March 7th, 2012 / 10:15 am
Snippets
Snippets
Melissa Broder—
I receive an email from the “Senior Interviews Editor” of “Snatch Haus Review” (a blog that gets 4 hits per day) (which is more than my blog) (but still).
He asks if I’d like to “give an interview.”
I know full well that the “interview” I’ll be “giving” really consists of me fbooking the link to the “interview” and ppl quickly “liking” it and not “reading” it. The most eyes this “interview” will ever get will be on the link I post to fbook and when I say the link I mean the link itself and not the page the link leads to.
“Absofuckinlutely,” I say. “Thank you for asking.”
On the other hand: http://monkeybicycle.net/blog/interview-meat-heart-by-melissa-broder/ :)
yeah that interview was dope. ja tyler aks good Qs
o fuck! u r ja tyler
p.s. in lowercase ja tyler looks like jah tyler
Can I interview you too?
sure right here
nice to meet you, Melissa =)
i read your interview, the other day
You’ve recently been asked to “give” an interview. The verbage here indicates an active activity. Do you feel that you would in fact be “giv[ing]” the interview, or would you consider it more of a taking?
you too. the kids at your party give me hope for the future. it was very sweet.
i think that if the interview is published in The Paris Review, it’s a taking.
if the interviewer follows the interview with an attempt to “network” or “procure a job at your place of employment” it is a giving.
the ja tyler one? to be clear, that interview is not the one i reference in this post. the one i reference in this post has yet to be “published”
Situational, then. That’s fair. Along those lines, in the interview with ja tyler, your approach is described as concerning “hunger, bottomlessness, fear of insatiability.” This seems to describe the anatomy of a black hole? In your opinion, is your approach that of a black hole, one that must consume indiscriminately to fill that void? A cosmically enormous and appetitively unprecedented force? Black holes are believed to spew things out of their centers? Would you consider your poetry to be this emission blasting out of you center?
yes, i read the one with tyler.
i think that yes, based on my eagerness to do any interview offered to me at any time–thus conveying an eternal love of the sound of my own voice as well as the ephemeral, yet tingly hits of adrenaline garnered from fbook likes– it can be inferred that i am a black hole.
In addition to the suggested narcissism of black-hole-writers, I’m interested in the ways in which our consumption bears significance on our work. In other words, the things I write don’t necessarily belong to me, nor have they ever, but they are altered as a result of being consumed. They are sort of borrowed for processing, then released back into the world in a new shape. Your writing appears to embrace this idea, but in a more complicated way. By constant allusions to organs, you seem to embrace the way in which our organs are within us and are used by us on a functional level, and then transcend that idea. This is less a question than an accusation.
If the interview is valueless, then why are you compromising yourself for it?
i feel confident that my organs are mine to appropriate
No arguments here. Thanks for entertaining me while overcaffeinated and understimulated at work. This felt more like a taking, to me. I even feel a tinge of guilt, like robber’s remorse. Good day Melissa.
we all feel guilt. it’s the htmlgiant comment section. tally ho!
#whore
How is it compromise?
Sounds like it’s being done because Melissa likes to be interviewed. Not like they asked her to wear a silly hat or record a plug for their morning radio show.
(meant to respond to Jereme. Jereme, I hope this reaches you!)
Ah you’ve effectively devalued my interview.
I bet you loved AWP then!
On a less derisive note, I don’t think #whore is apropos since a whore gets dick.
Frank,
Once something is made public, it belongs to the public.
Melissa states she’s participating because the interview has no real value other than to temporarily placate her desire for attention.
In other words, she is compromising her ideas for the sake of virtual nothing, for an illusion of ephemeral care.
I didn’t understand her motivation. Now I do. A little.
It was an earnest question.
I meant this in the context of our discussion.
Just realized it reads like I’m saying Melissa doesn’t ever get dick.
My bad.
–but what Frank said.
You make it sound like Melissa is exactly not compromising her “idea[l]s”: her “desire” is coordinating her action. Where’s the conflict within?
If she were a closet exhibitionist – like, say, someone on the internet anonymously – that would involve “compromise”.
I see chagrin (in the anticipation of failure to get attention) humorized by self-deprecation, but not compromise.
Everyone on the internet is a fucking closet exhibitionist.
Everyone on the internet is anonymous until they endanger their identity by making it public.
Ideas are like children. And now I know what type of father she is.
On a different note, what happened to the old deadgod? The one with the sense of humor.
Melissa’s making something public, which, as you say, gives the public the power to choose to read it or not. She also publicly suspects that the public will mostly not choose to read it.
That’s resignation, but no principle is being “compromised”. (She’s not committed to only seeking attention successfully; she’s committed to seeking attention altogether.)
She’s entitling herself to fail to get what she wants. Do you think that’s self-sabotage? which would be “compromise” indeed.
–because this snippet will probably force the contradiction of its conclusion (maybe a calculation like Franzen’s being despised for – inaccurately, in my view – elsewhere).
That strategery is a little funny.
i’ve asked writers i admire to answer interview questions for my undervisited blog. i didn’t do it to promote the author or myself, but because i was genuinely interested in making a connection between myself and that author. and the blog being a commemoration of that connection.
The public can do a lot more than read it, Deadgod. Theft and misinterpretation of ideas happens daily.
Future readership is meaningless to the discussion. Her resignation isn’t a resignation, but an assumption.
I mentioned principles?
I don’t really care about Franzen or any of the passive-aggressive idol worship happening in the internet lit scene or on htmlgiant.
I’m only interested in my discussion.
Man, I really miss the old deadgod. He had passion and humor. You on the other hand comment like it’s a boring job.
The malaise of htmlgiant, me thinks.
Theft and misinterpretation are irrelevant to the read/ignore distinction, and the comparison to Franzenfreude is, to me, comical.
Melissa says she’s resigned to her interview going unread. Premises: nobody reads what’s at links they “like” on fb; she’ll link her interview on a rarely-read blog to her fb feed. Conclusion: nobody who sees and “like”s her fb link to the interview will read it–but anticipating that won’t stop her from doing the interview and linking to it, damn it! (Premises in argument are assumptions-up-for-testing.)
You said “compromising yourself” and “compromising her ideas”. Did you mean something other than principles??
I’m interested in – and not bored by – your discussion, too–except the parts about me, which I don’t think are about me.
Interview shaming
I feel like this post sums up like 99% of my life
i’ve never been more fascinated in my life
I am sorry I am just reading all of this now!