Literary Clusterfucks 2013

It's funny you mention the sociology of literature because I learned from people who were very much involved in schools and scenes... but what interested me about their work was its mix of high and low culture, radical left political leanings, and equal interest in the abject and the classical. The gossip and shit has always bored me.

I think the only literary clusterfucks that I've even commented on publicly in recent years were regarding people who'd been outed as former Nazis and people who sexually assaulted other people. Otherwise, not worth my time, your prize doesn't mean shit to me if I think your work is shit, I'll keep reading what I want to read, thanks.

Looks like this round is only going to get more involved, judging by this tweet there are more SF/F male artists on the horizon:

I opened my DMs & I've been reading stories. I'm not sharing specific details because those are potential identifiers.

John Ringo
Robert Silverberg
Steven Brust
George RR Martin
Mike Resnick
Chuck Wendig

More follows.

— Ann Aguirre (@MsAnnAguirre) June 25, 2020

A couple of those don't really surprise me, not sure on some of the others.

anything that strays from that can't be marketed

this is broadly true for every facet of publishing, not just experimental poetry written by Black poets, but for everything that is published, bar none. book buyers are a small market these days and the majority of book buyers are notoriously conservative about what they choose to read, sticking to well-defined, easily identified genres almost exclusively. small presses often try to buck this trend and branch out into under-represented genres or experimental books. small presses also die like mayflies.

as a result of this perverse narrowness of interests among book buyers, publishers are extremely reluctant to publish anything by anyone that strays from known, comfortable, easily marketed genres. because the point is to at least break even on a book, and that modest goal is very hard to attain.

Perhaps this would be less of a problem if we stopped fetishizing the book qua object and fully realized the internet's potential for disrupting and fragmenting said 'market', which is a self-proliferating feedback loop if ever there was one.

less of a problem if we stopped fetishizing the book qua object

fwiw, I read printed books only. This is not because I fetishize them. I own a Kindle and it is loaded to the gills with books I might enjoy reading. I ignore them and pick up a book, because I find that printed & bound books are easier to read. Ink on paper is a good medium for looking at words in type. This matters much less for brief pieces that I can read in 20 minutes or less, but it becomes increasingly important to me as a piece reaches book length and my reading times are more like 90 to 120 minutes at a stretch.

I kind of envy those of you who find electronic devices an attractive way to read books. I haven't been able to make that leap.

changing font size helps on bumpy train rides

I prefer printed books myself but the process of turning them into tangible matter is fraught with sociopolitical obstacles. E-books can serve as a useful alternative when those obstacles become needlessly insurmountable.

e-readers are u&k for reading on one's side in bed

I opened my DMs & I've been reading stories. I'm not sharing specific details because those are potential identifiers.

John Ringo
Robert Silverberg
Steven Brust
George RR Martin
Mike Resnick
Chuck Wendig

More follows.
— Ann Aguirre (@MsAnnAguirre) June 25, 2020

Looks like this twitter account is gone.

Whoa, yeah. It's gone. Seems... odd... for that to just disappear.

Nothing just vanishes on the internet.

No, I just mean for it to go from collecting DMs from women who have experienced harassment at cons to being deleted several hours later seems... suspect.

Seeing a couple people on Twitter claiming they heard from her offline and the abuse she was getting in her DMs was so awful she deactivated her account.

Sadly makes sense

i thought this was going to be about nick flynn

I read that essay about Flynn and couldnt really spot where the abuse and grooming was supposed to be.

ooh, go tweet some people about that, i dare you

Lol no thanks. someone else did tho

What a galaxy-brain take. When she uses the term "grooming" she's describing a dinner date and the offer to read over her poems. the essay describes a man who is narcissistic and inconsiderate at worst. The idea that abuse occurred is so far reaching

— Helena Duncan (@helena_duncan_) June 26, 2020

xpost to Aimless: Oh, you're absolutely right, but part of what I was bemoaning is the fact that the small handful of Black writers who do get published by more visible presses are seen as monolithic and entirely representative of what Black writers can do and are doing, a truly tokenizing brain worm that infects even people who should know better.

James Baldwin noted the same tokenizing phenomenon long ago. In the USA it seems even worse for Native American writers than for Blacks.

*sigh*. Yes, I guess I just find its continuation rather disappointing.

As as far as indigenous writers in the US, I think that is changing a bit more, but I'm also in touch with a lot of Indigenous writers because it's one of my main research and personal interests, so my view is probably skewed.

Speaking of Canlit clusterfucks & Benaway, Hal Niedzviecki has taken to Quillette to decry mob rule and cancel culture

mob rule? heavens!

which institutions of legal governance are being overruled here? the NBCC? goodness me! did they do something forbidden by their charter and bylaws?

thwarted the will of the people of the republic of letters, who should revolt and install a new government

A short story about John Boyne in tweets...

Once upon a time there was an Irish writer called John Boyne who wrote a book called “The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas”. It was very successful, bringing John fame and lots of money... pic.twitter.com/dKbyc3COy2

— Helen🧜🏻‍♀️ (@mimmymum) July 19, 2020

^^ thread

Holy heck. What a series of terrible decisions. I don't know how that man could've been offered more opportunities to course-correct, and failed more drastically at each one.

Hmmm

You think it would have gone differently?

I don't like the sound of those Irish libel laws though they sound like the ones we had in UK ... NDAs was it?

Mostly surprised that the Striped Pajamas backlash only happened after the trans book backlash because the concept of that book seems like a Very Bad Idea.

only tangentially literary, but the ortberg family saga is a lot

wow, a lot has happened since I used to read the toast

there's absolutely nothing wrong with the basic premise of TBITSP imo, but he certainly seems like he's being a total arse rn

Before anyone accuses me of not understanding that this book is written from the perspective of a surprised and confused younger brother, reacting to discovering their sibling is trans - I understand that, and it's not what I'm talking about.

— Jay Hulme (@JayHulmePoet) April 15, 2019

Although Hulme makes some good points, I'm not sure the rest of his thread bears this caveat out? I have no interest in reading Boyne's book but the increasingly more widespread assumption that narrative and authorial voices are ultimately indistinguishable from each other rankles me to no end. Not every novel is a roman à clef.

on the other hand i don't think this lad is Nabokov either

white middle class cis dude gets rich writing a book about issues, follows his gravy train without really having the imagination or empathy to transcend his research, gets pissy as fuck when called on this, now *that's* a believable narrative

I've 'taught' BiSP a few times and it's bad at almost every level: contextual, thematic, syntactic. That the language is insipid to the point of invisibility is one thing, but Boyne somehow manages to make the text - in a book about Auschwitz-Birkenau, mind - pivot around reader sympathy for a grieving German family.

It does sound thoroughly mediocre, I'm just pining for a critique that goes beyond 'this book contains objectionable material'. Not a fan of the 'let's ban To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' school of would-be criticism.

Jay Hulme
@JayHulmePoet
·

Apr 15, 2019
Replying to
@JayHulmePoet
The most dangerous part is: Though some of the problematic parts of the book can and will be picked up on by almost anyone, much of the issue lies in the overarching themes, inaccuracies, and stereotypes, which will then be perpetuated by the readers.

This last phrase gives the game away imo, there is zero faith in the reader being able to pick apart the book on their own here. They're responding to the book like it's a meme with inaccurate/libelous messaging circulating on social media (which is no doubt a thing that happens in this age of inaccurate items circulating on social media).

white middle class cis dude gets rich writing a book about issues, follows his gravy train without really having the imagination or empathy to transcend his research, gets pissy as fuck when called on this, now *that's* a believable narrative

This post, by contrast, is just pulsing with imagination and empathy.

Cardamon, empathy for an obvious that like Boyne isn't compulsory, so please STFU

Randall Flagg Chocolate bar
@avalanche_andy
·
Jul 19
Replying to
@mimmymum
I presume his next book will be about Black Lives Matter from the perspective of a cop who hurt his knee while killing a black woman.

"It was then that I really came to understand the anguish of hundreds of years of oppression. My knee really hurt."

brilliantly witty that may be but it's very much not what TBITSP is doing

not that i will die on boyne's hill, as i say he seems to have been something of an arse about this latest scandal, albeit i'd need a more detailed breakdown of why his new book is so cancelled

cardamon i know you enjoy white knighting for the oppressed victims of cancellation but

zero faith in the reader being able to pick apart the book on their own here

these are YA books? i think the level of picking apart one expects from the reader might be slightly different to your conventional unreliable narrator.

also as far as i'm aware there's no indication that Boyne's authorial voices are meant to be unreliable.

also the thread which started this conversation revolves around a series of trans people patiently explaining their problems with his book, based on their own lived experience, and his apparent refusal to tolerate any form of criticism whatsoever.

i'm not even gonna ask why your reaction in these situations always seems to be to try and find a defence for the poor gobshite who's attracted the ire of people they've miscategorised, lied about or misrepresented. it's a boring question, i'm sure you've got your own answers.

clearly as far as defending the poor victim of horrible woke Twitter you're not the only one always at it

been a lot of showing of arses about trans issues on ilx lately

these are YA books? i think the level of picking apart one expects from the reader might be slightly different to your conventional unreliable narrator.

This is a fair point btw, although I do take issue with the implicit notion that YA readers are incapable of coping with ambiguity and therefore need to be force-fed a straightforward morality by novel's end.

Fwiw Boyne's rejection of any kind of dialogue post hoc is the most disturbing part of this beef.