Behind the Scenes
Friendly Fire
Dear Stephen,
I actually started writing this as a private email to you, but then I thought that posting about it would be more in the spirit of the Rumpus, and that the resulting conversation might be a useful one–more useful than if it was just you and me emailing. So here goes.
Why do so many posts on The Rumpus start from the premise that the author is somehow incapable or a weakling? I feel like I see examples of this all the time, but looking at the frontpage right now, there’s the Angela Stubbs article on Gina Frangello (second sentence: “She’s [the] kind of person you meet and you know seconds after meeting them, they’re capable of things you’d never be able to accomplish.”) and then the newest installment of Sari Botton’s Conversations with Writers Braver than Me, which I’m sorry, is about as terrible a name for a column as I can imagine–which is a shame, since it’s a good column. Oh and there was the Steve Almond’s “One Over Forty,” which was, actually, in some limited but real sense brave, and yet insisted on assuming the posture of a whipped puppy, even though the only one doing the whipping was Almond himself. Other examples abound, if anyone wants to go dig them out. I guess what I am asking is, have other people noticed this trend? And what is the deal with it? Does anyone have any ideas?
Unsurprisingly, I have an idea–and it’s that the Rumpus just happens to be where I’ve noticed something that is much larger: part of a general trend in contemporary indy- and small-press lit-land that insists on modesty to the point of self-abasement, encourages people to get awestruck at the drop of a hat, and rewards the expression of self-doubt rather than self-confidence. I think it’s related to the question Blake posed the other day, about why writers obsess in public over their rejections in a way that they never would (and, crucially, would never be allowed to) over their successes. In the case of both the above-quoted Stubbs sentence and the Botton column title, the attempt seems to be to pay a compliment to the subject of the piece, but the actual effect is to deflect positive attention from the subject (Frangello; Gould) and back onto the writer of the piece in the form of negative attention. In both cases, the reader has been put on notice that the author may not be equal to her chosen subject-matter.
It has not escaped my attention that both these examples are of women writing about other women. I keep trying to figure out how gender and gender-role-enforcement might play into this, but it’s a little bit more than I’m prepared to take on right now, other than to say that in American culture women are consistently forced to adopt or rewarded for adopting an aww-shucks posture in relation to the people and things that they would champion. This is a tendency which ought to be resisted with main force. Last thoughts: There’s no honor in being called brave by a self-professed coward. If your goal is to tell somebody “you are awesome,” try not to follow it right away with “and I am shit.”
Tags: The Rumpus
It’s certainly not a phenomenon confined to the Rumpus–not that you were saying that–but one I’m glad to see you bring up. I was thinking something similar during the rejection blog discussion–which I only read the first few comments of, and didn’t come back to, so probably missed a lot of the discussion–after it was asserted that you were not allowed to brag your accomplishments, but could your rejections. I think that’s obviously true, and I think it happens for some of the reasons you’ve brought up above.
My favorite interviews and features are those that are written by two writers who take the position of equals, before the first question is even asked. Blake Butler and Michael Kimball’s interview for Unsaid is a great example:
http://www.unsaidmagazine.com/display_lit.php?issue=4&file_url=butler_kimball.html
Michael is interviewing Blake here, but it’s easy to get confused, because both are contributing equally to the discussion, and therefore neither is in the lesser or greater role. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a strong feature.
I wanted to highlight the parts of your post that I really liked, but I kept wanting to highlight more and more parts to show you how great your post is. Thanks for writing this.
i was just talking about this indie lit fake humility attitude with my friend today…all writers want recognition, but to be cool you gots to pretend like you don’t care and if you get recognition you don’t deserve it. next reading i give i’m gonna open with the stone roses “i wanna be adored,” and at the end i’m gonna say, adore me, bitches, just before i drop the mike…
I totally saw dancing and bouncing, lifting up off the title. It’s like the half-full/half-empty glass, only with funny little animated icons of book covers.
It might be something copped from TV. I’m thinking of the late night interviews: the host genuflects before the celebrity guest with some self-depreciating comment (Conan’s bread and butter), the celebrity tells some embarrassing, self-depreciating story to relate to the audience, show that they have flaws just like everyone else. A chain of modesty.
wow, i never noticed that about the rumpus specifically, but you make great points in general, particularly:
“I’ve noticed something that is much larger: part of a general trend in contemporary indy- and small-press lit-land that insists on modesty to the point of self-abasement, encourages people to get awestruck at the drop of a hat, and rewards the expression of self-doubt rather than self-confidence.”
could be because self-confidence is rewarded everywhere else in society to the point of throwup. the general trend, that god-complex blinged-out peacock on steroids attitude is way prevalent. maybe for some people it’s nice to have somewhere to just be confused and insecure with other people who are also confused and insecure. maybe writers by their questioning nature gravitate towards that.
Poem Addressing Doubts that are Illuminated Before I Again Shift the Attention to You, Before Shifting it Back to Me Again
I want to explain more about what I’m thinking, but I’m afraid it will make me seem stupid. I do worry about how I appear in this poem. It is not cool for a poet to appear to be anxious for praise and attention in a poem. It is not cool for anyone to appear to be anxious for praise and attention. I’m just saying something that is true. I hope you will not hold that against me, or this poem. I would suggest that if you do not feel that you, or those you admire, are anxious for praise and attention, then you are not looking at yourself and the world realistically. Of course, I’m not interested in saying insightful, realistic things, which I wouldn’t say except for the fact that I’m interested in saying insightful, realistic things.
Peter Davis
Suggested revision: “HTML Giant has embraced drop-of-a-hat-awestruckness with a bold confidence rarely seen before or since. The raucous new design only adds to the fun. A winning debut.”
This bothers me too. I recall (quite vividly) one time I arranged a reading for a poet whose book I published. She got up and thanked me for my work on the book and inviting her to read. Then first thing she said in introducing the poems was that they weren’t very good. I was livid. It’s bad enough she spoke that way about her work, but to say that in front of the person who spent close to a year working on her book and also arranged a her lovely reading, well wtf? I’m sure that never crossed her mind. She was probably trying to be self-deprecating so the audience would like her. I’m sure she, like many women, she was conditioned not to act too uppity or confident about themselves or their accomplishments. But it was also quite insulting. It implied that I publish shitty work. That I spend all my time, energy and money working on shit.
People sometimes send poems for No Tell and in the cover note allude that their poems aren’t very good. Maybe they think they’re being endearing. I don’t know what people are thinking.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Mccm3T5D3SEC&lpg=PA151&ots=JoFFVSpkp5&dq=%22master%20for%20millions%20of%20years%22%20rothenberg&pg=PA150#v=onepage&q&f=false
Interesting post. Like Matt (and yourself) I don’t see this as anything confined to The Rumpus, but a general trend in the indie lit world.
Interestingly, it seems to go hand in hand with another annoying trend, which is a (false?) over enthusiasm for everything involved in the indie world. So on the one hand, an individual writer is a barely worth paying attention to yet all their friends are the most amazing, ground-breaking writers in the world.
You know, I’ve had this issue for a long time. I remember in grad school, a professor was talking about some poet or other, and kept saying things like, “but I’ll never be able to do that.” I got so annoyed at the cloying nature of that kind of commentary. Why on earth do we have to put ourselves down in order to praise someone else? It’s stupid. As far as the gender divide: I don’t know. I’ve seen men and women alike do it.
I want to be an icon.
I want to see your peacock-cock-cock.
Yeah, increasingly I can’t read an interview or article written from any other posture.
Sort of funny to hear it’s not allowed to crow about your successes, though, as I totally have been telling Facebook and Twitter when I get something I want. Guess I’ve been breaking the rules! It seems natural to me, though I guess I have felt self-imposed pressure now that I’ve had a few pieces published to not talk about that anymore, and only offer a link when the story is posted or printed.
I get really happy when people I love + respect succeed, it does not make me feel bad.
This is a problem endemic to “I” pieces in journalism. I majored in journalism and we discussed the phenomonen “critically,” about 20 years ago: many writers want the reader to identify with “them” (the writer) in such self-adulation and fortune to sit down with _________ (insert superhero/stud/dazzling soap star) that the writing borders on “And then he stuck his dick in my mouth and every journalistic instinct I had said this was over the line but it was ____________’s cock after all and who was I, some low-paid flunky beat writer to say no.”
Worse than that, I hate when they tell me that *I’ll* never be able to do that, or “we’ll” never be able to. Speak for yourself, dude! I plan to rock.
I’m the same way, Mike. Why would I not want to hear my friends are doing well? It’s actually worse when the hide it. Who wants to think they’re just hanging out some guy, only to find out later they’re the heavyweight champion of the world? Just say it, damn it. You earned it.
(Clearly, this is different than being undeservedly cocky, or refusing to shut up about yourself. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being happy about your successes, or taking a confident stance based on past and continuing success.)
“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
By the way, I don’t know if the generalization really holds up Rumpus-wide. It might be true that a few instances of this narrative posture are enough to grate the reader’s ears. But I don’t think that the preponderance of the articles are written in the way Justin describes. Maybe just a significant minority of the articles.
I also don’t think that all of the articles written generally from this inferior-ish posture are all doing the same kind of work. I think that when Almond does it, for example, it’s often just another instance of the comic inflation or deflation he often works into his prose toward the end of communicating something that would be otherwise bitter for the reader to swallow or deemed insignificant or deemed “too significant” to fit into a piece that tonally deflects significance. I’ve seen similar moves in writers from George Saunders to Tom Wolfe to Kurt Vonnegut, and what they mean has mostly to do with the context in which the slantwise speech is received, the way it is tonally modulated, and the relative extra-textual power of the speaker (Steve Almond, being a fairly high-profile writer among the kind of readers who read his work, might know that his characteristic self-deflations and self-inflations are read within the context of Steve-Almond-wrote-it, which is a very different context from unfamous-writer-interviews-highly-regarded-writer.)
I don’t have a single point here. What I’m trying to say, I think, is that there isn’t a single point to be made, and maybe the brush with which the argument is being stroked is too broad.
It’s better than taking the artist down, don’t you think? I can remember an interview of Miles Davis that was in Rolling Stone 20 years ago, and the interviewer felt the need to include Miles’ sexual advances toward her. This was one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century. One of the few the term “genius” really applies, and the interviewer was filing a public complaint against him. I guess she wanted us to know he was kind of promiscuous.
Oh wait, this isn’t the testicular theory thread, is it?
come over and i’ll show you…
Self-deprecation is a tricky thing in writing. Generally, I think its suits Almond well (he often uses it), because he mostly writes from a comedic angle and he’s a good enough writer to employ it without losing his readers. Not easy to do. He also does so with honesty, and that’s the thing I’ve noticed with articles written with from the aw-shucks point of view (not writing specifically now about the Rumpus but generally): it seems dishonest and manipulative. A careful reader is going to pick up on this. Any device or technique or tone that is overused will eventually vex those who read widely. They’ll come to recognize and resent it.
Peter nails everything about everything writing-related so perfectly in that book. Everyone should have to read it.
I agree re Almond. Made similar point below. And with your other comments re Rumpus overall and argument perhaps being too broad. The self-deprecating tone in the articles cited in the original post, I’d guess, are being employed for very different reasons.
Great post, Justin. I’d much rather hear about people’s successes than not, but I also think there’s a place for humility and understand that instinct, and that self-deprecation comes from that, but also a place of insecurity, which I can also understand. As for indie-lit cheerleading (re Lincoln Michel’s comment): I can understand how empty praise might have a dilutive effect, but when you’re involved in an enterprise you care about that very few people (in the larger population) care about, it’s nice to know that there’s still a small, but enthusiastic, audience for good books. I’m not saying what you raise isn’t problematic, but I understand where it comes from and why it’s both good and bad.
Thinking about this a bit more I’m not sure its incompatible with bragging about successes. I can think of writers in this world who frequently brag about their successes (and why shouldn’t they?) but in this disingenuous “Oh, how did I luck into this book deal/magazine publication/book blurb/award! I’m crying tears of shock right now!” way
To clarify, I certainly have no problem with singing high praises to great authors. But when everything is praised in the world it does have dilutive effect. You see something similar in the larger book world, the way every book has blurbs announcing it as the best ever, but in the larger book world negative reviews are still pretty frequent. I guess my eyebrow just raises when I see someone post a list of their all-time favorite authors and its like Shakespeare and 9 htmlgiant commentators. I’m exaggerating, but not by that much.
I may also be dragging this conversation into a different topic now though.
I think you’ve got something there–I don’t know if it’s copped from TV specifically, but I think it’s part of the “being a nerd is cool but I’m pretending like it isn’t but really I know it is” thing. It gets to the point of ridiculousness when even totally vapid, hot celebrity chicks say they were nerds in high school. Conan, Jon Stewart, all those guys take geek-chic as an interview stance–and I mean, it works with them, because they’re so obviously being ironic about it–but not when every other hipster girl wears an “I heart Nerds” t-shirt. Those of us who really were nerds, who really did have self-esteem issues, who were dreadfully shy–who’ve overcome those problems only through painful leaps and bounds and are generally loathe of going back there–we can see distinguish between those who were and those who weren’t. Same with false humility–it’s pretty obvious who’s really uncomfortable with praise (and clearly we should get over that as writers) and who’s just doing the genuflecting thing in the hopes that someone will notice how truly brilliant they are despite their amazing modesty.
I don’t know…genuine humility is a good way to go. I think writers know the game and they really are lucky if they have a career doing it. So who’s to say the humility is fake? There’s just so much cynicism in the air that anything that attempts to purport real feelings is immediately suspect.
The gist of Almond’s self-disclosure is: “I spend most of my life doubting my legitimacy as a writer”.
– which sounds like an amplified version of common writerly self-doubt, and raises Good Questions:
of what does this “legitimacy” consist?
what proportion of it is self-conferred?
if there were no such ‘doubts’ at all, would the writing not be chronically untested by its first reader??
But consider the ratio of genuine insecurity to cloying for congratulatory refutation – and look again at the thread that evolved in response to Almond’s blogicle and earlier reactions to it: many comments are so laudatory of Almond as to threaten to be sarcastic. Indeed, you might look back at the article after reading its thread and feel jaundiced enough by the cheerleading for Almond that you suspect the original piece was a satire of a public demonstration of humility!
Assertive skepticism of it notwithstanding, maybe self-deprecation in fact works all too well.
maybe writers are pussies is what you are saying.
yes, i agree. mostly.
any person with more than 1 or 2 friends was not a nerd growing up.
loneliness breeds intelligence.
fuck conan and his giant head.
I agree with Matt. Whereas there should be little tolerance for smug self-deprecation, there ought to be room for humility. I don’t think you’re arguing against humility, Justin. You seem to be against false self-deprecation, but what about those books you read that simply stun you? Those books that humble you as a writer?
Charlie Rose is the freaking worst about that. He’s such a phony sycophant I can’t bear to watch.
While I don’t think false humility is rampant here, I do think the tone of many HTML Giant posts “encourages people to get awestruck at the drop of a hat.” Sometimes the posts read like blurbs.
Is the problem self-deprecation or just a general failure of niche-inhabitants to modulate tone. I see that almost everywhere, from the HERE! IS! MY! ONE! IDEA! sites to the something something snark at book name ones.
Market share at the expense of general interest.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Ha ha. Not trying to start a fight. I’m basically agreeing that it’s a trend, a trend this site has not escaped.
really like that frank lloyd wright quote
know what you’re saying about saunders, vonnegut, & co. vonnegut wrote a letter to john casey about breece d’j pancake that said, “I give you my word of honor that he is merely the best writer, the most sincere writer I’ve ever read. What I suspect is that it hurt too much, was no fun at all to be that good. You and I will never know.” nothing wrong with that.
that admitting to confusion and insecurity is being a pussy is not what you are saying, right?
No, Lincoln I think this is exactly the issue.
Lily- those books exist, and when I encounter them, I’m happy to say so. But that kind of praise should be offered only sparingly, for the reasons Lincoln supplies.
Also, while an author may indeed wow you to the point of humbleness, the fact of your being-humbled is hardly the most salient fact about that author–indeed, it is not a fact about the author at all, but about the person writing the profile.
i think htmlgiant though is like intentionally blurbish and overblown, like they’ve embraced drop-of-a-hat-awestruckness with a confidence not really seen elsewhere. this new site design i thought was funny with the ads like weighing down on the title, and mousing over them bumps them up and down like they are hammering htmlgiant into the ground.
i’m not sure that the indie lit community takes on a false sense of humility. i think one, it is forced on them, as anytime anyone “toots their own horn” publicly they are scolded, reprimanded, and made fun of, accused of being selfish, only out for selfish recognition. but two, i think this is what egomaniacs dont get. the humilty isnt false, maybe people just see themselves and their writing and their accomplishments in a realistic sense. that is, they understand that its all been said and done by people better than ourselves, that our accomplishments, no matter how good they make us feel, are small in comparison to our predecessors, and any attempt to correlate the two is silly and feels false. to deny this is just to be an asshole.
I read an interview a couple of years ago with Tim Burton where he was in agonies over the fact that he kind of hoped his kid was really weird and had no friends so he/she’d grow up smart and have lots of free time to pursue his/her talents. Of course, that could backfire and your kid could grow up a serial killer or something…so there’s that.
i think all the time that someone oughta write the book Self Esteem for Writers. i would but i’d probably screw it up.
i am saying being a pussy is being a pussy. the whole lifestyle, not just the insecurity.
i don’t value intelligence. being a nerd wasn’t fun.
fuck tim burton. bitch hasn’t done anything worthwhile since he stopped being lonely and became a household name.
“like an axe to the softest tree meat, this comment changed my life, and i would never again post without its sphere of influence ransacking through my blood-drinking, word-intoxicated mind.” – BB, Author of ‘Sandwiches in Paris’
I totally saw dancing and bouncing, lifting up off the title. It’s like the half-full/half-empty glass, only with funny little animated icons of book covers.
Suggested revision: “HTML Giant has embraced drop-of-a-hat-awestruckness with a bold confidence rarely seen before or since. The raucous new design only adds to the fun. A winning debut.”
This bothers me too. I recall (quite vividly) one time I arranged a reading for a poet whose book I published. She got up and thanked me for my work on the book and inviting her to read. Then first thing she said in introducing the poems was that they weren’t very good. I was livid. It’s bad enough she spoke that way about her work, but to say that in front of the person who spent close to a year working on her book and also arranged a her lovely reading, well wtf? I’m sure that never crossed her mind. She was probably trying to be self-deprecating so the audience would like her. I’m sure she, like many women, she was conditioned not to act too uppity or confident about themselves or their accomplishments. But it was also quite insulting. It implied that I publish shitty work. That I spend all my time, energy and money working on shit.
People sometimes send poems for No Tell and in the cover note allude that their poems aren’t very good. Maybe they think they’re being endearing. I don’t know what people are thinking.
Which is basically like indie rock in the 90s. It was cool not to care. One of the best lines ever on Beavis and Butthead was about Pavement: “These guys just aren’t trying hard enough.”
i think you are obsessed with icons.
That, I think, is a big part of it. Don’t know how much parallel can be drawn between indie rock then and indie lit now, but there is an aesthetic that embraces non-rock-stardom, self-effacement. Think Michael Stipe’s cryptic vocals and oblique lyrics, think of the horrors of a guitar solo, calling way too much attention to the guitarist, to technique, evincing way too much confidence. The indie music sensibility is more along the lines of I’m not quite sure whether this is another verse or the chorus, but why does it really matter?–they sort of blur together. The goal is not to play the biggest possible show but to grab a few drinks, sell some handmade t-shirts, add a few names to the mailing list. You haul your own equipment, drive your own van. The smallness and intimacy and DIYness of it is a large part of the appeal, but also it doesn’t lend itself to Russell Brand-like bouts of grandiosity.
maybe America is different. I suppose it must be. in Britain, though, many of our celebrities and/or famous slash successful people in general were totally nerds when they were growing up.
do you really think having friends means you’re not a nerd? (that isn’t rhetoric, it’s a genuine question.) I always believed nerdry to exist more in the way you think and approach the world around you, and in the sort of things to which you’re drawn as a result.
it’s very possible to be widely liked and even more widely known while simultaneously spending most of your time doing things at which your likers and knowers would scoff, and even while continuing to feel quite out of place in (or aware of the absurdity of) the world / social situations.
there are definitely cool nerds. or, perhaps, I’ve been using that word incorrectly all my life, and what I really mean is ‘geek'(?). to me, though, ‘geek’ necessarily implies negativity, whereas ‘nerd’ does so only to people who are, at some very basic level, not worthwhile.
most american celebrities like to say they were nerds or geeks or socially inept or lonely or whatever growing up. some of them I believe and some of them I don’t.
The icon of iconic icon-obsession.
omfg – a stunner, Elisa! you totally rock. im so excited to read your comments here –
you nailed it – out of the park!
lovelovelove
I hate to go to a reading where the readers say what they’re going to read isn’t any good. Why would I come if I thought it was going to be bad?
you have them reversed. geek can be used with both positive and negative connotation; nerd has, historically, been used with extreme prejudice.
have you watched the seminal movie “Revenge of the Nerds” before?
the nerds have only one or two confidants–fellow nerds–until they ban together then become cool and popular.
they are no longer nerds by the end of the movie.
energy either goes outward or inward.
I hope there is room for humility. Fake and humility do not arrive in a package.
We’ve all seen the other side.
But as an interview approach, a bit lame.
Revenge of the Nerds is a send-up. Even if you take away the ridiculous premise of Nerds vs. Jocks, the stock characters just don’t seem to jive with experience.
I think Napoleon Dynamite comes a lot closer to the truth. Intelligent social outcasts who also are pretty acerbic, so they have aren’t totally blameless. They don’t have friends because they aren’t very good at navigating social situations. The people around them feel sorry for them but also eventually give up on them because they just keep bringing it on themselves. They are basically incapable of faking it or smoothing over their own awkwardness.
I think part of the pain is that they’ve been made to feel there’s something wrong with them. Not that the world is unjust and anti-intellectual. But that they just keep F-ing up in social situations. And so they do. They lack social intelligence but think social intelligence shouldn’t matter.
I would say geeks and nerds are interchangeable, and at least not worth arguing the distinction.
If your comment is relevant, and it happens to include something you’ve done that is a success, mention it. Why the hell not? Man, we all struggle enough as it is, some days to write a sentence, some days to get paid .05 a word if we’re lucky, some days to get nothing but SLIPS of rejection, not even a whole PAGE of rejection.
I’ll gladly drop praise where I feel like dropping it too – whether that’s in reference to the ton of talented people here or heavy lit hitters like Evenson or Bender or McCarthy or commercial successes like King or Rowling. If you dig it, say so.
If it reads sincere, be it a “blurb” about somebody’s new book or a comment about your own work, then put it out there.
//rant
napoleon dynamite was just a fuck-up spaz. he showed no characteristics of a nerd or a geek.
kip on the other hand, did.
“I would say geeks and nerds are interchangeable, and at least not worth arguing the distinction. ”
you can tell me you don’t want to get down baby, but why are you naked and in my room?
I can’t believe no one has suggested it’s because commenters are so mean. The writers of these pieces are laying down and baring their throats, so commenters will have mercy on them. I don’t think it’s a specific to The Rumpus, where people are probably nice, but it may just be second nature for blog posts now, like a flinch.
There’s just not a right or wrong here. Definitions of stereotypes are slippery and ultimately, who really cares?
I suppose there is something to be said for the fact we have grown past the idea we must be dead before achieving some sort of artistic recognition…
If Indie Lit were like 90s Indie Rock it would contain intentional typos to display a charming lack of skill.
[…] If you read the Rumpus a bit, you may or may not come to the conclusion that the writers are somewhat self-abasing. […]
[…] other week a discussion opened up at HTMLGIANT, in response to Justin Taylor’s post, that raised some interesting questions about the current tone in the independent community, one […]
i heard about this post on the wind and came here to shout at Justin kinda. If a book is getting a print run of say, 2,500 and to even be considered for best-seller stats a book must sell 4,800 copies, the math don’t match. if a critic sees a work which they feel hits 3 points outside of the paint, why shouldn’t it be given a glowing review? if a critic doesn’t like a book, don’t write a shitty review, the old if you don’t have anything nice to say addage comes to mind. then again, if something is great, then say it’s great. a positive review doesn’t mean it necessarily has less merit as a review, it’s just a review of a different kind. if indiejoe/jane has written a book (and you’re a fiction writer, you know how much work it takes to write a book nevermind get it placed at a publisher) and if it’s great, why shouldn’t it be recognized? dactyl is a loely non-profit which has been operating for a decade and a half which gives writers the option of apply for a 1,000 dollar fellowship if their work has been reviewed on the site. if this 1,000 dollars will help a writer pay some bills to buy more time to keep writing then what is the problem? critical-looking at books is important, it’s a part of the dialogue but why slam somebody? there’s a difference
[…] writing of young, underground writers, as Justin Taylor notes (and perhaps bemoans) in his short essay that details a trend “that insists on modesty to the point of self-abasement, encourages […]
Well…glad you like my column, even if you don’t like the name. Feels like the right name to me, though; feels true. I’m trying to gain courage by talking to writers who have exhibited it.