June 23rd, 2010 / 1:23 pm
Roundup
Blake Butler
Roundup
Ignorant Proclamation +2
1. At The Observer, another stockbroker says another dumb thing about the state of fiction.
Dear Lee: When your weathervane is James Wood, you might as well be covering the World Cup. Where have all the Mailers gone? I only ever knew of one, and he’s dead. Try actually investigating something. Open your eyes.
2. At the Guardian, Jeremy Kay reports from the set of the new Herzog/Lynch collaboration.
3. At Pop Damage, an interview with James Grauerholz, the executor of the William S. Burroughs estate.
Tags: james grauerholz, jeremy kay, william s. burroughs
The Lee Siegel editorial was Garrison Keillor stupid. Infuriating, actually. A great example of “IF I DON’T KNOW YOU YOU DON’T EXIST.”
Guess what? If a tree falls in the forest, and Lee Siegel isn’t there to see it, then that tree probably got an MFA from Iowa and once had a story in the New Yorker and couldn’t hold Hemingway’s elephant-killing jockstrap, goddammit.
Is some old white guy going to come out of the woodwork every week to take a snipe at fiction?
“The practice is no longer a vocation. It has become a profession… Where are the counterlists to The New Yorker’s 20? Where is the mischief in the little literary magazines, the fiction-publishing
monthlies like Harper’s …and The Atlantic, the countless online sites devoted to contemporary fiction? Isn’t such sharp dissent what the Web was supposed to empower?”
Dude. Are you serious? This is bullshit.
i’m a pacifist but i really want to punch lee siegel in the throat.
well his idea of a little literary magazine, a rogue and independent journal of letters interested in stirring things up, are harper’s and the atlantic. and the web has had all sorts of dissent and counterlists. i don’t even know if i feel like reading the rest of this as i’ve gone three graphs in and he’s just a grouchy dude that has no idea where to look for the contemporary.
i am not saying he is wrong though entirely about his first or second graph. but at the same time, with the real genuine advent of serialized television [other than soap opera’s] and the sort of films that came about in the 70’s [we can probably agree that a bit after that, after people realized they could get that entertainment elsewhere, that at that point fiction hit what happened with painting once photography came around: when faced with something that can do what you did but require less of people, what you are doing needs to change. unfortunately, what sort of happened with painting for painting’s sake ended up being a little closed off after the new york school made it big.]
and i mean, i could probably be off about all this. but whatever. i guess my point is that it sucks that catch-22 was a best seller and a book like that now probably would not be read by nearly as many people as it was then, but that also the medium that delivered that sort of entertainment changed, and in order to compete i am saying. i am saying that if you are just doing what a movie is doing why would i read a book when i can see it in pictures. if it’s no different than that sort of entertainment. and if it is different, it is possibly going to require more of people than just sitting and watching movies.
also i could give a fuck about norman mailer, but whatever. i could give a fuck about a lot of things.
You should read The Naked and the Dead.
i thought that herzog movie was coming out last year. was it pushed back for Bad LT? everything about it sounds amazing. i always thought their sensibilites would work together. like herzog and harmony korine.
the Executioner’s Song is incredible
but, you know, where is Job?
i will! i will get it out from the library when i get back from vermont in august. thanks adam!
i will get that one out from the library too.
grauerholz has always bothered me for some reason…
really. this made me burst out laughing.
Why dissent with something one doesn’t care that much about?
The release of Witz, for some of us, was more exciting than the release of 20/40.
James Woods has praised writers like Saramago, Hrabal, Bolano, and Sebald.
Siegel: sample the culture before talking about the culture, you gasbag.
He thinks he’s the heir to Burroughs, the son Burroughs never had, except Burroughs did have a son, and Billy Burroughs Jr was a damn fine writer. Kentucky Ham and Speed are great reads. I think Billy and James didn’t really like each other and it’s not hard to see why.
I think your average person is much more likely to go and look at a painting today than in the time of Boucher.
Aside from portraits, painting was never trying to do the same thing as photography.
And for television outing fiction: One coud argue then that film did before that. But before there were either film or television there were plays….and through all this people have still continued to read. Clearly many more books are sold today than when Charles Dickens was alive.
The Lee Siegel editorial was Garrison Keillor stupid. Infuriating, actually. A great example of “IF I DON’T KNOW YOU YOU DON’T EXIST.”
Guess what? If a tree falls in the forest, and Lee Siegel isn’t there to see it, then that tree probably got an MFA from Iowa and once had a story in the New Yorker and couldn’t hold Hemingway’s elephant-killing jockstrap, goddammit.
Is some old white guy going to come out of the woodwork every week to take a snipe at fiction?
“The practice is no longer a vocation. It has become a profession… Where are the counterlists to The New Yorker’s 20? Where is the mischief in the little literary magazines, the fiction-publishing
monthlies like Harper’s …and The Atlantic, the countless online sites devoted to contemporary fiction? Isn’t such sharp dissent what the Web was supposed to empower?”
Dude. Are you serious? This is bullshit.
i’m a pacifist but i really want to punch lee siegel in the throat.
well his idea of a little literary magazine, a rogue and independent journal of letters interested in stirring things up, are harper’s and the atlantic. and the web has had all sorts of dissent and counterlists. i don’t even know if i feel like reading the rest of this as i’ve gone three graphs in and he’s just a grouchy dude that has no idea where to look for the contemporary.
i am not saying he is wrong though entirely about his first or second graph. but at the same time, with the real genuine advent of serialized television [other than soap opera’s] and the sort of films that came about in the 70’s [we can probably agree that a bit after that, after people realized they could get that entertainment elsewhere, that at that point fiction hit what happened with painting once photography came around: when faced with something that can do what you did but require less of people, what you are doing needs to change. unfortunately, what sort of happened with painting for painting’s sake ended up being a little closed off after the new york school made it big.]
and i mean, i could probably be off about all this. but whatever. i guess my point is that it sucks that catch-22 was a best seller and a book like that now probably would not be read by nearly as many people as it was then, but that also the medium that delivered that sort of entertainment changed, and in order to compete i am saying. i am saying that if you are just doing what a movie is doing why would i read a book when i can see it in pictures. if it’s no different than that sort of entertainment. and if it is different, it is possibly going to require more of people than just sitting and watching movies.
also i could give a fuck about norman mailer, but whatever. i could give a fuck about a lot of things.
You should read The Naked and the Dead.
i thought that herzog movie was coming out last year. was it pushed back for Bad LT? everything about it sounds amazing. i always thought their sensibilites would work together. like herzog and harmony korine.
the Executioner’s Song is incredible
but, you know, where is Job?
i will! i will get it out from the library when i get back from vermont in august. thanks adam!
i will get that one out from the library too.
grauerholz has always bothered me for some reason…
really. this made me burst out laughing.
Why dissent with something one doesn’t care that much about?
The release of Witz, for some of us, was more exciting than the release of 20/40.
James Woods has praised writers like Saramago, Hrabal, Bolano, and Sebald.
Siegel: sample the culture before talking about the culture, you gasbag.
He thinks he’s the heir to Burroughs, the son Burroughs never had, except Burroughs did have a son, and Billy Burroughs Jr was a damn fine writer. Kentucky Ham and Speed are great reads. I think Billy and James didn’t really like each other and it’s not hard to see why.
I think your average person is much more likely to go and look at a painting today than in the time of Boucher.
Aside from portraits, painting was never trying to do the same thing as photography.
And for television outing fiction: One coud argue then that film did before that. But before there were either film or television there were plays….and through all this people have still continued to read. Clearly many more books are sold today than when Charles Dickens was alive.
haha: “The ignorance of this screed is equalled only by its ludicrous bombast.” (1st comment in lee sigel article)
can we please make “ludicrous bombast” a tag?
What is 20/40?
What is 20/40?
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Ignorant Proclamation +2 | HTMLGIANT