http://htmlgiant.com/q-a/interview-with-cool-famous-hot-literary-agent-erin-hosier/
Hey. I interviewed Erin Hosier. She’s a literary agent to a couple of fiction writers (Shya Scanlon, Brad Listi) and a lot of memoirists. Okay. I have a doctor’s appointment soon. I think that there is something wrong with me. Interview.
You mostly represent non-fiction writers, but a few fiction writers too, right? What kind of fiction manuscripts catch your eye? Do you want fiction that resembles memoir?
You should ask me more glamorous questions, like what kind of shampoo I use, or who my favorite designers are. I currently represent four literary fiction writers: Paul Jaskunas, Edan Lepucki, Brad Listi, and Shya Scanlon. I represent more illustrators than fiction writers. And more rock stars. Furthermore, these four writers are very different from each other, but I expect great things from each of them. I have represented other fiction writers over the years, but fiction writers tend to switch agents when I can’t sell their work. This is why I don’t handle more of it. My strengths are in writing, editing and pitching non-fiction. That’s my comfort zone. I even prefer documentaries to other movies, and I see way more movies than read books. Also, I’m a slow reader, and fiction comes in long manuscripts. I’ve noticed too that even if a novel is brilliant in so many ways – it makes you laugh or cry or it haunts your dreams or makes you look at the world in a new way, if it entertains – but it has just ONE fatal flaw in the marketing or manuscript department, it’s not going to sell.
What constitutes a “fatal flaw”, you ask? Here are just a few that I’ve heard from editors: too long, too dark, ultimately good but not Great, too gay, too male, too YA, nobody wants to read about these characters, and my personal favorite – “I didn’t like the ending.” Now you’re going to challenge me by saying that editors are hired for the express purpose of acquiring and editing novels – they’re supposed to help shape them, take them from good to great, work to change the flawed ending. I would counter that may have been true once, but that’s not the way it is right now. Most editors don’t edit, not the way a few of the greats do. But there are only a few really great fiction editors left, and so there are only so many novels good enough to capture their fancy. And have you noticed how many debut novels come out per year? Imagine being Josh Kendall or Lee Boudreaux and seeing the best of the best of the hundreds of literary agents who send you their wares each week. And that’s only when they get to work on the books the company’s not forcing them to, the bill payers.
Also, my favorite fiction writers are very few. I love Bret Easton Ellis and all he stands for. I like realism. I love Joan Didion’s “Play it as it Lays.” I admire Donna Tartt. Rivka Galchen is great. I love David Gates’ “Jernigan” (I’m sure he’s sick of people saying that). Most everything Denis Johnson does is fine with me. I enjoy dark and violent and horrifying. I like coming-of-age but not YA, and apparently there’s a difference. I don’t give a shit about the classics. I mean, I could pretend to, but why fake it? To me a classic novel is JAWS or CARRIE. I never studied literature. I wrote a term paper on The Yellow Wallpaper once, but who didn’t?
Finally, those four fiction writers I represent, they know all this about me. I always warn them in advance that I probably won’t be able to sell it and that it won’t be my fault because I’ll have tried every possible trick I know to make the publishers love it as much as I do. They know to blame the publishing houses. They know that they’re most likely my pro-bono cases, at least for awhile, but they still want me because they’re writers.
Well, leaving aside rock stars and designers for now, I like to think that it’s hardly possible, and maybe not even desirable, to anticipate what exactly will compel the last few great fiction editors. Because it seems that ultimately what will capture will be new, will cause a stir, take risks in terms of content; that flawless/marketable manuscript will be marketable because it has the potential to inaugurate a trend. And key is for the writer not to know that the potential is there. From afar it also seems that publishing has always relied on the possibility of this trend-starter. Do you think big publishing is reaching a point where the window of possibility for that rare “A-ha!” manuscript will be effectively foreclosed, or neutralized or something?
First of all this is the most awkwardly worded question ever [ :( ]. But yeah, I think we’re at that point already. A lot of publishing is about pushing “product” and “brands.” Lady Gaga has already started packaging her life in print, her line of books. As she should, but she’s still in the very beginning of her career instead of at the end. All it takes is a reality show and a ghostwriter. Literature used to live large in the general culture, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. The New Yorker was like People magazine. It really is different now. It’s a gift if you can talk to a friend outside of publishing about contemporary books or even articles. Speaking of, magazines are dead, too. Those will all move online. In the future, everybody will have an iPad type thing. Content is still important. Writing is always going to be important, but we have to find a way to monetize it.
How do you pull off being a glamorous literary agent?
I think book publishing used to be more glamorous. It was more like advertising. This economy is really bringing it down. There used to be these great expense accounts and fabulous hotels. My writer friend would do a freelance feature for Conde Nast and be put up at The Four Seasons to write even when she had her own place on the lower east side. People used to send flowers, champagne, tickets to stuff. Messengers would deliver hand written invitations to exclusive parties. There used to be extramarital affairs, cocaine. Now no one can afford it, so they just switch companies or move to the Pacific Northwest to start over. These days most literary agenting is on par with social work or public education. It’s so beige. I’ve always tried to up the ante fashion wise, but what are you gonna do? It can’t just be me and Ira Silverberg forever.
So what spots do publishing people pay attention to, in wait of the next big thing? What are good places to publish, places where your name will be seen? If you’re into that sort of thing. And don’t pretend you aren’t, whoever you are.
If it’s being published somewhere, someone who works in publishing is paying attention. I’m constantly shocked by how tiny the publications are that get referenced. Agents and editors are looking everywhere. They might not love it once they’ve read it, but they’re reading it. There are still the fiction purists who are looking at all those obscure Southern journals. And the editorial assistants are reading all the blogs and looking for young writers who have a voice and an influence. And they’re looking at the big blogs too. Richard Lawson of Gawker is one of the most asked-about writers without a book deal out there. He’s enormously talented and editors would love to see whatever he wants to do in the long form. The problem with bloggers though, if it even is a problem, is that they’ve become so adept at writing a blog or an op-ed that they don’t really have time to slow down and ruminate on a novel or even a book proposal unless there’s a really good chance that the project is going to pay them to quit their high profile blogging gig, and these days there are just no guarantees, especially when it comes to people who are famous for writing about popular culture. Those are the book ideas that the young editors can come up with and talk to agents about packaging, but it’s pretty challenging for them to then push those projects through with their publishers. In other words, a lot of these great young writers have agents, but there are so few projects for them in the book world that will actually pay a living wage. I can’t tell you how many times editors have said to me, “Erin, if you could only get Entertainment Weekly’s Whitney Pastorek to do a book…” And then she’ll write an amazing proposal and everyone will champion her voice but in the end the publisher will be like, why would anyone want to read this in the long form when they could read her online for free, and get this voice every day?” It’s a lot of bullshit.
For a long time I’ve thought that writers like David Foster Wallace, even BEE and Tao Lin in their own way, are so readable and
marketable because they’re using an accessible cultural vocabulary (with BEE, it’s coke and new wave; Tao, gchat and veganism; DFW, the gamut) in terms of content, but at the same time doing interesting, provocative formal stuff, and a lot of time there won’t even be a discernible plot – like, the plot of Less Than Zero is laughable, but it’s infinitely readable because of whatever air or aura it has, and the fact that it’s motored by all of this cultural ballast. Are publishing people aware of this “formula”? Are they looking for books that incorporate relevant cultural artifacts (Facebook, internet, whatever) and that use the significance of those artifacts to say something bigger about why they’re there, why they fill up a space that’s necessary for the functioning of any modern society (elements that produce alienation, distance, aloneness) ? Because to my mind those are always going to be the bestsellers, the movies potentially adapted into film, but that are also cool, interesting, smart, or even fascinating stylistically.
I think publishers will try anything. If a writer can make a case for a Twitter novel or whatever (and someone has), then you can expect it will be published. But what’s different today is that you only get one shot. So if your Twitter novel fails, Little Brown or Knopf or whomever is not going to give you another chance. This is no joke. You have to woo them every time, and you have to follow through with sales. So I think it’s dangerous for writers to try and hedge their bets and yet they almost can’t afford not to. I think the other part of your question is about stylistic literary fiction. And yeah, publishers like to call it “voice” but yes, they are looking for something unique and contemporary feeling. I think “And Then We Came to the End…” is a good example of that – a debut that has this stylistic hook of a collective voice, a novel about work. But there’s no way to really plan that your novel will become a phenomenon. It really is like winning a lottery. New fiction writers almost always try to compare their work to the same 4 or 5 writers because that’s in part what they’ve been trained to do using the nonfiction model of pitching, or if they’re writing in a certain form, such as “a novel in stories” they’re grasping for a comparison. By now word’s gotten out that nobody wants to buy short story collections, but some themed collections have worked, so now we’ll just call it something else and compare our work to somebody famous who did that recently. This is what agents do – it’s what we have to do – but I don’t think anyone is fooling anyone. It’s almost ridiculous to pitch fiction outside of talking about the writer and the story. You either love it on the page or you don’t. If you love it, you hope other people will love it, and that’s really it.
But let’s talk about these writers you mention, because they’re all really interesting to me personally (and they’re all men, unsurprisingly. I mean let’s add DeLillo to the list while we’re at it, Alec, geez.) Tao Lin is still really arty and on the fringe, though. I think he’s more of an artist whose medium is writing, but it’s also self-promotion. In that way, he’s really smart, and I think young people really respond to his “voice,” which is actually pretty voiceless, empty, and remote. He may be the anti-voice of his generation, but I would be surprised to learn that fiction editors at the literary houses really know about him or are trying to pry him away from Melville House. And Bret Easton Ellis has been on thin ice forever. I love his work, particularly American Psycho, but it goes without saying that I often feel like his only feminist fan. I think he is probably the most misunderstood popular fiction writer in America. To me he is the ultimate stylist. Every novel he writes is basically the same. The cadence, the themes, the characters, the story. And yet there are so few credible executions of what he does that I never get tired of spending time with him. But look, American Psycho almost wasn’t published, and I know a lot of people who still wish it never was, who just absolutely will go to their graves believing that Ellis is a misogynist sociopath AND a hack who keeps writing the same book. But I think what he does is so refreshing – he just shines a light on how disgusting human beings really can be, how depraved, overstimulated, narcissistic and vain. He’s a hyperrealist. If you laugh at it you’re an asshole, if you take it too seriously you’re an asshole, and if you dismiss it you’re an asshole. And yet look at everything else we do and buy and produce. I much prefer BEE’s proven formula of sex scenes that involve skull fucking to some straining bullshit by one of these latter day literary liars. The sad young literary men, indeed.
There will never be another David Foster Wallace, not just because he was a genius, but because we don’t seem to have the attention for that kind of long form exploratory writing anymore. He clearly touched a lot of people, but there’s something to be said for a less is more approach, but you know, fuck it, he could do whatever he wanted because he was the only one doing it.
The short answer to this question is that writers should stop worrying so much about which grad school to go to and stop focusing on the short story as the ultimate form. And that what’s happening with literary fiction is almost not worth discussing outside of this forum because most people can’t even read or comprehend it.
The novel isn’t dead, I know, I know, but it’s certainly in critical condition. To quote Woody Allen in Manhattan: “I mean, face it, I wanna sell some books here.” There are plenty of writers out there who want to manipulate style and form, but get their books read and disseminated at the same time. Would that be having one’s cake and eating it, a pipe dream, or, well, what can we hope for?
It does seem like there are fewer slots for novels, no question, at the bigger houses. But debuts will always be in demand. Editors need to acquire the next big thing, the novel that gets everybody talking. And as a writer, it’s a good time to be experimental. Every year there’s some kind of wacky exception to the rule. Remember Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow? Talk about a risky form, but it was a great commercial success. The very frustrating thing, as we all know, is that it’s harder than ever to be taken seriously for one’s efforts. The competition is fierce. There are so many great agents, gifted readers, who are representing really fantastic fiction and it’s just not going to sell unless somebody somewhere simply has to have it. An alarming trend in responses from editors lately seems to be, “This novel isn’t ‘necessary’ enough, which feels like a kick in the stomach. The bar is so high that it often seems like a lot of the stuff I see is at least “good enough,” technically. But the only thing that’s gonna get over are the very best executions of story or what seems to be working in the marketplace. You just have to know that and accept it for what it is. Know that your novel, in lots of ways, has a better shot than the fourth go by the prize-winning geezer who once had a sleeper hit in the 90s. Sales track – nine times out of ten – feels like everything. So if you have no sales track, you’re already way ahead. Also, think about other forms. Stop making the literary novel the be-all end-all it’s become. Respect that you might have greater opportunities as a writer of narrative nonfiction, as a journalist, as a screenwriter, as a teacher. Know that you’ll probably make more money selling coffee in America than publishing your novel with Harper Perennial, who by the way, is acquiring all the best debuts these days. This isn’t your failure, it’s a failure of literacy and economy. Art is a worthy endeavor, but making a living as an artist has always been a struggle. As long as culture deems their work “unnecessary” the plight of the unknown fiction writer is going to be really fraught. Still, I want to believe all this technology will help pair readers and writers, and the struggle for recognition, if not wealth, will be worth it in the end.
Tags: bret easton ellis, david foster wallace, Don DeLillo, literary agent, Tao Lin
DFW, BEE, Tao Lin. Damn.
she really likes ellis. I mean she really likes him. she likes him, you know? I mean really she likes him. she likes ellis, ok? do you understand, do you get it, she likes him?
this is a jerky comment. I feel bad about it already, but can’t not post now that I’ve thought it and typed it.
Nice interview. What books did she get published?
[…] HTMLGIANT / Interview with Cool Famous Hot Literary Agent Erin Hosier […]
Brilliant she mentions Toby Barlow. I was thinking of him the entire time reading this, and he always dominates my mind in conversations such as this.
Yeah, I enjoyed this too. It’s simultaneously depressing and heartening.
really smart and good. Shya’s book looks nice.
Love his stuff in n+1.
And I really like how honest she is about herself and the business. Good interview.
Erin being hilarious about Bret Easton Ellis over at TNB: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/ehosier/2010/07/for-bret-easton-ellis/
Incidentally, Erin, I’m nearly done with Lunar Park right now. 9/10 of it is trash. 1/10 of it is brilliant.
“I see way more movies than read books.”
“…he could do whatever he wanted because he was the only one doing it.”
And yet, 9/10 of you losers are licking the big envelopes and sending this id-jit your books.
DFW, BEE, Tao Lin. Damn.
she really likes ellis. I mean she really likes him. she likes him, you know? I mean really she likes him. she likes ellis, ok? do you understand, do you get it, she likes him?
this is a jerky comment. I feel bad about it already, but can’t not post now that I’ve thought it and typed it.
Erin, you are so not beige. It’s why I love you.
Nice interview. What books did she get published?
Brilliant she mentions Toby Barlow. I was thinking of him the entire time reading this, and he always dominates my mind in conversations such as this.
Yeah, I enjoyed this too. It’s simultaneously depressing and heartening.
really smart and good. Shya’s book looks nice.
Love his stuff in n+1.
And I really like how honest she is about herself and the business. Good interview.
Erin being hilarious about Bret Easton Ellis over at TNB: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/ehosier/2010/07/for-bret-easton-ellis/
Incidentally, Erin, I’m nearly done with Lunar Park right now. 9/10 of it is trash. 1/10 of it is brilliant.
“I see way more movies than read books.”
“…he could do whatever he wanted because he was the only one doing it.”
And yet, 9/10 of you losers are licking the big envelopes and sending this id-jit your books.
Erin, you are so not beige. It’s why I love you.
Fuck. She pretty much called Keith Gessen a hack (or a ‘literary luar’)
! x ! o !
*liar*
Fuck. She pretty much called Keith Gessen a hack (or a ‘literary luar’)
! x ! o !
*liar*
Anything said by a member of today’s publishing system should be accompanied by disclaimers, footnotes, and provisos. For instance, the remark “it’s not going to sell.” Translated, this means that it’s not going to sell among Erin Hosier’s crowd, or the kind of people who read and write for this blog. Literary America is a clubby little world of the well-educated who are, not exclusively but for the most part, from upper-middle class backgrounds. Those who aren’t, quickly learn how to conform. Left alone– not even thought about, really– are the 95% rest of Americans, for whom it’s thought that garbage from the James Pattersons of the system is good enough. And so, for the insularati, David Foster Wallace, an extremely solipsistic writer of dense prose who most Americans can’t read much less relate to, is considered a kind of secular god, because he conveys, in convoluted ways, the precious specialness of being them.
Sorry for crashing the party. Please carry on.
Dude…people would take you more seriously if you didn’t hate on *absolutely everything*.
Now, suddenly, you think corporations *don’t* just want to make a buck? And are passing on books that would sell because…why?…book corporations are clubby snobs?
(Also, back in ’97, they really did think IJ would sell — focusing on the enormity of the book, releasing it in simultaneous hard- and paperback editions [the 1st book since Pynchon to do that — Pyncon-links also being part of the marketing]).
P.S. How much of Infinite Jest have you actually read?
A few months ago I made a bukkake joke in response to Erin’s “The Nervous Breakdown” post and she emailed me to say she liked it. I’m a big fan, and not in the Stuttering John kinda way.
How much of IJ can a person read before his brain explodes?
I’m not saying that book corps aren’t trying to sell books. I’m saying they don’t know how to do so, because the minds of those within the system are contained inside a narrow viewpoint. The situation is worse now than ever.
Let’s face it: The HTML generation is the most brainwashed in human history, in that they’re bombarded, for up to 12 hours a day or more, by conglomerate produced media, through the various outlets of TV, internet, Ipods, etc etc. No generation has been so consumer oriented, which of course is the intent. Yet you’re all rebels and individuals, even though you think alike. Why is this? Because the media tells you that you are. It has to be so.
Literature should be the one place for real thought about the world, yet it’s focused on the sentence and sunk in a morass of self. No clarity of thought anywhere to be found. DFW certainly didn’t provide it. Bret Ellis was ahead of his time, because he acknowledged what was happening, but that doesn’t make his work any less depressing, any less of a dead end.
Ms. Hosier actually says some interesting things in her interview. She says the writer is better off selling coffee than getting published– even winning the lottery and publishing through Harper-Perennial. (Nice to see the HP badge of ownership back up on this blog.)
So, what good is the system for the writers like yourselves who cling to it?
From 2001 to ’07 the Underground Literary Alliance tried to create an alternative to the dead-end status quo. We wanted to turn the system on its head, and give power to the writers, not to the unseen gigantic media empires, of which Ms. Hosier is a tiny cog. (Not strictly part of it yet ever-so-much part of it.) Know where we found the strongest opposition? From writers themselves. “Don’t force us to leave the sheep pen!” they cried in one voice. They enjoyed their chains. They all, every single one of them, were holding out hope that they also could someday wear the Harper-Perennial brand, even if to pay the bills they’d still be working at Starbucks.
when you’re working with the brain you’ve apparently got King, i agree: Wallace is unreadable.
??? Is that the best you can do, Blake? A pithy putdown?
The question is what you do with the brain. I think it’d be put to better use not focusing so much on itself, but on the workings of the world. A good example of a writer who did this is long-forgotten novelist James Gould Cozzens, who in Guard of Honor examined the workings of the military bureaucracy during World War II. It’s an important work, because that war signalled the creation of the military-industrial complex simultaneous with the emergence of America as an empire. The story of America is the story of bureaucracies and systems. We’ve done them better than anyone else. Today they dominate even our thought.
What are these systems like? What are the people like who inhabit them?
Great art is prophetic. The lead characters in Guard of Honor, a limited general and his older, manipulative behind-the-scenes handler, are a foreshadowing of our recent leaders Bush and Cheney. Reading the novel gives insight into what such people are like; what their values are; how they run the gigantic machine.
Is this not intelligent enough for you?
There’s a difference between real-world intelligence and intellectual posturing, which we see a lot of now. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but there you have it. I posted today only to get a few hits for a new project of mine– didn’t intend to get into a discussion.
The question is still out there, though: WHAT GOOD is today’s literary system if it can promise even the likes of you, wearing proudly your HP t-shirt, only a job at Starbucks? Could it possibly be doing something wrong?
(If I ever sell out, know it will only be to get funds to come back with another alternative intended to put the moribund lit machine out of business.)
Take care.
TLDR
Also, learn how to do paragraph breaks.
Thanks for the link, that was great.
I would reverse those proportions on Lunar Park. I loved it except for the spots where it threatens to become a straight-up genre horror novel. As Imperial Bedrooms, whose first half I loved, actually does turn into a thriller mid-way through.
Wenc, first off, the ‘HTML’ generation can’t be as clubby as you say, simply because the first place I read your work was Open City. (Which if I remember correctly, you always claim is one of those eeevil hipster mags with their boot to the throat of…whoever).
Also: a big wtf to the above logic: publishers fail because they’re too commercial, yet also fail because they’re not commercial enough?
Also: it’s great you have such rarified tastes, but there are other, equally smart, equally literate folks who happen to enjoy a variety of literature with a variety of aims. My grandfather, for example. 8th-grade education, certainly not of this generation. Didn’t have a TV in his house ’till age forty or so. Fucking loves Infinite Jest. And Emerson. And Beckett. And Dennis Lehane. It would strike him (and me) as downright silly that art should have one aim. To him, I’m sure you’d appear the foolish youngster…
I can’t believe this guy expects people to call him “King”… Jesus. What year is this.
the political real world is the political real world
i like fabrication
i do not work at starbucks and never will
i dont have an HP shirt but if they gave me one and it fit good i’d wear it
today i am wearing a berry college volleyball tshirt i got at a thrift store
i didnt go to berry college and i hate volleyball
its a comfortable shirt
go read yr bukowski
if you want to picket something picket something dont write an allegory about life
or do, and enjoy yourself
everyone is not you
P.S. You should totally grab an Arenas novel if you believe politics and (sentence-driven) beauty are mutually exclusive. Palace of the White Skunks is very Jestian, very incisive, very political, and hands-down the best thing I’ve ever read.
Anything said by a member of today’s publishing system should be accompanied by disclaimers, footnotes, and provisos. For instance, the remark “it’s not going to sell.” Translated, this means that it’s not going to sell among Erin Hosier’s crowd, or the kind of people who read and write for this blog. Literary America is a clubby little world of the well-educated who are, not exclusively but for the most part, from upper-middle class backgrounds. Those who aren’t, quickly learn how to conform. Left alone– not even thought about, really– are the 95% rest of Americans, for whom it’s thought that garbage from the James Pattersons of the system is good enough. And so, for the insularati, David Foster Wallace, an extremely solipsistic writer of dense prose who most Americans can’t read much less relate to, is considered a kind of secular god, because he conveys, in convoluted ways, the precious specialness of being them.
Sorry for crashing the party. Please carry on.
BRAIN IS MEAT
Dude…people would take you more seriously if you didn’t hate on *absolutely everything*.
Now, suddenly, you think corporations *don’t* just want to make a buck? And are passing on books that would sell because…why?…book corporations are clubby snobs?
(Also, back in ’97, they really did think IJ would sell — focusing on the enormity of the book, releasing it in simultaneous hard- and paperback editions [the 1st book since Pynchon to do that — Pyncon-links also being part of the marketing]).
P.S. How much of Infinite Jest have you actually read?
I’ve tried putting more money into it, I’ve tried hitting it, I’ve tried unplugging it, and still it plays the same shitty song over and over again. Fucking Wenclas Jukeboxes.
Your grandpa sounds like the best kind of granpda.
A few months ago I made a bukkake joke in response to Erin’s “The Nervous Breakdown” post and she emailed me to say she liked it. I’m a big fan, and not in the Stuttering John kinda way.
How much of IJ can a person read before his brain explodes?
I’m not saying that book corps aren’t trying to sell books. I’m saying they don’t know how to do so, because the minds of those within the system are contained inside a narrow viewpoint. The situation is worse now than ever.
Let’s face it: The HTML generation is the most brainwashed in human history, in that they’re bombarded, for up to 12 hours a day or more, by conglomerate produced media, through the various outlets of TV, internet, Ipods, etc etc. No generation has been so consumer oriented, which of course is the intent. Yet you’re all rebels and individuals, even though you think alike. Why is this? Because the media tells you that you are. It has to be so.
Literature should be the one place for real thought about the world, yet it’s focused on the sentence and sunk in a morass of self. No clarity of thought anywhere to be found. DFW certainly didn’t provide it. Bret Ellis was ahead of his time, because he acknowledged what was happening, but that doesn’t make his work any less depressing, any less of a dead end.
Ms. Hosier actually says some interesting things in her interview. She says the writer is better off selling coffee than getting published– even winning the lottery and publishing through Harper-Perennial. (Nice to see the HP badge of ownership back up on this blog.)
So, what good is the system for the writers like yourselves who cling to it?
From 2001 to ’07 the Underground Literary Alliance tried to create an alternative to the dead-end status quo. We wanted to turn the system on its head, and give power to the writers, not to the unseen gigantic media empires, of which Ms. Hosier is a tiny cog. (Not strictly part of it yet ever-so-much part of it.) Know where we found the strongest opposition? From writers themselves. “Don’t force us to leave the sheep pen!” they cried in one voice. They enjoyed their chains. They all, every single one of them, were holding out hope that they also could someday wear the Harper-Perennial brand, even if to pay the bills they’d still be working at Starbucks.
when you’re working with the brain you’ve apparently got King, i agree: Wallace is unreadable.
??? Is that the best you can do, Blake? A pithy putdown?
The question is what you do with the brain. I think it’d be put to better use not focusing so much on itself, but on the workings of the world. A good example of a writer who did this is long-forgotten novelist James Gould Cozzens, who in Guard of Honor examined the workings of the military bureaucracy during World War II. It’s an important work, because that war signalled the creation of the military-industrial complex simultaneous with the emergence of America as an empire. The story of America is the story of bureaucracies and systems. We’ve done them better than anyone else. Today they dominate even our thought.
What are these systems like? What are the people like who inhabit them?
Great art is prophetic. The lead characters in Guard of Honor, a limited general and his older, manipulative behind-the-scenes handler, are a foreshadowing of our recent leaders Bush and Cheney. Reading the novel gives insight into what such people are like; what their values are; how they run the gigantic machine.
Is this not intelligent enough for you?
There’s a difference between real-world intelligence and intellectual posturing, which we see a lot of now. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but there you have it. I posted today only to get a few hits for a new project of mine– didn’t intend to get into a discussion.
The question is still out there, though: WHAT GOOD is today’s literary system if it can promise even the likes of you, wearing proudly your HP t-shirt, only a job at Starbucks? Could it possibly be doing something wrong?
(If I ever sell out, know it will only be to get funds to come back with another alternative intended to put the moribund lit machine out of business.)
Take care.
TLDR
Also, learn how to do paragraph breaks.
Thanks for the link, that was great.
I would reverse those proportions on Lunar Park. I loved it except for the spots where it threatens to become a straight-up genre horror novel. As Imperial Bedrooms, whose first half I loved, actually does turn into a thriller mid-way through.
1.) I don’t expect to call me anything. Of course, I’ve been called everything.
2.) It’s certain that everyone isn’t me. Also increasingly certain is that everyone in the literary world is everyone else. Not a lot of distinction, ya know.
3.) I’m hit over the head for not having a brain, allegedly. Granted I may not have much of one. But those who’ve responded here have demonstrated that they have even less of one. Do we get an intelligent attempt to respond to my points? Of course not! Instead you more than prove my point about system writers. They’ve been trained into nothingness. Real knowledge of how the world works is virtually nil, and interest in that world is less.
The focus is on the trivial– on sentences and, er, paragraph breaks.
4.) A typical incapable response: I bring up a complex novel by an overlooked American novelist, someone who understood well the architecture of the novel (try his The Just and the Unjust), and I’m hit with “yr” Bukowski. Stereotyping, are we? No, you’re not me, BB, but that’s the point. Writers who aren’t you, you’re able to see only through a classist stereotype, which is how the ULA was viewed when it made waves, which, yes, included a picket sign or two. (Look up my listing at the http://www.literaryrevolution.com site and you’ll see two of them.)
5.) My question remains open: Why unwavering loyalty to a system which is going to credibly publish (meaning, with a decent promo budget) only a few of the hundreds or thousands of you? Why the super-expense for writing degrees that A.) are basically worthless; B.) apparently cause individuals not to question things as they are; nor to think very competently for themselves?
It’s an offensive question. It’s a question that your standard go-along-to-get-along writer would never dare ask. But it’s a question that demands to be asked.
Thanks for the time. It’s been fun.
Yes, a nice little fantastic story about a fabulous grandpa, told by as person who doesn’t care to identify himself. Writing magical realism, are you?
Sorry, I don’t get it. Magical realism? What does that have to do with anything? (No, I don’t write or even read much magical realism. Maybe you got this from my Arenas reference, but if you’ve read his work [not wikipedia] you’d see he not teally a magical realist]).
What a clever non-response, though. (Is your name King Wenclas?)
Wenc, first off, the ‘HTML’ generation can’t be as clubby as you say, simply because the first place I read your work was Open City. (Which if I remember correctly, you always claim is one of those eeevil hipster mags with their boot to the throat of…whoever).
Also: a big wtf to the above logic: publishers fail because they’re too commercial, yet also fail because they’re not commercial enough?
Also: it’s great you have such rarified tastes, but there are other, equally smart, equally literate folks who happen to enjoy a variety of literature with a variety of aims. My grandfather, for example. 8th-grade education, certainly not of this generation. Didn’t have a TV in his house ’till age forty or so. Fucking loves Infinite Jest. And Emerson. And Beckett. And Dennis Lehane. It would strike him (and me) as downright silly that art should have one aim. To him, I’m sure you’d appear the foolish youngster…
I’ll look it up. Is a novelist who examines the world necessarily political? If he is, how does he benefit from writing a work of convoluted sentences which would be offputting to the vast bulk of the public? If the problem which Ms. Hosier outlines one of interesting the public, why do you remain determined to cling to postmodernism? Can you see that literature was healthier when guys like Steinbeck were the norm? (Or even, on the other end of the political spectrum, Ayn Rand?) Believe me, I look for novels of ideas– real ideas, not ruminations on the layers of media which surround the author and determine his every thought. I read Lethem’s latest novel, for instance. His big idea had something to do with an Academy Awards presentation; i.e., a media event. Which is as deep as the guy ever gets. But of course, what else could he and his ilk write about?
(Btw, I’ve been writing about character at my main blog. One thing I discovered over and over again, during the last ten or so years, is that very few writers today have any character. And so the standard anonymity. The most successfui or connected writers, like the Billionaire Boys Club, are the worst. I’ve seen enough of them to know that for a fact. Yet they’re sucked-up to by people like you on a continuous basis. A sad house of cards that will someday be toppled. . . .)
“Pemulis,” you know this. You’re a sponge, an invertebrate. There’s no way to run away from that.
I can’t believe this guy expects people to call him “King”… Jesus. What year is this.
the political real world is the political real world
i like fabrication
i do not work at starbucks and never will
i dont have an HP shirt but if they gave me one and it fit good i’d wear it
today i am wearing a berry college volleyball tshirt i got at a thrift store
i didnt go to berry college and i hate volleyball
its a comfortable shirt
go read yr bukowski
if you want to picket something picket something dont write an allegory about life
or do, and enjoy yourself
everyone is not you
P.S. You should totally grab an Arenas novel if you believe politics and (sentence-driven) beauty are mutually exclusive. Palace of the White Skunks is very Jestian, very incisive, very political, and hands-down the best thing I’ve ever read.
BRAIN IS MEAT
Qell, for one thing, the ‘convolution’ (as you’re determined to call it) can be a political act. Realism is historically the mandate of dictators. Castro demanded it, Arenas rebelled with beauty. The Soviets demanded it, Khrzhanovsky rebelled with fabulism. It’s a bit narrow to impose your tastes on the whole of history. Yes, Steinbeck wrote in a way that shook things up in his time. But who are you to say that we should dismiss William Vollmann, his greatest admirer, for writing realism *and* long sentences?
(I’ll have to ignore the rest. i’m not rich or connected and i don’t know who this billionaire boys club is.)
The clause “when guys like Steinbeck were the norm” sounds like an insult to Steinbeck.
Made waves? You and your flunkies had a debate with the Paris Review that barely made a fart of a noise, and you call that making waves? Oh yeah, and you got drunk and did some childish shit at some readings… you rock star you.
The funny thing about “revolutionaries” like you, Wenclas, is that when they fail, they blame everyone for it except themselves.
“Why unwavering loyalty to a system which is going to credibly publish (meaning, with a decent promo budget) only a few of the hundreds or thousands of you?”
Because the idea of standing in line at Kinkos to get copies of our crappy “zeens” sounds like a shit way to exist.
You always ask this question as if everyone here is looking for a “way in.” It’s a ridiculous assumption on your part.
“Real knowledge of how the world works is virtually nil, and interest in that world is less.”
The fact that you have some “pie-in-the-sky” notion of a literary utopia suggests to me that you have an even lesser knowledge of how the world works.
“Do we get an intelligent attempt to respond to my points?”
What points? You don’t make points. You hammer your square peg ideology into a round hole.
I’ve tried putting more money into it, I’ve tried hitting it, I’ve tried unplugging it, and still it plays the same shitty song over and over again. Fucking Wenclas Jukeboxes.
Your grandpa sounds like the best kind of granpda.
man everyone is always fighting here. not everyone ok but there is always a fight somewhere. I understand having strong feelings about literature art writing etc. but what do you win if you are “right”? is anyone naive enough to still think they are going to change someone’s mind like this? saying that another person is an idiot, in more or less words, might be the absolute least effective way to get them “on your side”. or if your goal isn’t to get people “on your side” then what is it? to look better than everyone else? to make everyone else feel bad about themselves/feel stupid? that is dumb. that is not nice. we (you and me and everyone) should be nice. soon enough mean week will be here and then what? I don’t control anyone but this is what I think. if you disagree then I guess that will be ok too. but dang.
1.) I don’t expect to call me anything. Of course, I’ve been called everything.
2.) It’s certain that everyone isn’t me. Also increasingly certain is that everyone in the literary world is everyone else. Not a lot of distinction, ya know.
3.) I’m hit over the head for not having a brain, allegedly. Granted I may not have much of one. But those who’ve responded here have demonstrated that they have even less of one. Do we get an intelligent attempt to respond to my points? Of course not! Instead you more than prove my point about system writers. They’ve been trained into nothingness. Real knowledge of how the world works is virtually nil, and interest in that world is less.
The focus is on the trivial– on sentences and, er, paragraph breaks.
4.) A typical incapable response: I bring up a complex novel by an overlooked American novelist, someone who understood well the architecture of the novel (try his The Just and the Unjust), and I’m hit with “yr” Bukowski. Stereotyping, are we? No, you’re not me, BB, but that’s the point. Writers who aren’t you, you’re able to see only through a classist stereotype, which is how the ULA was viewed when it made waves, which, yes, included a picket sign or two. (Look up my listing at the http://www.literaryrevolution.com site and you’ll see two of them.)
5.) My question remains open: Why unwavering loyalty to a system which is going to credibly publish (meaning, with a decent promo budget) only a few of the hundreds or thousands of you? Why the super-expense for writing degrees that A.) are basically worthless; B.) apparently cause individuals not to question things as they are; nor to think very competently for themselves?
It’s an offensive question. It’s a question that your standard go-along-to-get-along writer would never dare ask. But it’s a question that demands to be asked.
Thanks for the time. It’s been fun.
Yes, a nice little fantastic story about a fabulous grandpa, told by as person who doesn’t care to identify himself. Writing magical realism, are you?
Sorry, I don’t get it. Magical realism? What does that have to do with anything? (No, I don’t write or even read much magical realism. Maybe you got this from my Arenas reference, but if you’ve read his work [not wikipedia] you’d see he not teally a magical realist]).
What a clever non-response, though. (Is your name King Wenclas?)
I’ll look it up. Is a novelist who examines the world necessarily political? If he is, how does he benefit from writing a work of convoluted sentences which would be offputting to the vast bulk of the public? If the problem which Ms. Hosier outlines one of interesting the public, why do you remain determined to cling to postmodernism? Can you see that literature was healthier when guys like Steinbeck were the norm? (Or even, on the other end of the political spectrum, Ayn Rand?) Believe me, I look for novels of ideas– real ideas, not ruminations on the layers of media which surround the author and determine his every thought. I read Lethem’s latest novel, for instance. His big idea had something to do with an Academy Awards presentation; i.e., a media event. Which is as deep as the guy ever gets. But of course, what else could he and his ilk write about?
(Btw, I’ve been writing about character at my main blog. One thing I discovered over and over again, during the last ten or so years, is that very few writers today have any character. And so the standard anonymity. The most successfui or connected writers, like the Billionaire Boys Club, are the worst. I’ve seen enough of them to know that for a fact. Yet they’re sucked-up to by people like you on a continuous basis. A sad house of cards that will someday be toppled. . . .)
“Pemulis,” you know this. You’re a sponge, an invertebrate. There’s no way to run away from that.
Qell, for one thing, the ‘convolution’ (as you’re determined to call it) can be a political act. Realism is historically the mandate of dictators. Castro demanded it, Arenas rebelled with beauty. The Soviets demanded it, Khrzhanovsky rebelled with fabulism. It’s a bit narrow to impose your tastes on the whole of history. Yes, Steinbeck wrote in a way that shook things up in his time. But who are you to say that we should dismiss William Vollmann, his greatest admirer, for writing realism *and* long sentences?
(I’ll have to ignore the rest. i’m not rich or connected and i don’t know who this billionaire boys club is.)
The clause “when guys like Steinbeck were the norm” sounds like an insult to Steinbeck.
Made waves? You and your flunkies had a debate with the Paris Review that barely made a fart of a noise, and you call that making waves? Oh yeah, and you got drunk and did some childish shit at some readings… you rock star you.
The funny thing about “revolutionaries” like you, Wenclas, is that when they fail, they blame everyone for it except themselves.
“Why unwavering loyalty to a system which is going to credibly publish (meaning, with a decent promo budget) only a few of the hundreds or thousands of you?”
Because the idea of standing in line at Kinkos to get copies of our crappy “zeens” sounds like a shit way to exist.
You always ask this question as if everyone here is looking for a “way in.” It’s a ridiculous assumption on your part.
“Real knowledge of how the world works is virtually nil, and interest in that world is less.”
The fact that you have some “pie-in-the-sky” notion of a literary utopia suggests to me that you have an even lesser knowledge of how the world works.
“Do we get an intelligent attempt to respond to my points?”
What points? You don’t make points. You hammer your square peg ideology into a round hole.
man everyone is always fighting here. not everyone ok but there is always a fight somewhere. I understand having strong feelings about literature art writing etc. but what do you win if you are “right”? is anyone naive enough to still think they are going to change someone’s mind like this? saying that another person is an idiot, in more or less words, might be the absolute least effective way to get them “on your side”. or if your goal isn’t to get people “on your side” then what is it? to look better than everyone else? to make everyone else feel bad about themselves/feel stupid? that is dumb. that is not nice. we (you and me and everyone) should be nice. soon enough mean week will be here and then what? I don’t control anyone but this is what I think. if you disagree then I guess that will be ok too. but dang.
Hey…Hey! Where’d the Wenclas go?
Hey…Hey! Where’d the Wenclas go?
I don’t mind the “mean” stuff and I dig the energy, in fact… I’m just disappointed that it all leads back to the same kind of not-ready-for-reading writing I’ve been handed by various friends and acquaintances since adolescence. What’s the compelling argument against learning how to write before going public with the shit?
This was the most refreshing interview I have ever read with a literary agent (discounting the Robert Gottlieb interview in Paris Review, but he was technically an editor). Previously there was a round table of literary agents discussion in Poets & Writers, and Daniel Lazar was the only one who didn’t say anything to offend me. So I tried to submitting to him, and was swiftly rejected.
But I love the part of the interview when she mentions the fatal flaws of being “too dark” and “too gay.” I think submitting to agents is one of the most depressing and futile endeavors a person can undertake, but her discussion about the desire for more debut novels, “the next big thing,” definitely cheered me up. I would submit to her but I am sure my novel has too many “fatal flaws”
I don’t mind the “mean” stuff and I dig the energy, in fact… I’m just disappointed that it all leads back to the same kind of not-ready-for-reading writing I’ve been handed by various friends and acquaintances since adolescence. What’s the compelling argument against learning how to write before going public with the shit?
This was the most refreshing interview I have ever read with a literary agent (discounting the Robert Gottlieb interview in Paris Review, but he was technically an editor). Previously there was a round table of literary agents discussion in Poets & Writers, and Daniel Lazar was the only one who didn’t say anything to offend me. So I tried to submitting to him, and was swiftly rejected.
But I love the part of the interview when she mentions the fatal flaws of being “too dark” and “too gay.” I think submitting to agents is one of the most depressing and futile endeavors a person can undertake, but her discussion about the desire for more debut novels, “the next big thing,” definitely cheered me up. I would submit to her but I am sure my novel has too many “fatal flaws”
Nice to see the untalented trolls of the ULA still crying their Stalinist line on writing.
Nice to see the untalented trolls of the ULA still crying their Stalinist line on writing.
That was awesome. Even more awesome? Her piece in TNB about BEE. HILARIOUS. And rather snarky. She is pretty fantastic.
That was awesome. Even more awesome? Her piece in TNB about BEE. HILARIOUS. And rather snarky. She is pretty fantastic.
She looks sexy – would like to see if her red hair is true. Also wonder if she paints her toes.