Literary Clusterfucks 2013

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:

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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.

that dude recently got into NYU's writing program btw

the most promising young american author is TAO LIN

The tagline on the cover of RIchard Yates is "what constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?"

― Treeship, Thursday, October 2, 2014 8:26 PM (Yesterday)

ugh this is gross; can't we all just consensually enjoy poppers

yeah

pretending there is such a thing as "a generation with no rules" is just silly

Think that was the original tagline to _Story of the Eye_

The fact that it's my generation he's describing is very weird. Nihilism as a central preoccupation, even as an adversary position, seems so 19th century.

i think it's back. this david foster wallace essay appealed to many people:

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day
trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is
no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice
we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing
some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, be
it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or
some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything
else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if
they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have
enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body
and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time
and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally
grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified
as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great
story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will
need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.
Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid,
a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing
about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that
they're unconscious. They are default settings.

as a secular person, i am uncomfortable with the appeal to the supernatural. but i think what lin's books do at their best is describe what it's like for people who, through arrogance or confusion, have rejected all given values and try to fashion new ad hoc codes for themselves. his early blog writings are all like, ethical treatises, and books like richard yates describe the monstrous ways these ideas found expression in his real life. so yeah, i think this is nihilism... the idea that you can just make it up as you go along, and stay true only to your own "conscience," which doesn't mean anything if you don't have moral intuition which i guess lin might actually not have.

i feel like david brooks writing this shit. but really, there's still such a thing as feeling lost and right now people are more reluctant than ever to steer lost people back on correct paths. this is probably a net good, as nothing is more dangerous than certainty. but uncertainty carries dangers too.

it's hard to formulate this, but i think this question is relevant now than other times because people are offered more choices on how to think, how to live, etc. i am thinking of kierkegaard and the idea that the moment of choice (which discloses our freedom) is a moment of anxiety. while it's probably good that there isn't set patterns for life, firmly established for us -- a fact that is constricting -- the nightmare described in taipei of spending so much fucking time absorbed in one's thoughts and choices is also constricting.

<3 dfw but that's bullshit, or at least extraordinarily one-sided, regarding a side he's projecting

i can't really speak to your connection to lin's books -- i've not read them and am unlikely to now -- but why is it so difficult to simply treat people well? it doesn't take religion. the fact that modern society sucks and the internet is alienating doesn't make it impossible.

i've been taking (prescribed) mind-altering drugs for more than half of tao lin's life and can almost certainly drink him under the table. yet i've managed to refrain from fucking (and fucking up) 16-year-olds. it's simply not that difficult to be a decent person, no matter how often one cries nihilism and alienation.

yeah, i wasn't excusing him morally and don't want to be seen even minimally to be doing that. this whole thing though has been a wake up call for me to remember that artists are people and don't just exist in some sort of hypothetical space where they can explore the extremities of the human condition without consequence. like, i read richard yates in 2011 and just thought it was a novel, even knowing it had "autobiographical elements", and wasn't as disturbed as i should have been.

but anyway, i think there is a lot to that dfw quote. everyone's responsible for being a decent person, but our responsibilities to others can become occluded when we spend too much time absorbed in ourselves, which is really easy to do now. i wouldn't blame any of lin's irl actions on this, but in the book there is a connection between the characters' sense of moral vertigo and their sense of alienation and i think this is why his work was described as "nihilistic", a term jmm found to be a strange buzzword in 2014

lol that is some srs half ass shit dfw

it's cfw in his c.s. lewis mode, it's all right, it's got a tang to it

dfw, even

He went to Amherst, after all.

i don't think what he is saying is too different from this:

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

― lag∞n, Thursday, October 2, 2014 3:32 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fu

lol

on the one hand, Treeship otm, OTOH, Wallace is p clearly wanting to SAY SOMETHING WISE whereas lagoon hedges his bets and preemptively defends against charges of self-seriousness with an "or w/e" style which does age a little better than grafs with lines like "it's the truth"

artists are people and don't just exist in some sort of hypothetical space where they can explore the extremities of the human condition without consequence.

His being an abusive and cruel person/partner has nothing to do with anything as elevated as EXPLORING THE HUMAN CONDITION. Abusers are much alike no matter how heady and academically admired: narcissistic, anti-social, self-centered, manipulative, the lot.

lagoon wasn't giving a commencement speech xp

io, obviously. i was talking about not really taking the "autobiographical" stuff seriously beyond just being a marketing pitch. it's one of the grimmest books i've ever read.

"haley joel osment" -- the lin stand-in -- is clearly a vile predator. nobody who read it would think differently. but i and a lot of people liked to believe in a separation between author and character, even though dating a person that young is by itself very much out of line in my opinion

The only choice we get is what to worship.

But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

Hmm.

I don't feel much provoked by DFW's thing since it seems to me his "pretty much everything else" hardly covers anything. He discards a couple of clearly not very good sources of meaning, but those he mentions hardly begin to exhaust the space of possibilities. It's a big universe out there.

http://liferoar.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/stop-denying-and-unseeing-rape-subculture/

Rape subculture in “alternative” communities is often doubly insidious because our individual and group identities are molded precisely around an idea that we are not that. We are not dumb jocks; we’re poetry freaks! We’re intellectuals! We know the language of feminism! We voted for Barack Obama! We’re vegans! We’re artists! We’re anti-authoritarians! We’re liberal hippies! We’re Buddhists! We’re alternative! And it is precisely this psychological investment people have in being “different” and “alternative” that makes rape subculture all that much more important to be aware of.