Marie Calloway’s google docs pieces

June 7th, 2012 / 1:33 pm Ethan—

Marie’s work and particularly that “Cybersex” piece reminds me of Laurel Nakadate’s work, in that it’s got this theme of exploitation, and of making the audience wonder who is exploiting whom. Thought provoking stuff.

June 7th, 2012 / 1:48 pm Frank Tas, the Raptor—

I like them because it might be the only time I’ve read something where in my old self-confident age I’ve felt vulnerable. In all of my time reading predominantly male writers I have not read one male writer admit to such behavior, unless it’s the focal point of their work, which seems self-inhibited.

Also I like that this stuff is happening on Facebook chat, because Facebook chat feels so public. The idea of parties involved liking statuses at the same time they are talking dirty to each other is great.

Also reminds me of this, but better: http://www.shortandhappy.com/amber/about.htm

June 7th, 2012 / 2:30 pm Roxane—

I just really keep thinking, “Are you serious?” These read like a cry for help. This looks like emotional spiraling in the wake of disappointing experiences with men. I love work that blurs the line of exploitation. I also love intense female confessional. This does not seem like that. This seems….troubling but not in an intellectual sense. I read these and want to call her parents or friends and say, “Your loved one needs help and kindness and counsel.” Are these pieces sincere? Absolutely. But are they more than what they appear to be? No. Facebook chats and Internet comments laid over sexually explicit images? Surely the bar is higher. Maybe I just need to open my mind, but… I find this kind of positive critical response astonishing.

June 7th, 2012 / 2:45 pm Victoria Trott—

i like these a lot

June 7th, 2012 / 2:59 pm Blake Butler—

what does “surely the bar is higher” mean? higher than what? you like safe confession? or confession once the person has gone beyond the point of harm? are you certain she is being earnest? how many levels are there to “sincerity”? would you have called artaud’s parents? is it ok for someone who really does need help to make art, and have it be considered art even at the same time it is frightening? is something like the Sugar column more compelling to certain people because it doesn’t have this level of danger to it? can the feeling of danger be manufactured? can real danger be presented to the world in another way besides seeing the person through therapy? where does art end?

June 7th, 2012 / 3:07 pm drew kalbach—

i think these work in much the same way as reality television. which is interesting.

June 7th, 2012 / 3:15 pm Stephen Tully Dierks—

[]

June 7th, 2012 / 3:19 pm Roxane—

I am not familiar with Making Scenes, Kate. I will definitely check it out because (I just googled it), it looks awesome. I’m actually writing something right now about abject confessional, so I’ve been thinking a great deal about all this. I would agree that these pieces have a performance art feel to them, but I see more performance than art.

June 7th, 2012 / 3:32 pm Giancarlo DiTrapano—

I met Marie Calloway at the St. Mark’s Muumuu reading. Right when I met her she said some very honest and personal things to me and seemed like a pleasant person. It was refreshing. These Google doc things are pretty hard to take your eyes off and turn away from. Looking forward to more.

June 7th, 2012 / 3:43 pm Roxane—

I agree that it is dangerous to place work in a therapeutic context and armchair diagnosis is silly but I suppose, ultimately, I look at these pieces and my first thought is, “Oh honey.” My first thought is not anything else. When I look art, even uncomfortable, confessional, abject explicit art, I don’t think that should be my firs thought. I appreciate your thoughts, though, because I know how much you know about this tradition and I’m just being exposed to it in many ways.

June 7th, 2012 / 3:48 pm Anonymous—

I’d like to read a male Marie Calloway.

June 7th, 2012 / 3:58 pm Anonymous—

I think sometimes the experience of confronting a young woman/girl making art out of her life with such intense vulnerability can trigger that maternal feeling, or that feeling of discomfort and maybe that feeling of discomfort is interesting, which is why I’ve always been drawn to works that foreground the body in all of its messiness. I think it’s interesting.I like work that is about life and skirts the high-wire act. I think though a woman has a right to make art out of her own frailty and vulnerability – Breton’s Nadja seemed like a hot mess but we dont’ get her narrative. I think we’re less likely to want to save these male artists who engage in high-risk behavior- like Chris Burden shooting himself (and with that example, I’m just parroting Chris K. in her Video Green, who has written and writes about our attitudes towards oozey female confessional art much better than I ever can) or yes Artaud or Gerald Nerval super-obsessed with some actress.

Oh, I’m just being exposed to the tradition too. Just learning and reading and trying to learn and think about these things. But I guess I’m saying is that your feelings of protection perhaps can be part of your feelings about Marie’s work – and I think in some ways highlights the transgression of these pieces – this sense that something is thrust in public what should be private, an emotional fragmentation. But I also see a defiance in these pieces – like in her first two stories – a quite juicey and interesting revenge. And it’s unclear who is being exploited.

I just don’t think a work should be read or viewed in the context whether the artist needs therapy – I don’t think many of us would be safe.

June 7th, 2012 / 4:12 pm Dena Guzman—

Also, whoever accused Marie of being autistic, like that is a bad thing, is a disablist, ignorant jackass. From her piece “Criticism.”

June 7th, 2012 / 4:19 pm Mike James—

Has anyone noticed that she looks fucking great nude? Like, A+.

June 7th, 2012 / 4:36 pm Christopher Higgs—

I am extremely interested in what Marie Calloway is doing.

There seems to be so much written about her work already that I have not sufficiently familiarized myself with, I’ve felt unprepared to write about it; but I have intended and do intend to write about it at some point because I think it’s captivating and provocative. And contra Roxane, I think it demands positive critical response.

Reading the negative comments from Roxane makes me think of one of my favorite passages from Gertrude Stein’s “Composition as Explanation,” an essay that I read and reread as religiously as religious people read their religious texts:

“Of course it is beautiful but first all beauty in it is denied and then
all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not so indolent they
would realize that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and
stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic.”

When Roxane writes above, “I read these and want to call her parents or friends and say, ‘Your loved one needs help and kindness and counsel.’ ” I want to say to Roxane: YES! Don’t you see! That is exactly the reason why Calloway’s work is so noteworthy!

Of course, I’m also going to disagree with Roxane when she says, “I do not see this as art, not because of the content or the presentation but because I don’t think it’s very good.” That statement has way too many problems to tackle in a comment box, but suffice to say, it’s exactly the kind of response conservative critics routinely use to justify aesthetic conformity.

Unfortunately, it is also the language of patriarchy, the language of enforcement, the language of oppression. When Roxane starts talking about a “higher bar” my alarms go off like crazy. That sort of rhetoric is exactly what Helene Cixous writes so passionately against in her essay “Laugh of the Medusa” (and elsewhere) where she writes, “Woman must put herself into the text–as into the world and into history–by her own movement.” This is not to accuse Roxane, whom I know well enough and respect highly enough to know that she does not intend to wield the language of patriarchy, but is simply to draw attention to the ways in which we talk about what we talk about. Bars are set by those in power. Those in power have a vested interest in maintaining power. By excluding, negating, or denying the validity of certain voices we become more intensely complicit in the power system that benefits from enforcing “higher bars.”

I’m of the opinion that we should do all we can to affirm and promote voices that do not conform, that challenge our notions of “good/bad,” and that affect us in uncomfortable ways. Thus, I am an advocate for Marie Calloway’s work.

June 7th, 2012 / 5:08 pm Roxane—

Interesting commentary, Christopher. You invoke Cixous, and I would suggest Calloway isn’t putting herself into the text by her own movement. I feel like she’s being put into the text by the movement of others.

In terms of a higher bar, I am perhaps being conservative but not in the patriarchal sense nor as a means of silencing experimental work. Surely there is room for discussing quality as much as there is room for appreciating sincerity, vulnerability, etc.

June 7th, 2012 / 5:31 pm shaun gannon—

damn

June 7th, 2012 / 5:51 pm Anonymous—

True. Then again, I’m also wary of the way “these writers” attempt to address “depression” (and mental illness) in their work–basically, reinforcing all of the tired and lazy stereotypes about clinical depression (and Bipolar), like conflating it with teenage/20-something angst and ignoring the larger and more complex social conditions of disability (and mental illness in particular). Several of these writers talk about how important depression is in their work, yet engage it in ways that are so vague that what they’re discussing could just as easily be general malaise, not an actual medical condition located in the brain that contributes to discriminatory things like, the lack of housing, jobs, and suspicion from police and citizens, and overall stigma.

June 7th, 2012 / 6:14 pm Anonymous—

Maybe a better question is: do these documents return us a world transfigured? If so, how?

You write: “It’s not very interesting to watch the same buttons being pressed over and over. I like mutation. I wish there was less obvious fear.”

But that is what these documents give us a look at: more sad and lonely people reaching out through the web. They tell us that the author is one of these people. She has demonstrated this before in other ways. So she is reaching out in many ways. That you “think” you “really like these pieces” (instead of “really liking them” without qualification) also causes me to wonder whether your list of rhetorical questions, which avoids actual discussion with Roxane by pointing in so many different ways, does not become in places sincere in its requests for information.

You write: “where does art end?”

There is no telling, but I believe it begins with the least ripple in the mind of its viewer.

“There are people in the world.”

This is your response to this work? It is time to shut off the computer.

June 7th, 2012 / 6:23 pm Anonymous—

I truly can’t see anything “good” in these. That some of you can intrigues me. This is about female vulnerability as far as I can tell. It’s not about literature or empowerment or anything surprising. It seems sadly same old, same old.

June 7th, 2012 / 6:34 pm Anonymous—

I’m interested to know if people would be so interested in Marie Calloway if she was an obese 50 year old woman. I suspect not. It’s every lit guys fantasy to have a young, hot girl begging to have his jizz on her face, right? Or, not every lit guy, but some. Maybe it’s an elaborate joke on that. Still does not make it “art”.

June 7th, 2012 / 6:36 pm Marie Calloway—

i feel like the majority of people who like my work are women. men tend to find my work boring or gross.

June 7th, 2012 / 6:42 pm Mike James—

lol

June 7th, 2012 / 6:46 pm Mike James—

Yeah, no. You’re projecting. You have to internalize the concept that for every person there is another who will find them attractive. It’s nature. I believe people would be interested. There are enough people on earth w/ enough access that someone somewhere will find something interesting if there is merit/quality in it. It ends up being the individual who decides how much quality/merit actually exists for them. I’m not gonna tell you how much water is in your body.

June 7th, 2012 / 6:56 pm Nick Mamatas—

One can discuss quality without suggesting the perceived low-quality art is not art at all.

June 7th, 2012 / 7:00 pm Nick Mamatas—

I’d be extremely interested in checking out collages by an obese 50-year-old in which jizz on the face was a theme.

June 7th, 2012 / 7:12 pm postitbreakup—

i don’t know how i feel about these, but i read them all, and that’s more than i can say for almost everything ever written, so i guess that means something

June 7th, 2012 / 7:43 pm Frank Tas, the Raptor—

Maybe this is confirmation bias working here, but I think the world transfigured is the one where the quotations are removed from “chatting with people privately on the internet” to reveal “chatting with people in a very public and vulnerable sphere on the internet because there is no such thing as real privacy on the internet.” This I think is a good transfiguration, it teaches people a little more intelligence/discretion in an inevitably open and public forum.

“But that is what these documents give us a look at: more sad and lonely people reaching out through the web.”

That sort of implies any attempt at creative innovation through the internet as a medium is futile because, arguably, EVERY SINGLE THING ON THE INTERNET is reflective of sad and lonely people reaching out through the web. Sort of the same way every piece of fiction/poetry put out for the public ultimately is a call for attention from an ego-hungry sad and lonely person. Your argument is reductive to the point that you make the discussion’s counter point become “Why do anything, then?”

I won’t be able to respond to a response if there is any till later; it’s time to shut off the computer.

June 7th, 2012 / 9:14 pm jtc—

i did not read them all, which is…as much as i can say about almost everything ever written. i did read about 16 stories from high school students in a creative writing class i was leading a workshop in for though. the stories were longer, and were okay i guess for high school students. they appeared to be ‘trying’ though.

June 7th, 2012 / 10:19 pm Nicholas Williard—

Just got really excited reading men, the conversation:

“do the guys who you cyber with know who you are? like do they know your a really good writer and blog about sex and stuff?”

That was me!!!!!!!!! But I do think it’s admirable the Marie keeps people’s identities somewhat veiled in her work.

June 7th, 2012 / 11:15 pm S—

Yeah, so veiled that you recognize yourself.

June 8th, 2012 / 12:46 am Alexandra Cole—

I find Marie Calloway’s work intensely interesting.

June 8th, 2012 / 2:49 am Zac Zellers—

THAT WAS ME!!1!

June 8th, 2012 / 3:12 am dl.flsxzkmrkyrzk—

lol oh no exposure

June 8th, 2012 / 9:18 am amber kennedy—

i missed the boat on adrien brody when it appeared & hadnt heard of marie calloway but i love her now. her writing just makes sense to me and reflects the person i am/people ive been in sometimes painful ways. and i love the straightforward journalistic/observational style & as a writer myself i think in terms of contemporary lit she’s a couple of steps ahead of most writers.

thanks for these marie

June 8th, 2012 / 9:28 am Anonymous—

these bits of text, image, screenshots etc have been edited, arranged, manipulated. you might think it’s very bad art but how can it not be art? there is intention through material and process to create an effect in the receiver. the effect is rhetorical and thus constructed. art.

June 8th, 2012 / 11:33 am Frank Tas, the Raptor—

Ok, good work, you pointed out one way the internet is used aside from creatively/socially/striving for attention-ly. Does that carry any bearing on your argument? Or is the simple satisfaction of pointing out that my argument was a clearly very big generalization? To go back to what you said:

“But that is what these documents give us a look at: more sad and lonely people reaching out through the web.”

What is creative work on the internet supposed to do? The whole point of displaying creative work on the internet is in hope that someone else sees and likes it, or else we’d just save it to our hard drive and never attach it to an url. We use it to reach out to others to help fill up that empty lonely feeling we all get sometimes. Because the Internet is public. Are people supposed to make a tumblr, say “I don’t care if people see it or not”, and we actually believe them? And for the people who actually make a blog but keep it completely to themselves, is that the next step we need to seek out in creative innovation online? I mean, what other goals can a person have when they are making creative work online aside from seeking out the attention of others? This is a sincere question.

Good fiction and poetry are much bigger than calls for attention. If you want me to support that last statement with evidence or reason,
then I pity you. If all writers wanted was attention, they’d go into
some easier, more public business, such as… just about any other
business. If you are still unconvinced, you will have to trust me.
Good writers (and thinkers) can tell a work of art from a MySpace
page.

Hey, nice paragraph, let’s break each sentence down.

“Good fiction and poetry are much bigger than calls for attention.”

I always wonder about responses like this. Of course I know this. But
as you admit in a very roundabout way, a “call for attention” is
always part of what makes fiction writers and poets create fiction and
poetry. How much it fits into the formula depends on the writer. Now,
I see your counter-argument coming in advance, so let me respond to it
here, save us some time:

“Yeah, but you said that ATTENTION CALLING is fiction and poetry’s
ULTIMATE GOAL, which suggests that ATTENTION CALLING is the most
important part of poetry and fiction.”

There is what drives a writer to write, and there is the reception the
public gives it. I posit that Yes, attention calling is the number one
drive in making a writer write, be it attention to his or her self or
attention to his or her work. But once that piece is out of the
writer’s hands and placed in the public sphere it becomes something
much larger than the writer’s desire for attention.

If you want me to support that last statement with evidence or reason,
then I pity you.

If you wrote this sentence and did not once think in the back of your
mind, “Hey, this reads kind of snobbish,” then I pity you.

If all writers wanted was attention, they’d go into some easier, more
public business, such as… just about any other business.

What? What? Dude. Wait. What?

If all writers wanted was attention

This is an incomplete statement. Writers want attention for something
they worked very hard on and believe in and love to do, much like a
parent to a baby. So let’s rephrase:

If all writers wanted was attention for something they worked very
hard on and believe in and love to do, much like a parent to a baby,
they’d go into some easier, more public business, such as… just
about any other business.

No they wouldn’t, because they don’t love selling pillows as much as
writing. Being a great writer is a lot sexier than being the number
one pillow sales person in the nation, plus when you’re a great writer
you change the way people think about live, whereas pillow salesmen
just changes the way you sleep on pillows, I don’t know, I shouldn’t
need to explain this.

If you are still unconvinced, you will have to trust me.

Yeah. Blind trust. More intellectuals need to pick up on this habit.

Good writers (and thinkers) can tell a work of art from a MySpace page.

Good writers (and thinkers) can find art in a MySpace page. They can
find art anywhere, because that is their job. They find the beauty in
something and use it in their work and it becomes art. Creating rules
for art is fascistic. We got enough fucking rules to worry about in
our regular day to day lives. Don’t tell us how to categorize art.

My argument is not reductive. It is a criticism based on very visible
images and words.

And my argument isn’t based on image and words? What’s the difference
between an image and a word? Isn’t a word something you see? And,
conceding that images and words ARE different, to avoid parsing, isn’t
my argument based on words? Your words? Words that are very visible?

Seriously though: have you ever looked at a piece of art on the
internet and thought: This person does not want some attention.

June 8th, 2012 / 12:01 pm Anonymous—

Dear Kate Zambreno (“francesfarmerismydaughter”):

I saw that you reposted my deleted comment on your blog:
http://francesfarmerismysister.blogspot.com/2012/06/html-giant.html#comment-form

Frankly, I deleted my comment because I shouldn’t waste much time here, on a site that elevates such nonsense like this and archived cyber sex sessions. Here is the original post that “made you cry your fucking eyes out”:

“Why do you always use Calloway to basically assert your own interests? It makes me think that you’re more or less interested in hearing yourself talk than offering any sort of coherent and clear analysis of Calloway’s work. Basically, what we get from you whenever Calloway is a topic is a bunch of name-dropping to show how much you know about, supposedly, this particularly genre/genres. It’s always, strangely, about you–not Calloway. Once, you even found a way to compare the reaction to her to some negative review of your book on Goodreads. I don’t doubt that these are serious artists, and that you know something about them, but you’ve yet to actually relate them (and other in the past) convincingly and clearly to Calloway’s work. It makes me wonder about your motives”

Let me tell you…that’s some hardcore bullying right there. Typically, when people challenge me intellectually, I retreat to my bedroom and commence sobbing, hoping that my significant other will “come home and look at me with sympathetic eyes and give me an encouraging pep talk.” I mean, are you serious? If this post caused such a reaction, you might need to seek professional help, and trust me–that is not me diagnosing you with “hysteria” or playing Freud–that’s me saying that no one should have such an over-the-top reaction to the above post, one that involves uncontrollable crying and shaking. That’s like something out of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” only Gillman was being ironic, and you appear to be serious!

There is nothing in my post that attempts to “discipline” you or “keep you in the kitchen” or “shame” you or any other such ridiculoussness. Can you respond to any provocative inquiry without resorting to gender politics? Like, just once? Or, better put: if you use gender as an analytical tool–which I’m all for–can you do so in a way that’s intellectually honest, rather than as a way to shutdown or, ironically, shame the inquirer? You are the one who defends Calloway’s work so ardently on the Internet by mentioning her alongside hordes of names and suggesting that us critics just can’t handle a sexual, provocative female artist. Asking you to draw clearer and more thorough connections between those artists and Calloway’s work–in a clear, non-tangential way–isn’t asking too much.

June 8th, 2012 / 12:10 pm Anonymous—

^Excellent post, as with your other one. Good to see that are, in fact, adults here.

June 8th, 2012 / 12:23 pm Edmond Caldwell—

I’d dismissed Calloway’s work the first time I encountered it, but it was Kate Zambreno’s eloquent defense of it that compelled me to go and take another look. That’s got to be one of the premiere roles of effective criticism, no? So so much for Zambreno’s interventions really just being “about herself.”

June 8th, 2012 / 12:41 pm deadgod—

Chris excludes “quality” but draw attention to “effect” and excludes “art” so as to turn to “work”.

a) “Effect” and “work” are contingent terms, in that neither refers to a stable, perspective-independent transcendentality. (“Effect”, in particular, ineluctably entails perspective.) Are they to be talked about “fruitfully” without “first mutually agree[ing] on a definition”?

b) Defining terms so as to underpin a fruitful discussion: must agreement on these definitions be perfect for the discussion to be fruitful? or can that agreement itself be non-absolute and there still be a fruitful discussion?

c) Agreement on definitions of terms leads irresistibly to agreement on… what else? the application of those terms in judgements? That “because” hews closely neither to philosophical discourse nor to everyday life.

d) How is the policing done by these exclusions emancipatory and not an aggrandizement of the excluder’s power to police?

e) Discussion of ‘is it good?’ is shut down because it “go[es] nowhere”. Instead, the discussion is to be of the “significan[ce]” of what and how texts work. What’s the difference between a text being “good” at what it does and doing what it does “significant[ly]”?

June 8th, 2012 / 12:56 pm JSA Lowe—

Hello, it’s our old friend Derailing 101: “You’re Being Overemotional“! Not very original, SlutShamer. a) It’s Zambreno’s blog and she can react on it, and in her life, however she damn well pleases. b) When you start out using a word like “always,” your argument was never really merely innocently “asking you to draw clearer and more thorough connections”—it was aggressive right out of the gate. Consider making a concession or acknowledgement *before* you carve into your interlocutor; it’s more rhetorically effective no matter what the gender or social status of the person you are addressing.

June 8th, 2012 / 1:15 pm deadgod—

I think “Criticism” is well-done.

I do wonder, of the other material, whether using abjection as a tool of ownership, perhaps as a way of somehow re-capturing of one’s story, isn’t easily folded back into perspectives (and narratives) of one’s subjection.

–but I can’t tell, as clearly as others seem to, whether Marie Calloway is making herself ‘abject’.

A woman taking a picture (or having it taken) of herself drooling cum and (she) publishing that picture: is that masochism? mental illness? slavery? Or do those predications say more about their predicators?

June 8th, 2012 / 1:24 pm Anonymous—

Since I’m obvously not coherent enough to comment on HTMLG anymore, Slut Shamer, I’d like to invite you to read my critical memoir, Heroines, that’s coming out through Semiotext(e) in October, edited and published by Chris Kraus, who has also published many of the “heavyweight names” you had a problem with me namedropping. Fuck. I’m namedropping again. Sorry. It brings in lots of these ideas that I’m obviously inadequately communicating here, ideas like pathologizing women writers, suggesting they seek therapy, which us hardline feminists sometimes call “wallpapering,” a reference to “Gillman”‘s story. Oh, is that too much self-promotion for you? So sorry. I won’t be able to send you a review copy, however, because it doesn’t *appear* that you’re a published critic. Unless you’d like to, you know, reveal your identity when you’ve obviously got a personal grudge against someone.

June 8th, 2012 / 1:37 pm Anonymous—

I wasn’t actually offering to send you a review copy.

June 8th, 2012 / 2:06 pm Michael Martin—

I ask myself: where have all the great menstrual hysterics of 19th century literature gone?

They’ve been hiding in blog-comment threads all along!

Thank you, Lady Calloway.

June 8th, 2012 / 2:32 pm JSA Lowe—

(Of course you were trying to be ironic. I don’t really think it works, though, and that failure seems revelatory.)

June 8th, 2012 / 2:43 pm JSA Lowe—

Wait, I know how this one goes! Now *I* say, performing revulsion, “I’m done with you, clueless troll, I’m not taking your bait” and then YOU say, with performative how-predictable eye-rolling, “ha, isn’t that just how people like you are, abandon the debate because you’re being bested,” and then *I* say, etc., etc., etc., repeat play. But honestly why bother refuting these one by one when you’d just feel compelled to rebut those in turn with evident relish, and so on—this dance has already been danced by better writers than we. Shall we then just consider our points made, to the best of our ability given this admittedly fairly crappy medium, and then argue it out on an AWP panel someday while chucking copies of bell hooks and Kristeva at one another’s heads? Happy Friday, everybody.

June 8th, 2012 / 2:52 pm Anonymous—

Honestly, we probably agree on a lot more than you think. I don’t really see where I’m “trolling.” Happy Friday:)

June 8th, 2012 / 3:08 pm Nick Mamatas—

Ironic sexism on the Internet? I must screencap this brave new endeavor for posterity.

June 8th, 2012 / 3:12 pm Nick Mamatas—

Did you ask KZ to “draw clearer and more thorough connections” or did you just whine that she wasn’t doing so and cast aspersions on her motivations?

Ah, and also her mental health now (which insisting that you’re not). I suppose here’s another clearer and more through connection—basically both MC and KZ had their psychological status questioned here on HTMLGiant, which is, of course, chockful of trained psychologists as of, uh, yesterday.

June 8th, 2012 / 3:55 pm Anonymous—

I’m passionately interested in the notion of the confessional, and public/private, and boundaries – that doesn’t mean I’m passionately interested in Calloway’s work, more than a LOT of people are interested in it. This site posts a post basically a day about it. No, you’re singling me out for other reasons.

I really don’t go through life looking to be offended and oppressed, believe it or not, but that’s a supremely jerky thing to say.

June 8th, 2012 / 4:43 pm Nick Mamatas—

Oh, I got it. I just thought it was stupid. As you backed down, clearly you finally realized that it was stupid as well.

June 8th, 2012 / 5:09 pm Anonymous—

Fair enough. I shouldn’t have interpreted that phrase so literally–you’re right.

June 8th, 2012 / 5:34 pm J Lorene Sun—

I like what Calloway is doing with form but I can’t find
much appreciation for her art. She doesn’t do anything but
expose. I’m looking for redemption in art. I don’t want to feel responsible for
her…I want her to save herself. That would make her sincerity new, imo.

June 8th, 2012 / 7:24 pm Anonymous—

This broke a 100 comments and Ray Bradbury’s death is around 4 (as of the moment).

June 8th, 2012 / 8:21 pm Anonymous—

Higgs hasn’t “elevated” anything, unless passive-aggressiveness counts as elevated discourse. I don’t do passive-aggressive. He dismisses people frequently, hostile or non-hostile. And talk about condescending. At least you’re willing to get your hands dirty and fight–I can respect that.

My tone, in general, is admittedly “hostile” because I’m tired of people championing experimental or avant garde art–however you want to define those categories–by insulting other mediums and creating divisive binaries that are ahistorical and anti-intellectual. Several well-known commenters can’t discuss a work of “experimental’ art or literature without somehow slamming its supposed opposite and implying that those of us who critique, say, Calloway’s “experimental” work are just too stupid to get it and firmly entrenched in our own camps. I’m open to all modes and aesthetics, but obviously, there’s no place here for aesthetic range and diversity here, so you’re right, having this conversation is pointless…me being here is pointless. Later!

June 8th, 2012 / 9:52 pm Anonymous—

I think it’s really important and valuable to critique work, Marie’s and otherwise. I think it’s about HOW her work was being dismissed, and what rhetoric was being used to invalidate any claim she seemingly had to write at all. That is when I first waded into the muck, because of the comment thread of the first (maybe?) HTMLG post about it. But I think it’s valuable and important to critique work, and in doing so, not to insult someone else’s position and to assume that we’re all going into this with some knowledge of, say, the history of the avant-garde, but also different tastes. I think there’s a danger in being too superlative, yes, about material that might not warrant it.I’m also however interested in supporting other writers and artists, especially young women writers who are doing risky work. But I do think sometimes that support can undermine critical discourse. I don’t think that being critical is being negative. I would like to more critically engage with Marie’s work – of which I don’t personally feel I’ve been a wholesale cheerleader for – but for me the immediacy of a blog or a comment thread is not the time to do it – I can only sketch out thoughts – to try to more fully form later.

June 8th, 2012 / 10:00 pm marshall mallicoat—

YES

June 9th, 2012 / 12:00 am Zora—

http://reno.redlightworld.com/profile.php?action=listingview&listingID=7062

June 9th, 2012 / 7:39 am Anonymous—

But there is a higher bar. Would the Collagist publish Marie’s work? Would you expect to open up page 34 of AGNI and find Marie’s tits next to a photocopied facebook entry? Do you really want Marie’s work to clutter up the literary journals we all love to read? Or would we all prefer to keep her work as a clickable link we like to peruse after midnight when the house is quiet, because literary porn movements are kinda cool for the average literary-type, especially after a Heineken and a pack of smokes? I love boobs, too, man. But, this is low quality art at best.

June 9th, 2012 / 9:05 am Christopher Higgs—

Jagabond, while I appreciate your comment, especially because I think it raises important questions, I’m afraid I disagree with you on all counts.

Specifically, I feel uncomfortable with your repeated use of the first person plural. There is no such thing as “we” — as this very comment stream proves. “We all” don’t love to read literary journals. In fact, “we all” don’t love to read the same things period. You may confer some sort of “higher bar” on The Collagist and AGNI, but that is your own personal construction. And as to whether or not one would desire to find Calloway’s work “cluttering up” those journals, I suppose the inclusion of her work may make some readers quit reading and other readers begin reading, and that’s my point.

With regard to your “literary porn” comment. I think what you and many others are missing is exactly the demarcation Kant explains in his Critique of Judgement between the gratifying object and the aesthetic object. To view Calloway’s work as merely “boobs” is to perceive only the gratifying object. It is the same as seeing Duchamp’s urinal as merely a urinal, or Warhol’s brillo box as merely a brillo box.

That said, there is another (different) argument to be made for the pleasure of “low quality art.” Remember, whomever confers the designation of quality is wielding power. What kind of epistemological system resides behind that power, and what other systems does it preclude or negate? Those are the pertinent questions.

I haven’t had my morning coffee yet, but I wanted to reply real quick because while I disagree with you, Jagabond, I think you raise a very important issue about gender dynamics. Male writers, myself included, who champion Calloway’s work must contend with the accusation of being guided by the appeal of her sexual performance. As I said to Roxane in a previous comment, I intend to think more about this and write something more well-informed at a later date. But for now, I’d simply direct those accusations back to Kant’s third critique. (And for what it’s worth, in the back of my groggy mind I keep thinking about Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography and Jenny Seville’s paintings in terms of the sexual aspect of Calloway’s work, and Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Andy Warhol’s Popism in terms of the literary gossip aspect of Calloway’s work.)

June 9th, 2012 / 9:23 am Richard Grayson—

One of the dominant values of twenty-first century America is an
“open mind.” Nothing is so stigmatized as a closed mind. To have an
open mind (as the term is used in popular discourse), however, does not
mean simply being open to new truths as discovered by science or dug up
by archaeologists or determined by philosophers or described by poets,
playwrights, and pundits. Not at all. In contemporary America – and
most of the Western world – to have an open mind means to hold all truth
claims only tentatively and provisionally and to examine and even
question every value and every virtue and every reputed “fact” and never
call anything “the truth.”

Accordingly, if one has a fixed opinion on virtue, values, lifestyle,
or God, he is said to have a “closed mind.” It doesn’t matter if that
opinion came after years of searching and study and investigation. It
doesn’t matter if that opinion can be supported from experience or
anecdote or historical examples. It especially doesn’t matter if that
opinion was reached after consulting “authorities” on the subject.

Authorities are confining and restricting and stand in the way of the
search for “my truth.” No authority is more important than one’s own
mind and judgment at the moment of decision, according to this view.

Another term for the despicable condition called a closed mind is
“prejudice.” We are told by the advocates of unbridled intellectual and
moral freedom that anyone with a fixed opinion on a matter is
“prejudiced.” The implication is that his views are not thought-out,
coherent, and consistent. Rather, he has not considered all the facts,
has allowed personal whim to determine his values, and is guilty of a
crime against nature and humanity when he claims to have ruled out
competing ideas and values and to have settled on a set of ideas and
values as “truth.”

The horror of such “prejudice” is that it implies that those with
contrary views are “wrong.” In a totally democratized system of values,
anyone who claims to have found “the truth” must be considered a threat
and a fascist or an aristocratic elitist. Such a person is to be
anathematized and shunned and prevented from having any access to the
minds of our children and college students. Students must be given
carte blanche to search for their own truth. They are not expected
merely to learn the truths of previous generations or to parrot the
maxims and philosophies that were foundational to the creation of even
their own civilization.

“Question everything” is the motto of the advocates of an open mind.

Theodore Dalrymple addresses these issues in his recent book, IN
PRAISE OF PREJUDICE. The subtitle states the central thesis: “The
Necessity of Preconceived Ideas.” Dalrymple states the obvious truth
that, in the real world, we cannot moment by moment decide which parts
of the storehouse of received values or concepts we will accept without
further investigation. Dalrymple argues that democratic families in
which children from the earliest ages are given choices about their
behavior rather than directions for their behavior, are producing
misguided children who become misguided and dysfunctional adults.

Our post-Christian culture to the contrary notwithstanding, the Bible
teaches – and history confirms – that life works right only when we
accept certain preconceived ideas and prejudices. To believe that
humans are more valuable than cats is a good thing – unprovable but
true. To believe that marriage is important and that families need to
eat together and that lying and stealing are bad – these are good
prejudices. To be closed minded in the conviction that unwed teenage
girls having children is not healthy is a prejudice that, if it became
popular again, would spare many girls and their children and our society
a great deal of misery.

An open mind is like an open mouth – you must close it if you are to
process what you put in. That is not to say that, once we have closed
our minds on a conviction that becomes a “prejudice” that we never
examine it again. We continue to tweak and finesse our convictions for
the rest of our lives. But we don’t face moral and spiritual questions
each day with blank minds. Our own experiences, the views of trusted
authorities, the accumulated wisdom of history – especially, our own
culture’s history, and, for a Christian, the clear teaching of the
Bible, all provide us with sufficient information for the formation of
prejudices that are essential for the evaluation of moral options.

Paul prayed for the Philippians that “your love will keep on growing
in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you can determine
what really matters and can be pure and blameless in the day of Christ.”
(Phil 1:9-10 HCSB) The Greek word translated “discernment” is
“aisthesis” and means “critical judgment.” Paul says that this
Spirit-directed sense of critical judgment will help the Philippians to
determine “what really matters and be pure and blameless.” In other
words, essential to spiritual growth and moral and spiritual
decision-making is the faculty of thinking critically about moral and
spiritual options. The mature Christian will be armed with
Spirit-informed “prejudices” that encourage him to make the best choices
at the right time so that he can grow in Christ and so that the church
can experience blessing and unity.

It is the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God to allow
the believer to “close his mind” around the truth, to know the
difference between right and wrong and even to distinguish good, better,
and best, and to avoid the agony and the tragedy of a moment-by-moment
moral quandary that exists when self is king, when the mind is neither
preconditioned nor prejudiced, and when we live as if each new day and
each new moral option were unprecedented and unanticipated.

June 9th, 2012 / 11:50 am mimi—

A+ is in the eye of the beholder

June 9th, 2012 / 2:05 pm Laura Marie Marciano—

I am a writer, and a professor of writing. I have had cybersex. It has mattered.
I have done it in odd places–I have felt weird about it, shameful– i have also
felt enjoyment. I think that Marie is presenting something that people do, lots
of people, not just who you would expect to. I think that is the true power of this work.
You can say it is the “death of literature”–you can compare it to whoeverthefuck you want–
talk about how you know something about art–or she doesn’t know something about art—-that’s fine.
That is your right. However, this work came from a real place, a real moment, whether it was intended
for publication or not. It was a moment—in time–recorded. And that matters. And it moves people to talk about it—and that is art. Thank you, Marie, for your honesty.

June 9th, 2012 / 4:51 pm Pat—

i don’t know if there is a lot of value in being the 130th commenter, but i just wanted to add that i found these pieces paradoxically both extremely compelling and extremely difficult to read. this is a feature of some of my favorite works of art, including the second part of notes from underground and kafka’s best stories, which i suppose is a good sign. maybe it is just my black turtleneck talking, but i think there is inherent value in forcing readers to confront the type of emptiness and despair i felt when reading these pieces, an effect which is not easy to achieve and, i think, usually evidence that the work in question hits upon some vulnerable aspect of the reader’s psyche, something she would rather not explore. marie calloway’s willingness to candidly explore some of the more sordid
aspects of sex in the 21st century makes her a braver writer than i.

June 10th, 2012 / 12:10 am HTMLFAIL « The Outsider—

[…] ago, Blake Butler (a long-time HTMLGIANT editor) posted links to Calloway’s latest work on HTMLGIANT. With titles such as “Cybersex” and “Men” and executed in a collage style, […]

June 11th, 2012 / 1:42 am politics and poetry: both are kinda dirty « yellow house cafe—

[…] M.C. Google Docs – Butler/HTMLGIANT (links to her docs…the comments are interesting to read) […]

June 11th, 2012 / 3:03 pm ANJA MORGAN—

Is that possible, though? I feel like much of her writing and persona is so influenced by, aware of, and entrenched within the societally mandated experience of femininity/female youth that this would be essentially impossible. And we needn’t discuss the extent to which the “male confessional” is often touted as “literature” and “autobiography” and “art” whereas the female version is so often framed as sloppy, overemotional journalling. What does this theoretical “male Marie Calloway” write about, and what is it we find transgressive or interesting or despicable or problematic (however you see her) about his writing?

June 11th, 2012 / 3:50 pm mimi—

i agree that “there is inherent value in forcing readers to confront the type of emptiness and despair [i] felt when reading these pieces, an effect which is not easy to achieve” and i believe that some (let’s say ‘half’) of the credit is due her ‘cohorts’ (jimmy chen, ‘commenters’, et al)

it all seems as much ‘group performance’ as anything, not really ‘creative writing’, too much is appropriated by calloway

June 11th, 2012 / 11:36 pm Roxane—

I think it could be possible, though it would certainly have different repercussions and would probably not receive the same kinds of reaction. I can’t quite imagine what it would look like but I know I’d love to see it.

June 12th, 2012 / 2:05 am ANJA MORGAN—

Right, and I’m just suggesting that it’s worth considering why that bar and those standards are considered higher, or even the ways in which that bar can be construed as confining or even problematic…

Marie Calloway’s google docs pieces

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