Literary Clusterfucks 2013

not Roald Dahl but thought this was interesting re: literary scams. PANK was the first place to reject me, back in 2009 when it was a legit online magazine. wild story

https://litmagnews.substack.com/p/showcase-magazine-ephemera-c-and

wow that's ... depressing ... but more interesting than the dahl thing

I really loved Merve Emre on Dahl in the New York Review a few months back:

Reading Dahl’s books to my children in swift succession over the past few months has reminded me of Samuel Johnson’s complaint about the comedy of Gulliver’s Travels: “When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest.” Easy it may be, but the results are very wide-ranging indeed. Dahl’s fictions of scale are the stupidest and crudest I have encountered. They have none of the unearthly enchantments of Grimms’ Fairy Tales or Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle; none of the madcap philosophical sophistication of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth or Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, whose title character is forever stretching out or shutting up like a telescope; none of the intricate, if somewhat tiresome, world building of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books or Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree; none of the genuine ethical and political complexity of the three greatest children’s authors, Edith Nesbit, C.S. Lewis, and Edward Eager. With few exceptions, size, in Dahl’s imagination, is nothing more than a proxy for force. Largeness indicates the power to manipulate and coerce; smallness indicates vulnerability to punishment and annihilation that must be overcome through trickery. Even his happiest endings left my children listless and a little depressed, as if they intuited that what had seemed at first to be the pursuit of justice in an unjust world was nothing more intriguing than a game of bloody knuckles, a theater of schoolboy cruelty.

There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with cruelty in art; in children’s literature, it has its place, particularly when it responds to the physical and emotional cruelties inflicted upon children, among the most powerless and casually brutalized creatures in the world. Yet the sadism of Dahl’s plots and the grotesquerie of his characters contain not a single germ of critical self-reflection, not one gesture of liberation, not a drop of pity or compassion, no matter how begrudgingly they may be tendered, in life as in fiction. The cruelty of his villains begets a reciprocal cruelty in their victims. He makes his children small then big; he makes his adults big then small; and he traps his shape-shifters and his young readers in a fun house of dirty, depthless mirrors. This is how one enters into “the marvellous world of Roald Dahl,” as the BBC called it in a 2016 documentary celebrating his enduring contributions to British culture.

Can someone give me a one sentence summary of YA Twitter. Is it as toxic as I've heard? Read quite a few articles mentioning it last night

Meet Brandon Sanderson. Brandon published two books in the time it took our writer to finish this story. Brandon's fantasy writing made him $55 million last year. Brandon doesn't think he's a very good writer.

📷: Michael Friberg | https://t.co/GczMykmqeC pic.twitter.com/CZebKi1r9N

— WIRED (@WIRED) March 23, 2023

I don't know if this counts as a literary clusterfuck but a lot of people are angry about this profile of fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. The profile is not polite about Sanderson or his fans or his community and I understand why people would be offended, but I thought it was an interesting article, more interesting than a more diplomatic equivalent would have been.

Sanderson has responded on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/brandonsanderson/comments/1200dzk/on_the_wired_article/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

But he also feels sincere in his attempt to try to understand. While he legitimately seems to dislike me and my writing, I don't think that's why he came to see me. He wasn't looking for a hit piece--he was looking to explore the world through his writing. In that, he and I are the same, and I respect him for it, even if much of his tone seems quite dismissive of many people and ideas I care deeply about.

I think this is correct and people calling it a hit-piece are wrong. I generally dislike articles where you can tell the writer is consciously trying to cut the subject down to size, but this felt more like a genuine attempt to engage with something the writer has a reflexive distain towards - it can't be fitted into a hit-piece/puff-piece dichotomy which is maybe why people are so wound up about it?

everybody calls anything that isn't PR fluff a hitpiece now, it's part of the cycle

vocabulary deteriorates at such a faster rate in the social media era

this piece could have been three words, "saunderson is mormon." the end.

looking at the article I'm mostly taken aback at how he took in 44 million on Kickstarter to publish 4 secret books he'd written. Does it really cost 11 million dollars to publish a book?

the article is definitely more unfluffy than the average non-PR fluff piece, I think, but I also believe that people are misreading it.

I liked this bit which, read in the context of an earlier account of how he writes non-stop for hours a day and doesn't do much revision or rewriting, makes Sanderson sound like a human chatGPT

Turns out Sanderson doesn’t seem to feel pain of any kind, even emotional. On roller coasters, he’s dead-faced, while his wife is shrieking. “It’s sick and wrong,” she says, smiling. She likes to say she married an android. For his part, Sanderson actually, at this moment, looks pained. He might not feel, he says, but his characters do. They agonize and cry and rejoice and love. That’s one of the reasons he writes, he says: to feel human.

also, man, aren't there enough mediocre 800 page fantasy novels already published to satisfy these readers?

are secret books that you buy and then you have to buy another subscription to unlock the text within it

the dream of hypertext

I just thought the piece was poorly written. It left me with no curiosity about Sanderson, whom I'd never heard of before reading it, and it didn't make me want to read anything more by its author. It was a failure — if I was the guy's editor, I would not have published it.

are secret books that you buy and then you have to buy another subscription to unlock the text within it

― hootenanny-soundtracking clusterfucks about milking cows (Neanderthal)

disrupting gnosticism

I’ve read 17 of the actual books. Or maybe it’s 20.

I think the 17-20 Sanderson books might have broken him.

I wouldn't call it a hit-piece exactly, but I don't think it's good. Way too self-preoccupied, and I hate this kind of strained conclusion that barely says anything.

I suspect there will be big announcements soon. There have to be. Sanderson is bigger than ever. A good writer? Who knows. What I do know, now, is this: So many of us mistake sentences for story, but story is the thing. Things happening. Characters changing. Surprise endings.

Jean Auel wrote such wretched prose I've never been able to get through more than two paragraphs of it. But she sold millions of copies of her books and my mom loved her stuff. Presumably her appeal was similar to Sanderson's. I'll never know because I can't be arsed.

IT’S NOT THAT Brandon Sanderson can’t write. It’s more that he can’t not write. Graphomania is the name of the condition: the constant compulsion to get words out, down, as much and as quickly as possible. The concept of a vacation confuses Sanderson, he once said, because for him the perfect vacation is more time to write—vocation as vacation. His schedule is budgeted down to the minute, months out, to maximize the time he spends, rather counter-ergonomically, on the couch, typing away. Most days, he wakes up at 1 pm, exercises, and writes for four hours. Break for the wife and kids. Then he writes for four more. After that he plays video games or whatever until 5 am. A powerful sleeping pill is all that works, finally, to get him, and the voices in his head, to shut up.

Of his own work, Sanderson has said: “I detest rewriting,” “I write for endings,” and “I write to relax.” It shows. He writes, by one metric, at a sixth-grade reading level.

I'm interested in the idea that he just bashes this stuff out, it reminds me of this Bob and Ray skit where they're interviewing a guy who's written a 1000 page history of the United States that's full of errors such as Abe Lincoln driving to his inauguration in a motor car, and he says something like 'well, when I sit down at my typewriter I just keep going until I get finished, y'know'. I heard that this is how Woody Allen makes his movies - writes the script on one go with minimal redrafting, shoots it quickly in as few takes as possible, and then the next day he's writing the script for the next one. Allen also acknowledges that he's not very good at making movies just like Sanderson acknowledges he's not very good at writing. I wonder if this style of creation will become more widespread in the future as the distinction between 'professional' and 'hobbyist' artist breaks down?

I wonder if this style of creation will become more widespread in the future as the distinction between 'professional' and 'hobbyist' artist breaks down?

you mean, breaks down even further than it already has?

this piece could have been three words, "saunderson is mormon." the end.

― ꙮ (map), Friday, March 24, 2023 11:53 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

heh

lol!!!

Presumably her appeal was similar to Sanderson's.

Neanderthal sex?

no thanks i'm busy

apparently this author also teaches creative writing (at BYU)

I'm looking at the "Popular Highlights in this book" thing on amazon that shows what people highlighted in their kindle app for his books and shaking my head slowly

Regarding Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, my uncredited work is in the book. "Solution" is, by the author's own admission, a take on my game Train. She uses the same theme, gameplay patterns, releases the game at the same location (MIT) ... more

— Brenda Romero (@br) March 22, 2023

Update: The Washington Post spoke with Knopf, publisher of Tomorrow x3. They stand by Zevin and are apparently unwilling to credit me noting, ". . . the only games listed in the author’s acknowledgments are video games." Board games don't count? https://t.co/voVNyBq9dM

— Brenda Romero (@br) March 24, 2023

The object of the game is for players to fill a boxcar with tokens and get it to the other side of a board. Train, too, contains a grim reveal: Players eventually read cards informing them that the tokens represent Jews and that the boxcars were headed toward concentration camps.

Makes u think

a clusterfuck within a clusterfuck!

With all sincerity, it would be good if there was a way to support your work that didn't involve donating to an organisation that arguably provides political cover for apartheid.

Is there another option?

— Kyle Spencer (@kyleville) March 24, 2023

is this is a publicity stunt?

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love," delayed her new novel, set in 20th century Siberia, indefinitely after online backlash condemned the book’s publication while Russia is at war with Ukraine. https://t.co/nDBum1b75i

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 12, 2023

Yes.

a weird one

has naomi wolf responded at all to naomi klein's new book, which apparently uses the former as an example of descending into madness?

https://x.com/Birdyword/status/1398574511826497537?s=20

hmm that was supposed to be just the image, but I imagine her response is the same

naomi: well, yeah

i like what i have read of the klein book. personal, speculative, and even experimental. a different mode than i am used to her writing in.

made me think of this: https://www.amherstlecture.org/perry2007/Borges%20and%20I.pdf

i respect the commitment

absolutely despise it when humanities academics talk about "loving books." you shouldn't love books and you shouldn't demand anyone else to love books, it is wildly inappropriate. just fundamentally not the correct way to do serious work in the archive

— i read a book, and i liked it (@drumm_colin) October 3, 2023

His commitment to arguing with every single commenter is something else

I lolled

Had you opened more books, you'd have learned "eros" is a Greek word (the Latin translation is "amor") for a kind of love, and also that love is also "philia" and "agape", which are not the same with eros. Thinking love is only eros only shows you should enagage books more.

— Alexandru Mircea (@Alex__Mircea) October 4, 2023

This guy is a researcher in monetary history. I wonder why doesn’t love books.

I think there’s a kernel of a defensible point in there but it’s not at all represented in what he’s actually written

I lolled

🐦[Had you opened more books, you’d have learned "eros" is a Greek word (the Latin translation is "amor") for a kind of love, and also that love is also "philia" and "agape", which are not the same with eros. Thinking love is only eros only shows you should enagage books more.
— Alexandru Mircea (@Alex__Mircea) October 4, 2023🕸]🐦

i followed the colin for a while, it's a fun academic nutter account. had to unfollow after a while tho he's just way too intense. i don't pretend to understand (or care to learn about) his schtick but i think "monetary history" is kind of a misnomer, he's mostly a philosophy humanities guy who reads old books

From his thread I learned that everything you don't agree with is "cop shit"

Fellas, I heard that liking books is subconscious (at best) racism and erasure of indigenous epistemologies, wyd?

It is certainly exclusionary of pre-literate and pre-verbal societies

I nominate the second sentence of that initial tweet for ILB board description.

When someone questioned him about what archives he was talking about he was like, you know, all the books in the world