Literary Clusterfucks 2013

maybe religion will save us (not unserious, 'religion' needs unpacking. panentheistic revolution bros n sisses)

i think what interests me most about these two cases is that these aren't ignorant redneck high school football players who never learned that rape was wrong. these are members of the alt-lit community who are heavily educated in contemporary social justice themes + ideas. the first dude actually name-drops the patriarchy in his apology. it makes me feel like the problem isn't the lack of education, but the lack of ethics/morality/empathy/humanity.

― Mordy, Thursday, October 2, 2014 3:14 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They're also steeped in the literary tradition of damaged antiheros doing terrible things and writing thinly-veiled books about it and getting praise for their honesty.

honesty itself venerated uber alles

what did walter benjamin say abt history

it's a crying angel flying backwards?

maybe religion will save us (not unserious, 'religion' needs unpacking. panentheistic revolution bros n sisses)

― Ƹ༑Ʒ (imago), Thursday, October 2, 2014 3:24 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah its interesting me an mordy are two of the more religious regulars around here thinking the same abt this, i feel like a lot of the time religion can lean a lil too heavy on the personal morality plays while ignoring or reenforcing structural/societal issues but at the same time we all do have an internal life that we have to relate to and our contemporary culture is so massively extroverted that it does a poor job of dealing w people on that level and often makes them feel like they dont matter or arent good enough or w/e

great post :)

:)

where's magill with the kool aid

this is bigger than Literary Clusterfucks tbf, its like the entire point of it all. as solved on ilx

it fees like a culmination of ilx 4.0 alright

before the unbanning

i also want to know where magill is with the kool aid

feel like its kinda weird too how people so invented in the concept of structural injustice are also so into rubbernecking these individual cases, like is tao lin literal human garbage or is he a product of an unjust society

Yeah this is an excellent discussion. The specificity of experience is (necessarily) lost when talking about any type of politics, yet it's inescapable for individuals, who must some way or some how construct an ethical code for themselves. In Tao Lin's early blog posts, he tried to do this via Schopenhauer and the principle of "minimizing harm," but his novels this decade have been preoccupied with the collapse of this system, and the paradoxically joyless hedonism -- walking death -- that lay at the other end. The fact that he might be a literal moral monster complicates this in a way I am not sure how to process

might?

he seems like an emotionless asshole

just from that Jezebel article alone

any kind of tap dancing around this is bullshit

and how does it make you feel to judge him in that way waterface

it's really not important how i feel

it doesn't feel good to be honest but i never liked him as a writer anyway

surely waterface is picking at treesh here who unfortunately was ilx's resident tao lin stan. i don't think your feelings necessarily need to be complicated by this treesh - i mean, surely this isn't the first fiction author whose work you've found meaningful and later you discovered to have horrific moral flaws? like my fave novel of all time is prob Dead Souls and gogol was a voracious antisemite

ok he's a terrible cunt cool

can we get back to saving the collective soul pls

(lol I'm feeling better about Peter Hammill's drivel outburst now)

well if anything good will have come of all this

wins how do u derive ur moral outlook

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/projects/18691/photo-main.jpg?1397760312

(exponent)moral outlook^(exponent - 1)

Xp mordy I love dead souls too. Gogol is similar to Lin in that his moral confusion is right there on the surface and part of what makes the book compelling. Gogol was less self aware though: he aimed (I think) for moral cohesion in his epic satire of Russia, while Tao Lin's novels almost satirize the impossibility of that kind of clarity. The tagline on the cover of RIchard Yates is "what constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?"

Like, idk about you, but I think the failure of gogol's project is what makes it a masterpiece, something he probably dimly glimpsed with his overemphasis on the unnerving "falseness" of social relations in Russia, the creeping unease that threatens to transform the farce into a nightmare. Deep down, i don't think gogol believed slavic nationalism to be a cure for this ineluctable quality of his experience

Sorry: massive tangent. Back to Lin, i think he is always at least nominally satisfied with nihilism; even as he describes it as unsatisfying, there isn't a real "yearning for meaning" there. Maybe people can't live like that and that's why my mom's always bugging me to go back to church

Has Vintage Books printed an official statement? Just curious what approach they'll take.

feel like its kinda weird too how people so invented in the concept of structural injustice are also so into rubbernecking these individual cases

people rubberneck for different reasons, but for me there's a (not at all healthy) element of magical thinking involved. "i need to learn everything about what happened so i can make sure it never happens to me." how can i react "correctly" if a dude i thought was chill tries to harass or assault me. how would i talk about it after the fact so people would believe me instead of dismissing me. if i'm a victim how do i be "the good victim." what would i do if the person held a measure of power over my career (i'm a chick with publishing ambitions, so this case and the ed champion case hit close to home). keep silent: well, X Y and Z kept silent and now people are saying they're complicit in the victimization of others. speak up: a deluge of unwanted attention and the risk of repercussions, either professional or just the normal threats a woman gets when she uses social media to say something controversial. etc etc, endless shitty calculus.

it's fucked up, and i recognize that it's the kind of thinking that contributes to a culture of victim-blaming. i would hopefully never lead a woman or a member of a vulnerable minority to think they have to live up to these "standards" my mind keeps trying to create for itself. but it's really tempting to find comfort in the delusion that you can sherlock-holmes your way out of structural injustice and violence.

i also recognize that i often take comfort in people's public displays of rebuke/hostility toward abusers ("literal human garbage" etc). stridency wasn't a part of my toolkit growing up; my automatic impulse in communication is to be light-footed and conciliatory. so stridency and righteousness feel powerful to me, like reclaiming something forbidden. there's this (reductive) sense that the other side has always done it, so if i see my side doing it, that means the cultural tide is turning in our favor. it doesn't jibe with the framework of structural inequality or even the rules of effective argument, but sometimes i just don't care. i'm reading the tea leaves, looking for any sign that things are improving to make myself feel better.

that is a super well considered reply thank you, not sure im up to comprehensively responding to it but just wanted to say that what i was trying to say by rubbernecking was a pretty specific thing and doesnt really include most of what youre saying, like if something makes people legit mad imho fwiw its cool if they express that likewise with all sorts of other reactions

theres just this thing and maybe u have to be on twitter a bunch or read gawker to get sick of it, and maybe in the context of sexual misconduct isnt the best to talk abt it, cause it extends to like startup owners who do some intemperate or gauche or w/e thing, then theres this reaction thats all wow this is the worst person in the world which is typical internet hyperbole, i just feel like when it gets to that kneejerk level the hyperbole is too frivolous like these are actually serious issues that should be treated as such not just judged w this drive by moral grandstanding then on to the next idk

fwiw i feel like with the edward champion incident something good came out of it in that he was someone in a position of power who was pretty clearly abusing that power and it looks like he got put down, thats constructive and obvs a lot of people went out on a limb to make it happen

http://htmlgiant.com/behind-the-scenes/htmlgiants-last-day-is-october-24th/#disqus_thread

the main (i think) alt lit blog announced it's closing today. here's an explanation for why in the comments:

Avatar
MFBomb LiteraryCircus • 27 minutes ago

Postmodernism has nothing to do with it. Tao Lin does. HTMLGIANT hitched itself to the alt lit wagon. Commenters as far back as 2010 warned that alt lit was a juvenile fad that wouldn't last, but they were called get off my lawn types. They warned that alt lit's nihilism would be its eventual downfall, and they were dismissed as haters. I remember one commenter on here saying something like, "I can't wait until alt lit buries the old guard," whatever that means. How'd that work out?

Lin's last book wasn't as successful as expected. Now dude's facing rape charges. STD, Trull, Smith, were all exposed as sexual abusers too.

I'm not shocked that this nihilistic scene is dealing with numerous rape charges. I was never fooled by the lovey-dovey, effeminate, boyish masculinity of its male members that attempted to mask predatory behavior.

If you're a younger writer under the age of 25, I'd advise you to steer clear of scenes or cliques. Bury your head in books while the cool kids fry their brains on prescription drugs and write shitty poetry that would make Jim Morrison blush. You'll win in the end.

good advice for anyone tbh

is that actually an "explanation why"

Nope

nihilism is a really poor substitute for profundity

Writing poetry after alt lit is barbaric.

Lol

Between this situation and the PRR guy, there seems to be a connection between these male alt lit writers and an attraction to teenage girls that is disturbing and also not something I've thought about as someone who basically likes this kind of neo-confessional writing. I would be interested in reading an analysis of this... i think it has to do with the memoirist's interest in arresting time and a subsequent fetishization of youth. There is something in this sensibility that leads to objectifying and exploiting women and I think it goes beyond the scene being a "boy's club."

Regardless, i'm only reading women novelists for the next few months at least.

here's my analysis: these dudes are developmentally-stunted predators who can't countenance the idea of a relationship with someone their own age

and you all laughed at a.o. scott...

Tavi doesn't fit naturally into that picture.

Yeah i guess it's just woody allen syndrome: the exploitative narcissist who thinks his shortcomings as a human are not only harmless but charming.

Xp

PRR guy sorta describes crushing on tavi when she was 15.

There's a fairly large gulf between hinting that you might have had a crush on someone when they were fifteen and being in an allegedly abusive, controlling relationship with them. Tavi is an 18 yr old with agency and already a more feted cultural figure than the PRR guy is ever likely to be. Tao Lin appears to have chosen someone vulnerable, through age and other factors, to exploit. Comparison with PRR, other than the more general point that a fair percentage of guys from all background will date teenagers if they can get away with it, seems forced.

No doubt. Probably unfair to compare them.

basic rundown of re abuse in scenes: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/228916/on-sexism-sexual-assault-and-the-threat-of-the-non-bro/

I think a lot of the reason sexism, misogyny, assault and other problems are able to fester and grow in these communities is because there are women out there who have more of a vested interest in protecting these communities from criticism than in protecting other women.

I think another problem is that they are intertwined not only socially, but professionally. Your friends aren’t just your friends, they’re your contemporaries. If you make too much noise, draw too much attention to things that make the community look bad, ruffle feathers–it doesn’t just mean losing your social circle, it could mean messing up your career.

i've honestly never heard of a radical and/or arts scene free of abuse and assault. really any decent-sized social grouping made up of people in their 20s/early 30s, with the possible exception of some religious groups (though never totally, obv), will have perpetrators. i'm partial to thinking that monsters will always find their way in and they'll always have different sorts of protection, different ideologies only lead to different excuses, etc.

the biggest figure in the writing "scene" in my college and its surrounding towns was an abusive rapist (and all-around asshole to everyone who couldn't give him smth tbh) and it became exhausting trying to communicate this to people and hear them either make excuses, or act sympathetic/"shocked" only to completely ignore it immediately afterwards. it's not like a college-town poet is ever going to be important enough to defend for any reason! he wasn't even that good! but scenes become bubbles, and the people within them start to treat them like homes. protect them because they protect you, etc. a good quote from that piece:

It’s also a lot harder than calling out Rush Limbaugh, because none of us have to live with Rush Limbaugh.