Literary Clusterfucks 2013

it's a bit blood sausage in'it?

It makes me cringe when I hear other Canadians use it tbh.

Idk don't want to be sanctimonious about this stuff. I just want to try to be as unintentionally dickish as possible, like checking my use of "Dude" as a generic term, because many people see it as being gendered.

Isn't this partly generational too? Zoomers' uses of 'dude' and 'guy' appear to be more gender-neutral on average. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

one of the positive aspects of the glasgow dialect is the plural "yous". would be helpful if standard english had an equivalent

I grew up in Illinois where "you guys" was the standard; moved to Georgia in high school where I tried to adopt "y'all" as a solution to the genderedness of "you guys"; later moved back to Chicago and reverted because all the women I worked with said "you guys."

Now I live in Montreal and mostly feel confused. Saying "you all" feels laboured to me, I'm not fond of "folks" (and find "folx" perplexing, plus it's only textual). Basically I wish "y'all" wasn't perceived as cringe, because I think I could switch back to it but I certainly don't have a southern accent.

i saw somebody use "nonbinary gentlefolk" recently and honestly i'm still angry

love to use "y'all"

Since I know you're originally from the US, I wouldn't cringe if I heard you say 'y'all'.

xp

What's a non-US version though?

Imo we need to bring back 'thou'. Problem solved.

Merci, pom !

The Goodreads 5 star scale is tough, if a book is not so bad it gets set aside without being finished that’s an automatic 3+, but 5 should be reserved for truly special works. So 80% of the books I rate (via Kindle prompt) get 4 stars.

Punitive 1-star review-swarms are pretty shitty - the book is currently at 1.81 (and even if it was just the cable installer story and 300 blank pages it's better than that).

Anyway here's the Blake Bailey story

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/21/publisher-halts-philip-roth-book-amid-sexual-abuse-claims-against-biographer

I had never heard of this person so I googled and her book is about being a cult survivor apparently - the bad writing takes thread is funny in a o_0 way but idk kind of a bummer (and goodreads sucks)

I was actually also checking if she was a YA author, partly because the writers who have the unhinged self-important tantrums that end up itt always seem to be for some reason but also because of her “the joke will be on these assholes when they have to read my book in school” thing which delusions of grandeur aside suggests she thinks the reviewers are all children

I mean that's what makes it a good burn!

Read one way, maybe, but the self clowning corncob nature of the rest of the meltdown kinda suggests more that she just wanted to express “my book will be taught in schools, I’ll show everybody” but didn’t think through what she was actually saying tbh

yeah pretty certain 'they' is referring to a different group of people than 'these assholes'

authors angry at getting 4 star reviews seems part of the same disease that makes legions of stans swoop down on reviewers for giving their faves' new album a 7.5 or 8.0

I had never heard of this person so I googled and her book is about being a cult survivor apparently

This was the detail that stuck with me, and how there doesn’t seem to be any consideration (on Twitter anyway) that this trauma could affect, say, how someone behaves when their work of several years becomes public. God help anyone who is, say, bipolar and has a Twitter account when that happens.

Any author or public figure who gives a shit about such things is a fool, imo. One of the best Goodreads reviews of one of my own works was accompanied by three stars. Who the fuck cares? It's a funneling site for Amazon.

This was the detail that stuck with me, and how there doesn’t seem to be any consideration (on Twitter anyway) that this trauma could affect, say, how someone behaves when their work of several years becomes public. God help anyone who is, say, bipolar and has a Twitter account when that happens.

I think it's clear by now that social media has a detrimental effect on everyone's mental health, but when the inciting incident is "scornful anger at people for posting enthusiastic positive reviews of your work" I think it's kinda on the author to have the self-knowledge to hand the promotion keys to an assistant.

Roughly how many assistants do you think this first-time author has - like, to the nearest ten

Well apparently she has someone she pays to block ppl for her

As an East Coaster, I would like to see "youse" achieve the social acceptability of "y'all."

"yo knuckleheads" is preferred in enlightened settings

I knew a Scouse guy who'd say "alright, bollocks?" by way of collective greeting, clusterfuck solved

I doubt Hough has a legion of assistants, but one would hope there is an editor of publicist in her life that might help steer off Twitter for a few days, especially when she doubled down in some rather unfortunate ways.

I love Goodreads for recommending stuff based on the books I've read, found so much I'd otherwise have never heard of

As an East Coaster, I would like to see "youse" achieve the social acceptability of "y'all."

― but also fuck you (unperson), Thursday, April 22, 2021 9:23 AM (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Why stop there? Just go with "yinz"!

one would hope there is an editor of publicist in her life that might help steer off Twitter for a few days

Judging by the amount she (and other writers) tweet each day, it seems twitter has replaced alcohol as the author's vice

(ha, just noticed my post could have used an editor)

Roughly how many assistants do you think this first-time author has - like, to the nearest ten.

If having a social media presence is important to her success, she can afford to pay someone for it. If it isn't, then she can just keep her account private. This idea that people HAVE to be on every social media platform is enabling imo.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure all authors are encouraged to be very active on social media these days.

Yeah, of course they are, that's the pull of the whole thing. So it's important to know how to play the game or to refuse to play it.

I mean I hadn’t heard of the book until now so

If this was Mailer or Vidal, people would just laugh off calling Goodreads users nerds.

lol yeah no one's ever thought norman mailer was an insufferable asshole

I bet Ray Bradbury would have been a hilarious Twitter presence, that dude was all-time crabby

Yeah, her book is published by a Random House imprint and is getting a massive promotion -- there is assuredly a paid employee of RH who does this and only this who is giving her extremely fine-grained guidance right now (though whether she takes it is up to her, I don't think the publicists at the publishing houses actually ventriloquize tweets for the author)

My experience in the publishing industry is that "massive promotion" is way less than you think it would be, that publicists are way overworked and give the most cursory assistance to all but their 2-3 biggest name clients, and that authors are pretty much expected to whore themselves as hard as possible. She's gonna be mostly out there on her own, and the only time the publisher's gonna jump in with both feet is if/when it's time to say, "Oh, we had no idea she held Grotesque Opinion Z or had done X Horrible Thing — we disavow her and are pulling the book from shelves."

FWIW, I've followed her for a few years, happily pre-ordered the book and found it a very funny, sad and thoughtful collection of pieces; I think having it be individual essays rather than an autobiography as such was pretty smart. While I half saw things were a bit active these past few days I have such a busy Twitter feed to start with -- and have seen actual medical-intervention-level manic phases happen in real time on there -- I can't say I was noticing something terrible. I think I mostly saw a post about a donuts?

Seems like it was spread out over a few days and went through the typical process of tweets being deleted, her account going private, then coming back to double down.

I haven't read the book, but I did like her cable installer essay among other things, so at first I was willing to be somewhat charitable to it being a bit of a meltdown. But when she came back and started blocking accounts for people who just typed her name without @ing her and then doubled down on comparing unfavorable reviews to being sexually assaulted, it got a lot more difficult to take a charitable view towards the whole thing.

Yeah, it was the comparison to assault as well as some tweets from a few years ago (taking on someone with "bi" in their bio for appropriating "dyke," which she still considered an epithet) that seemed to escalate things.

Meanwhile (I know we're juggling dual clusterfucks here):

“personally flawed but brilliant writer who wants to control his image so badly that he chooses a caddish sycophant over an admiring but clear-eyed peer to write his bio, which bio then further damages his image after he’s dead” is so neatly ironic it could be early Roth

— Phil Christman🌹 (@phil_christman) April 22, 2021

Yes, I was going to say, this twist feels straight out of a Roth novel anyway.

I had only really started reading Roth in the last few years and was looking forward to a bio about him but, uh, I don't think it will be this one.

Roughly how many assistants do you think this first-time author has - like, to the nearest ten

Is the argument here that she is lying about hiring an assistant specifically to namesearch twitter and block randos talking about her? Because I agree that it is plausible, but disagree that it is a defence.

The anti-Hough tweeting seems a lot meaner than the actual Hough tweeting.

Most authors don't get assistants and publicists! What a ridiculous idea.

To be clear, when I say "publicist", I'm assuming there is someone at a Random House imprint who has at least some small role in publicizing works by their authors (as overworked as they may be).

She's not "most authors." Her book is a top-10 NYT bestseller this week. She doesn't have her own personal publicist but there is definitely a publicist at Penguin Random House paying close attention to her book.

Speaking as someone with a close friend who's put out four thrillers with multiple cover redesigns and big-name author pullquotes on the front -- he gets about £200/book for publicity to handle himself, which, pre-pandemic, was basically just a cheque for release party wine and crisps.

You don't need to be "given" assistants and publicists to have someone else do your social media.

Like this came up because someone suggested her behaviour was the result of trauma. It doesn't seem so wildly off the mark to me to suggest that if your mental health is in a condition where you react wrathfully at four star reviews, it would probably be a good idea to either outsource your social media presence or, y'know, just not post. The idea that it's a healthier state of affairs for the rest of the internet to tip-toe around this one writer because exposure just doesn't seem sustainable.

xposts