his blog posts are the same, and his comments offer little to nothing in substance.
‘Where is fanfare needed more?’
This is what you wanted to talk about right? The whole furor isn’t useful but it is emotional and while you’re right that too much discussion is given over to these kind of talks that’s probably because there is a practical workaday aspect to literature/art blogs.This seems more like a community than a magazine. Things get promoted on here too, publication is celebrated. People rival with each other and often it’s ugly
Practical isn’t necessarily useful in terms of this going past the self or communal movement…if im right in thinking that’s what you mean though i have a feeling that i may have misunderstood.
Still it’s not as if it’s just this handwringing. On this site and lots of others there are fascinating and engaging posts that explore all kinds of stuff. That’s what im interested in more than the furor around the PR which seems more tabloid and really removed from anything im interested in. So i agree with you that it’s boring but ummm i do have sympathy for it and that. i forgot my train of thought.
anyways.
It’s almost too easy to be heard today, which is all the more reason to be published by The Paris rather than on some blog.
*Paris Review
So this is how the Right and the Left argue when the terms “Right” and “Left” are no longer permitted.
Why? Prestige?
I mean – if I read the same poem here or in the Paris review, is it going to change the poem?
Something that is good does not depend on where it is published/shown.
De nada. I’m just another melting snowflake.
Are you really going to make me explain why it’s better for a writer to be heard in the freaking Paris Review rather than the Rat’s Ass Lit Blog?
i dont understand the question
“I mean – if I read the same poem here or in the Paris review, is it going to change the poem?”
“Are you really going to make me explain why it’s better for a writer to be heard in the freaking Paris Review rather than the Rat’s Ass Lit Blog?”
yes, the medium changes the message. obviously.
and i was being serious.
Well – their poems are not going to be published in the Paris Review.
And actually, aside from prestige, I honestly don’t see the difference. The only real difference I see is the money. But they were paid.
In one of those links there was a whole interview on the subject. Christ, it’s a few cancelled poems. It is not like the Paris Review burnt an unpublished collection by Lautremont.
As for “Rat’s Ass Lit Blog” – Well, there are an awful lot of us here. We apparently get something from it.
I should also say – If I were hired to edit poetry for a journal and had to deal with a year’s back-log of material, I wouldn’t take the job.
“the medium changes the message. obviously.”
I don’t believe this. It might change the way certain people look at it – but that is more about them than about the work. The words are the same. The only thing that changes is the ego boost.
mfbomb, dont you mean the rats ass review?
MIMI THANK YOU FOR THE SHOUT-OUT I ACTUALLY HAD A GREAT BUNCH OF COMMENTS COMING OUT BUT BLAKE REJECTED THEM AFTER THEY WERE ALREADY ACCEPTED. THEN HE TOLD ME TO “BUCK UP AND HIT A HIT/GO TO PRACTICE/ENJOY A SANDWICH” SO I JOINED THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS
Blake,
I had the day off and decided to waste it.
And–in all seriousness–I do apologize for my tone on this thread and if I got too heated. I also apologize to others reading the thread. For whatever reason, these topics bring out the worst in me.
Blake,
I had the day off and decided to waste it.
And–in all seriousness–I do apologize for my tone on this thread and if I got too heated. I also apologize to others reading the thread. For whatever reason, these topics bring out the worst in me.
actually i’ve never read anyting in the paris review intentionally. You just want stuff published where people you think might like it or think interesting things about it or be affected by it are. Not just talking to like minded people but putting it out into a community.
“And actually, aside from prestige, I honestly don’t see the difference. The only real difference I see is the money. But they were paid.”
Prestige is pretty important and often leads to more “important” people reading your work, like agents and other editors.
i liked it
Yes, that is possible. But if something were published here, certainly many editors would also read it. As for agents: do poets really have agents? I mean, why?
I can understand being upset about having a post-acceptance rejection. That is normal. But a normal person, so it seems to me, would be pissed for a few days and move on. Or use the anger to write something. Make something constructive out of it.
As I said, not long ago something similar happened to me. I turned around and sold the material for more money. I was pissed, but used the anger to do something positive with the work.
But “being heard” isn’t limited to one publication. A Paris Review pub opens doors and gives the writer more opportunities to be heard than a story published on a website with an incestous, niche audience.
I know I’m coming late to the party, but seriously, I’d just like to point out that Graham Foust just proves once again how intellectually bankrupt and artistically worthless an enterprise flarf is. I can imagine Stein flipping through the “acceptance” pile and going “hey, wait a minute, these are just Google search results. What the–? Creswell, get in here! Looks like we’ll have to fumigate this place.” All issues of poets’ emotions, editorial decorum, and future Acknowledgments pages notwithstanding–anything that reduces the amount of flarf in the world is OK by me.
Well, it is up to a writer to open their own doors. And, from my experiences (limited it is true) being published in big places doesn’t necessarily lead to big things. It can. But more often than not it doesn’t.
This is where we run into problems–the idea that discussing the issue angrily online is also an admission of defeat. This is a tactic people like Blake Butler use to shutdown conversation about institutions (see Tin House and now Paris Review discussion).
Commenter: “This really pisses me off! How can they treat writers so poorly?
BB: “You need to just write and get over it; it’s all about ‘self.”
Feel the spirit, man. Just write. Live free. Yeah.”
Actually, it’s impossible for a writer to open his own doors, unless he self-publishes.
i dont think its a call to shut down discussion, but instead a call to for us as a group to temper some of the wilder, more outrageous responses. if saying ‘get over it and write’ is a problem (which i think is an unfair reduction/strawmanification of blakes op), and if a form letter unacceptance is a problem, then so is ‘parisreview is tacky’ and ‘stein should be on the unemployment line’ and ‘this smacks of imperial arrogance’ and so on, which ive seen on some of the other threads at wwaatd.
Well, by submitting their work to Paris Review, they were trying to.
It isn’t impossible. Most of the writers I know who are successful have made themselves so.
But I haven’t seen those kinds of posts here–the latter kind. Therefore, the only extreme response HERE has been from the OP, who seems to get off on insulting the intelligence of his readers on a routine basis by playing dumb, introducing strawmen, and/or making embarrassingly reductive arguments.
I am not saying a person should not feel angry. Of course not. I am just saying that there are better ways to channel that energy than making it the latest on-line topic of debate.
The only reason these things are worth making public is if the writers in question feel that people should stop submitting to/buying the Paris Review. I mean, otherwise what is the point? Is the editor going to now publish the work because he feels bad? Maybe he really didn’t like the poems. Should he still publish them? Based on what? Is his loyalty to his readers, or the writers, or to himself?
It’s not an “either/or” scenario–it takes both. So, yes, it is “impossible” for a writer to make his own way completely. That’s like arguing that a child born into poverty can escape poverty with a “little hard work.”
As poets, its our job to make our poems so good that nobody would even consider not printing them. Failing that…
Roxane,
I don’t know if this is the place for it—it probably isn’t—but I’ve been wondering: Have you ever been somewhere when someone said, “Is there a Ms. Gay here?” and you said, “I’m Gay” and you heard some bro in a corner chortle and it made you angry? Thanks.
So if one notices an “injustice” (and I’m not suggesting that this is a life altering injustice), she should just STFU and keep plugging away and not even discuss it?
You’re doing the same thing.
Jesus Christ, the world doesn’t align that neatly, and a writer can’t write around the clock. There is time for both and it’s insane and insulting to keep playing this “just forget it and work” card.
Comparing some poets who are offended because the Paris Review wouldn’t publish them and starving children doesn’t quite work for me.
I am sure most starving children would be fine with a kill fee.
Most comparisons aren’t equal; often, a good comparison is hyperbolic to hammer home the essential point, which is pretty simple here: “it also takes a village.”
I thought these day people wrote poetry for themselves anyhow. I had no idea that they did it for pseudo-fame.
No, I am just saying “choose your battles”.
This particular battle just seems a little too precious to make me truly outraged.
Well, you can rest easy: I’m not about to storm the streets and set fire to things.
Thank you (and others) for confusing (or conflating) online “outrage” with an admission of defeat. I guess it’s impossible to have a nuanced discussion with some of you people.
Excellent question, Justin. I have heard every response and/or joke about my last name that is possible. I don’t get angry. I laugh because its funny.
Actually, they do it for positions in universities, not pseudo-fame. I know people who hold middle-class wages on publication in less than a few ‘important’ literary journals. Without this motivation, there would be very little reason to publish in literary journals, and very little reason for so many to exist.
can we get a slow long 80s handclap for MFBomb for somehow continuously commenting on this thread for almost 10 straight hours now? it’s been a real marvel of modern medicine. i’m serious.
clap
Eh, go fuck yourself. I had the day off.
Are you trolling on your own blog?
When is he not trolling?
Most of his blog posts are the same, and his comments offer little to nothing in substance.
De nada. I’m just another melting snowflake.
i dont understand the question
and i was being serious.
MIMI THANK YOU FOR THE SHOUT-OUT I ACTUALLY HAD A GREAT BUNCH OF COMMENTS COMING OUT BUT BLAKE REJECTED THEM AFTER THEY WERE ALREADY ACCEPTED. THEN HE TOLD ME TO “BUCK UP AND HIT A HIT/GO TO PRACTICE/ENJOY A SANDWICH” SO I JOINED THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS
Blake,
I had the day off and decided to waste it.
And–in all seriousness–I do apologize for my tone on this thread and if I got too heated. I also apologize to others reading the thread. For whatever reason, these topics bring out the worst in me.
Blake,
I had the day off and decided to waste it.
And–in all seriousness–I do apologize for my tone on this thread and if I got too heated. I also apologize to others reading the thread. For whatever reason, these topics bring out the worst in me.
i liked it
I know I’m coming late to the party, but seriously, I’d just like to point out that Graham Foust just proves once again how intellectually bankrupt and artistically worthless an enterprise flarf is. I can imagine Stein flipping through the “acceptance” pile and going “hey, wait a minute, these are just Google search results. What the–? Creswell, get in here! Looks like we’ll have to fumigate this place.” All issues of poets’ emotions, editorial decorum, and future Acknowledgments pages notwithstanding–anything that reduces the amount of flarf in the world is OK by me.
Actually, they do it for positions in universities, not pseudo-fame. I know people who hold middle-class wages on publication in less than a few ‘important’ literary journals. Without this motivation, there would be very little reason to publish in literary journals, and very little reason for so many to exist.
is that what it takes to get noticed around here? faaaauck.
“Is there anything more about the self than writing? We enjoy looking at our navels because they are interesting and mysterious.”
Navel-gazing as a widespread-default in writing is a relatively recent development. Unless you’ve got one of those amazing navels with the whole world in it, who else really wants to read about your lint (other than those who also write about their lint and therefore hope you’ll return the favor)?
Not late, but you may be dressed a little funny for the party — Graham’s one liner was a put down of flarf; Graham’s work does not equal flarf. If Graham had google-process poems taken by the MO’R/DC version of the PR, that would surprise me.
What would NOT surprise me is an eventual New Yorker piece by Chiasson on flarf.
“people like Blake Butler”!!!!
/shakes fist
i like foust but i
love flarf.
“Is there anything more about the self than writing? We enjoy looking at our navels because they are interesting and mysterious.”
Navel-gazing as a widespread-default in writing is a relatively recent development. Unless you’ve got one of those amazing navels with the whole world in it, who else really wants to read about your lint (other than those who also write about their lint and therefore hope you’ll return the favor)?
i like/love both, insofar as i ever like/love poetry at all
The fact that you (obviously) don’t know Foust’s work is… sad. I don’t know Foust, so I’ll trust Jordan that it was a put down–I thought Graham was just having fun. And, Justin, since you (obviously) don’t know Foust’s work, maybe you don’t really know Flarf? Perhaps start with Jordan’s brilliant poem:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=238276
If you can’t love that, well…sad.
ha, that is kind of a foustian couplet
Not late, but you may be dressed a little funny for the party — Graham’s one liner was a put down of flarf; Graham’s work does not equal flarf. If Graham had google-process poems taken by the MO’R/DC version of the PR, that would surprise me.
What would NOT surprise me is an eventual New Yorker piece by Chiasson on flarf.
“people like Blake Butler”!!!!
/shakes fist
i like foust but i
love flarf.
i like/love both, insofar as i ever like/love poetry at all
The fact that you (obviously) don’t know Foust’s work is… sad. I don’t know Foust, so I’ll trust Jordan that it was a put down–I thought Graham was just having fun. And, Justin, since you (obviously) don’t know Foust’s work, maybe you don’t really know Flarf? Perhaps start with Jordan’s brilliant poem:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=238276
If you can’t love that, well…sad.
ha, that is kind of a foustian couplet
MfBomb apologizing to Blake possibly the lame period to this entire thread sentence.
Blake quit telling people to shut up and write, on a forum comment, you Svengali.
Justin, that assumes you believe the editor and writer. Wouldn’t it be a defensive preempt to say, “Oh, no worries, it was Google work anyway.”
Or maybe you are going get-off-my-lawn. I know, I know, it’s a young lawn but everything is accelerated these days.
Should have seen what Frost thought of free verse.
flarf indeed.
tennis
net
“I thought these day people wrote poetry for themselves anyhow.”
They do it because they think they’re supposed to. Eventually they quit. Very few who are writing poetry at 20 still bother to at 40. It’s like jogging.
you seem bitter
Roxane, I love that you’re Gay.
MfBomb apologizing to Blake possibly the lame period to this entire thread sentence.
Blake quit telling people to shut up and write, on a forum comment, you Svengali.
Justin, that assumes you believe the editor and writer. Wouldn’t it be a defensive preempt to say, “Oh, no worries, it was Google work anyway.”
Or maybe you are going get-off-my-lawn. I know, I know, it’s a young lawn but everything is accelerated these days.
Should have seen what Frost thought of free verse.
flarf indeed.
tennis
net
“I thought these day people wrote poetry for themselves anyhow.”
They do it because they think they’re supposed to. Eventually they quit. Very few who are writing poetry at 20 still bother to at 40. It’s like jogging.
you seem bitter
Roxane, I love that you’re Gay.
you seem callow
you seem callow
[…] the act of purging years of accepted work at a world-reknowned journal is a big deal. Comments at this HTML Giant post, for example, bear this out. One school of thought is that the writers should receive a kill fee, […]
Game, set, match.
Game, set, match.
[…] I contributed a piece of bona fide “shit talk” to the comment thread attached to this post of Blake’s. Without rehashing what it was I had a bug up my ass about, let me just say that I completely […]