I feel this way about books but also stand-up comedy. Yes, some stand-ups punch down in a particularly egregious way and some repeatedly insist on targeting the same group in a manner that is simply unfunny (think Dave Chappelle's trans jokes), but the vast majority of them are being particularly clever and the wokest of woke simply don't understand beyond the surface of the joke.
FDB: Are the references to Bukowski meant to be distinct from the references to CITR or are you thinking of Salinger? (It doesn't matter terribly either way to your argument of course.)
Distinct, as in "within the same discursive universe as CITR," but I immediately realized on rereading the post that people wouldn't grasp that so I added a third reference.
I really think more people should read Bordieu. No taste preferences of any kind are ever innocent and are an intricate part of how the class structure of society organizes and legitimates itself. It could never be another way. That these opinions are often expressed by those with 300k educations is in no way a coincidence. Taste is habitus and they are merely following that same habitus in the field of books. Cultural capital is very real, and people develop and invest in it precisely because it gives them the ability to dictate taste to everyone else. The field of culture is as unequal and unfree as the economic field. That is the bitter truth.
Growing up in a blue collar family I didn't think about reading as a signifier. My father, IBEW, gave me _ Working and Thinking on the Waterfront (Eric Hoffer)_ . When I did go to college the YSA/ anti-war kids were very snooty about Hoffer. Many did ID with Salinger. I couldn't understand HC's world at all. As I moved on in school I learned what one should discuss to be accepted and how to 'hide' any non-approved reading from the cool kids. Looking back this was a total waste of self. You know what men have a great sense of self? Guys who can fix things. My father said to me don't go out with any guy who can't change the oil or a tire or rewire the house or build real bookshelves. Good advice. As for reading--all reading is good reading at the time you are reading it and better to have read anything than never read at all. Whether it was the Fountainhead or Infinite Jest or 10:04...it's reading and reading leads you on. Speaking of which there is a new book coming out: Stalin's Library. See where reading lead that fellow. https://kathleenmccook.substack.com/p/stalins-library
I don't judge them for doing so, given that the front of class kids (like me) are relentlessly told by their culture that if they don't climb the ladder they'll be losers for the rest of their lives
During the early part of the Trump era, I was mad insecure about going against Woke consensus regarding movies and the Oscar race. I was that guy who rooted for La La Land to win over Moonlight one year and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri to win over Get Out/The Shape of Water the next. It felt awful; I felt like I was suddenly a Republican even though none of my actual political views changed. I imagine some people went through this process with books too.
Looking back, I realize it's all rather silly and I never had anything to worry about. Most people don't care about award shows outside of the Twitter obsessives. And I love the point made here that maybe it's Yelling Woke Twitter that are the true insecure ones. They're in pain, so they project that pain outward onto other people.
You presume that white liberals don't have a bottomless appetite for other people telling them how bad they are as white people, when that's literally what motivates like half of them to even get out of bed in the morning.
It won Best Original Screenplay I believe. The Best Picture award went to The Shape of Water, which pretty much no one other than diehards remember (count me in that category though lol).
for me the funniest swing of the pendulum is Johnathan Franzen, and maybe more broadly all of "the Johnathans" Lethem, Safran-Foer, and for some reason Michael Chabon gets included as well. When I was finishing high school and in college all these guys were in good standing and maybe even winning awards. I loved The Corrections and still do, and several of Michael Chabon's books will forever be among my favorites. He has an incredible imagination and I still remember some of the metaphors from "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" even though I haven't read it in over ten years. Michael Chabon has also long been a proponent of genre fiction, graphic novels, things that twenty years ago were seen as low art but (I think) have become a little more elevated recently.
But the writers themselves? ah well, they're from another era and as far as I can tell completely ignored if not scorned. Too many echoes of Updike, can you really trust a man who writes about a woman like that? Where's the female protagonists, etc. Nevermind that all the stories I remember had queer characters, never mind that they are men themselves and despite their impressive imaginations they are probably more talented at writing from a perspective nearer their own.
Whatever. This is why, even as a literature major, I have no desire to participate in the publishing industry or any of this discourse. People are insisting on doing their (frequently bad) politics through art, and it produces shitty art as it always has and always will.
(and just to be clear art that is more likely to satisfy the politics of the current moment doesn't have to be bad, I loved the Broken Earth Trilogy and I definitely do not like NK Jemisin's politics)
I concede that girls are more susceptible to this because girls are subject to what are legitimately misogynist judgments of their tastes etc and I have sympathy, but this is dominantly a girl thing and, far worse, an ostentatiously literary weepy white dude ally thing
the only person in my life who likes Michael Chabon as much as me is a girl! And yes I agree, but a particular type of girl, the reciprocal form of the weepy white dude ally.
Also not dismissing the displacement thing, the displacement is real. Not gonna make me pretend that good things aren't good though sorry.
Hatred is addictive. As Howard Stern once said, his fans would listen to his show for an hour, dip in and out. His haters would listen attentively, seething all the while, for the entire show.
Plus if you like something you run the risk of liking the *wrong* thing and it might be bad for you. Drink down that cultural cod liver oil instead.
We girls decided to give up on getting the world to realize that stories about women could be just as universal as stories about men and instead of continuing to strive to elevate women’s stories as another window into the human experience, we decided it would be easier to demote the formerly admired men’s stories and make sure we emphasize that all stories are now best read as narrow representations of specific identities that we can never hope to relate to if we don’t share the same key identity markers.
Ah man. I really disliked the Broken Earth Trilogy, but still found it compelling in a way (?), and I wanted to talk about it so badly, but I couldn't because Jemisin's politics are not to be questioned.
It's just so tiring how literally every cultural artifact in America is scrutinized in this way, and instead of merely saying, "I didn't like this book" or "I didn't like this movie", you have to amp the dislike up to 11 and make a performative display of revulsion, not only for the work itself, and not only for the people who enjoyed it, but also anyone that even consumed it to begin with.
I'd like to think these tedious bores will stop doing this as they get a little older, or grow a little more intellectually curious, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Because what good is it if you not only loudly, performatively display your refined tastes in X without loudly, performatively, displaying your loathing for Y?
If we could float people who do this out to sea on an iceberg, I could die happy the next day. I swear to God almighty.
You mention insecurity, which is indeed at the root of it. Think about the guys in High Fidelity. Why do they endlessly obsess over musical taste, question each other’s taste, sneer at the taste of others? Because they have erroneously mapped onto “taste” the drive to acquire useful knowledge and skills. Ordinarily, young people in the prime of their lives should be acquiring the skills and knowledge of their people, in order to contribute to the survival of the group. A primary motivator in acquiring such skills is the desire for status, and young people get that need satisfied by developing those skills, proving their worth and mettle, and, often, going through an initiation ritual. Now you are an adult of our tribe — a vital member of the group who helps us survive in a difficult world.
In our society, though, we have made many people somewhat vestigial. Nobody is really that critical to our mega-tribe’s survival, and the ratio of really important positions to people who could do them is alarmingly low. Many people are left with a deep, gnawing sense of uselessness. It’s a profound insecurity that the vast majority of our ancestors never dealt with.
The solution? I must just need to acquire MORE of the skills and knowledge that my culture says it values! To prove my worth I should carve out a niche. I’m the one who knows about cult rock 45s! I’m the one who knows which books signal the wrong sort of ideas! I AM THE ONE WHO TWEETS.
All this activity is completely fruitless, of course (analogous to what David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”), but it momentarily salves the anxiety.
Which is why I love High Fidelity so much, because the point of all of the judgment is that Rob is supposed to grow out of it. There's a scene toward the end where his girlfriend takes him to the home of some very lovely people. They have dinner and Rob is just smitten with them. Then Laura shows him their record collection. He has to wrap his head around the fact that such wonderful people have this lousy taste in music. He learns to reconcile what most people did years previously. It really is what you ARE like, not WHAT you like.
It seems like criticism has just gotten worse. On one end, you have the "plot hole" side of things, where people nitpick random stuff to prove that a book or film is "objectively" bad. I think the wokes have invented their own type, where you look for things that are "problematic." Both forms of criticism add nothing to our culture.
Never overlook the fact that most of the people in professional "literary culture" have no particular interest in books at all but, again, in appearing to be literary for professional and social hierarchy reasons. Of course the criticism is shitty; they don't really care about what they're reviewing.
"appearing to be literary for professional and social hierarchy reasons"
Back when the office was open, I remember over-hearing a conversation that "it would be a bad look" to hire a certain person. I also remember a poll in like 2019 where the voters preferred Warren, but wouldn't vote for her because she's "unelectable." It's something I've called the meta-ization of the world, or the PR-ification. I hear it at work all the time that we should do X, but it would be a good look to do Y. And that's not for customers, that's for people within the same company! No surprise this would apply to books. We can't just read the books we like. We have to read the books that make good PR for ourselves. Everyone is performing an endless commercial.
I think you're onto something, and I think the meta-ization of the world is 1) an inevitable outcome of an 'information society' and 2) a very handy shield because you can use optics or meta reasons to justify basically anything while farming out responsibility to a nebulous third party, be it Society or Twitter or whatever.
"an inevitable outcome of an 'information society'"
What do you mean by this?
Obviously there's many factors, but I think part of it has to do with financialization. There's more money in appearing to make something than actually making something. Like, I think a lot of companies hire data science/ML/AI people simply because it's a "good look" for investors, not because those people are actually useful (I bet Stats 101 linear regression probably works fine for most of those ML tasks).
What I mean by this is: a people operating three degrees of abstraction away from anything tangible and hands-on are going to meta-ize and overanalyze everything. Put people behind desks and immerse them in their phones and they'll think in terms of websites and tweets and images.
Ah ok, that's very similar to what I meant about financialization. I've worked in corporate bullshit for years, which is like 28 layers of abstraction from anything real. I really think we shouldn't have permanent management. Everyone should do some like real work (whether it service work, manual labor, call center, whatever) for at least like, a few months every couple of years. Idk if that's naive "anarkiddy" stuff but I really think it would help if some people saw real stuff every now and then.
That's obnoxious because there are plenty of us literature lovers in the world who aren't cynical or ambitious enough to try to elbow our way into that Literary Culture but who would bring more thoughtful ideas to the table out of a genuine love of books. Then again, we have your comments section to mollify us.
This is, again, the transition between the third and fourth stages of adult cognitive development. Stage four of cognitive development has an internal structure of justifications, where stage three cannot process the world through anything but popularity contests.
That $300,000 education you mentioned used to solidly provide a transition from three to four, up until poorly-understood pseudo-postmodernism undermined it in the humanities. (Although it could not do so in STEM, which is why STEM majors took over the world.)
At the risk of every one of my comments here being repetitious, this is yet another reason I would like very much to know what you think if you read Robert Kegan. It seems to have explanatory relevance for every topic you tend to discuss most often. "In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands Of Modern Life" examines the transition between stages three and four specifically.
The short version: Pseudo-post-modern is pre-modern.
The long version: "Pre-modern," "modern", and "post-modern" track with cognitive stages three through four respectively, at the societal level. Reaching the stage three "communal" mode and dying young was perfectly suitable to coordinate a pre-modern village. You did things because you are unaware of any other choice; everyone you've ever met simply does it that way.
The late nineteenth century, and most of the twentieth, scaled up to social structures with more people, requiring abstract impersonal formulaic processes and procedures which served as a labor saving device to make that possible. It was the high-water mark of a sort of blind idiot god, if you will.
The sophisticated founders of postmodernism correctly identified the limits and problems of stage four abstract impersonal formulaic processes and procedures. These were systems of "because of this, therefore that" justifications, in theology, politics and supply chains, in which the labor saving aspect had gotten so far out of control that there was blind faith that somehow it would all work out. For example, we are fools if we don't have our bureaus of land and water management actually talk to indigenous people who lived in the local area for centuries. Stage four believes there is One Right System and it can be applied globally instead of locally by a centralized system, which centralizes power to whoever already has it.
The founders of postmodernism were only able to realize that because they first attained stage four systematicity.
A student or academic in the grip of stage three never internalized or understood systematicity to begin with, and their college education is a non-stop stream of reasons to make sure they never want to. You cannot become meta to systems until you can work with systems. So their rejection of systematicity is recognizable as the lazy activist or sullen teenager. Pseudo-pomo is a simplistic reduction of all systematicity as always being in the service of power and nothing else. Examples of systematicity include elections, education and credentialing, the rule of law, medicine, science, or neutrality in journalism, all of which are to be replaced by pre-modern small groups. Pseudo-pomo replaces systematicity with the naked self-interest of the identities you were born into, jingoism, faith groups, your skin color, i.e. personal relationships with your tribe. Pseudo-pomo expects this to scale up to the level of a complex techno-social complex, through the same sky magic which they believe delivers food to their table and cat photos to their phone.
One brief example: in this comment I just said pre-modern indigenous tribes had a way of life entirely adequate to their small local scale. And also, I just said we are fools if we don't have our bureaus of land and water management actually talk to indigenous people who lived in the local area for centuries. But if you try to apply it now, globally instead of locally, millions of people will die when the infrastructure breaks down. Pseudo-pomo can only see this entire comment as anti-indigenous racism.
Systematic institutional stage-four bureacracy, and communal stage-three sentimental popularity contests, both result in crawling horrors. Freddie de Boer catalogues examples all the time.
"Pseudo-pomo replaces systematicity with the naked self-interest of the identities you were born into, jingoism, faith groups, your skin color, i.e. personal relationships with your tribe." I do believe you just wrote the obituary of Western Civilization, with the quoted line as its epitaph.
Intrigued and sold. But a question before I read it. If stage 3 ends in high school cool kids vs everyone else forever and stage 4 ends in video game-like dystopian overlords crushing our souls, what is the solution? And more importantly does Kegan's book even suggest one?
Just asking ahead of time because after Trump, Covid & the Wokepocolypse I now need, like Lennon when he met Yoko at the gallery, climbed a ladder & read "Yes" on the ceiling, some sort of positivity or else I'll exceed my insurance limit on anti-depression medicine.
So a middle ground maybe? Stage 3.5 or something? Where we at least open our hearts to the Camus like benign indifference of the universe?
Smart question. There's a stage five. Be forewarned. The stages are like a river with switchbacks down a hill, and at the transition between each switchback, the water just surges in random directions in an eddy pool. It was working before, you had been moving along at a good clip, and you don't want to turn around. But you're not "turning around"; it's a switchback. Stages are places of stability, but the transitions between them undermine who you are, and are unpleasant and depressive if you don't know that anything lies ahead.
All the stages are great accomplishments compared to the previous stage (such as the stage two transactionalism of a prepubescent), and Kegan wants you to admire and congratulate them as much as he does. Whereas stage 2 sees one's self as one's interests and desires, stage three steps outside of that and can take the perspective of another person and becomes embedded in one's psychological surround. An extension of it, identifying with one's loved ones and companions. This is an improvement over staying in stage two, which usually lands one in prison.
In stage four, one now steps outside and sees systems between the relationships where one previously *was* one's relationships. Now one identifies with systems-- that is, one's principles, projects, and commitments.
In stage five, one steps outside of systems and can select between them as appropriate to the circumstances, or modify, combine, or design them. Some call it metamodernism.
Fascinating. I've actually heard a bit about meta-modernism, which I found interesting too, but didn't really read up on it.
I heard about it around 2017-18 from an anti-Trump Twitter person of note, who I liked. Then bought it up with an anti-Woke Twitter person who I also liked. The anti-woke guy said Metamodernism was BS. So I passed up on it. That anti-woke guy ended up supporting Trump, which is a deal breaker for me, no matter what rational you give it.
So I'll give it Kegan and Metamoderism a shot. Thanks!
Oh, I've been reading vividness (and intend to move on to meaningness when I'm done) for a while now without being able to remember where I heard about it. Is that your fault? If so, thank you.
I vacillate between whether these attitudes are "making up a guy to get mad at" or "my entire social circle is consists entirely of my MFA classmates" seeing how something like a third of American men don't even read books in the first place.
I'd be utterly stunned if 66% of men read a book in any calendar year. And that's in no way a judgement of those who don't. It's just that books are a niche interest.
In fairness, I'd love to spend an afternoon with a bold, edgy, contrarian anti-Grishamite. Think of the possibilities. Sneaking into an airport bookstore and hiding his books behind the Tom Clancys. Scouring the subway for people reading it and shout "MITCH EMBEZZLES THE MONEY AND ESCAPES AT THE END." 4,000 word thinkpieces on toxic legalism in literature.
I think what speaks to me about the line is the allusion to a deep, possibly fundamental divide between people who consciously [performatively?] "construct a fucking personality" /at all/, and the silent, mentally healthy (more or less) majority of humanity.
Years ago, when people first started talking fervently about "personal brands" and how it was absolutely necessary to "curate" your own if you ever wanted to get a new job or be "successful" -- that's about the time I checked out and quit social media. I still find the whole concept deeply disturbing. The vocabulary seems to have shifted, but this idea clearly hasn't gone away.
I got into a big dumb argument with a friend because I said that a book she had never even heard of until that day was interesting (not that it was correct or that I believed its premise, just that it was interesting) based entirely on my three sentence synopsis of the book. She decided the book MUST be wrong and I MUST be wrong for thinking it’s interesting, ignoring the fact that she had literally zero functional idea what the book is about. I feel like this scenario is a pretty perfect analogue to the Atlas Shrugged one. What percentage of Atlas Shrugged haters have read the book? Or even know what the book is genuinely and truly about? 5%?
Incredible the number of people who hate Infinite Jest who will readily acknowledge that they have not read it. They are alllllllllmost ready to grasp the fact that none of their opinions about books mean anything and that it's all signaling.
What book was it? Some of the best books challenge our preconceived notions and make us really think. I call that interesting. Part of the crazy woke culture is this absolute shutting down of alternate ideas as if those ideas themselves could be corrosive, toxic and dangerous. That probable explains her reaction : that you had allowed yourself to be contaminated with impure ideas.
It was Self-Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton Williams. The fact that it's such a remarkably inoffensive book - it's literally just a memoir that tells an interesting (albeit modestly controversial) story - made the entire thing so much more frustrating.
See this makes me want to read that book, which seemed appealing to me from the first profile I read about him when the book came out and before he had such a reputation as not woke, but I tend to stick to novels and spurn memoirs because there was such a glut of them in the 90's, but now you have persuaded me to dip back into that pool for someone other than an Obama.
I think you're on the right track, and the right train, with this observation.
Reading for escapism? I mean, why not. YA is perhaps a better and less expensive way to Be Younger than, say, a mustang. Or a Miata lol.
I feel this way about books but also stand-up comedy. Yes, some stand-ups punch down in a particularly egregious way and some repeatedly insist on targeting the same group in a manner that is simply unfunny (think Dave Chappelle's trans jokes), but the vast majority of them are being particularly clever and the wokest of woke simply don't understand beyond the surface of the joke.
Humor is violence? That's a new one even for me.
The woke have zero sense of humor. None. Zilch. It must be so tiring to take oneself so seriously all the time.
FDB: Are the references to Bukowski meant to be distinct from the references to CITR or are you thinking of Salinger? (It doesn't matter terribly either way to your argument of course.)
Distinct, as in "within the same discursive universe as CITR," but I immediately realized on rereading the post that people wouldn't grasp that so I added a third reference.
I really think more people should read Bordieu. No taste preferences of any kind are ever innocent and are an intricate part of how the class structure of society organizes and legitimates itself. It could never be another way. That these opinions are often expressed by those with 300k educations is in no way a coincidence. Taste is habitus and they are merely following that same habitus in the field of books. Cultural capital is very real, and people develop and invest in it precisely because it gives them the ability to dictate taste to everyone else. The field of culture is as unequal and unfree as the economic field. That is the bitter truth.
Growing up in a blue collar family I didn't think about reading as a signifier. My father, IBEW, gave me _ Working and Thinking on the Waterfront (Eric Hoffer)_ . When I did go to college the YSA/ anti-war kids were very snooty about Hoffer. Many did ID with Salinger. I couldn't understand HC's world at all. As I moved on in school I learned what one should discuss to be accepted and how to 'hide' any non-approved reading from the cool kids. Looking back this was a total waste of self. You know what men have a great sense of self? Guys who can fix things. My father said to me don't go out with any guy who can't change the oil or a tire or rewire the house or build real bookshelves. Good advice. As for reading--all reading is good reading at the time you are reading it and better to have read anything than never read at all. Whether it was the Fountainhead or Infinite Jest or 10:04...it's reading and reading leads you on. Speaking of which there is a new book coming out: Stalin's Library. See where reading lead that fellow. https://kathleenmccook.substack.com/p/stalins-library
Hoffer's _The True Believer_ seems particularly relevant now.
"Like almost everyone who spent their adolescents climbing the status ladder"
Hell yeah, I spent 'em like candy.
I don't judge them for doing so, given that the front of class kids (like me) are relentlessly told by their culture that if they don't climb the ladder they'll be losers for the rest of their lives
(I think there might be a typo)
oh I get it
Sorry, I'm completely incapable of pointing these things out straightforwardly and am absolutely compelled to couch them in terms of lame jokes.
During the early part of the Trump era, I was mad insecure about going against Woke consensus regarding movies and the Oscar race. I was that guy who rooted for La La Land to win over Moonlight one year and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri to win over Get Out/The Shape of Water the next. It felt awful; I felt like I was suddenly a Republican even though none of my actual political views changed. I imagine some people went through this process with books too.
Looking back, I realize it's all rather silly and I never had anything to worry about. Most people don't care about award shows outside of the Twitter obsessives. And I love the point made here that maybe it's Yelling Woke Twitter that are the true insecure ones. They're in pain, so they project that pain outward onto other people.
I don't think there's any "maybe" about Yelling Woke Twitter being the insecure ones, honestly. I'm willing to be proved wrong, though.
Wasn't Get Out making fun of white liberals? I'm surprised that ended up winning an Oscar.
You presume that white liberals don't have a bottomless appetite for other people telling them how bad they are as white people, when that's literally what motivates like half of them to even get out of bed in the morning.
It won Best Original Screenplay I believe. The Best Picture award went to The Shape of Water, which pretty much no one other than diehards remember (count me in that category though lol).
for me the funniest swing of the pendulum is Johnathan Franzen, and maybe more broadly all of "the Johnathans" Lethem, Safran-Foer, and for some reason Michael Chabon gets included as well. When I was finishing high school and in college all these guys were in good standing and maybe even winning awards. I loved The Corrections and still do, and several of Michael Chabon's books will forever be among my favorites. He has an incredible imagination and I still remember some of the metaphors from "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" even though I haven't read it in over ten years. Michael Chabon has also long been a proponent of genre fiction, graphic novels, things that twenty years ago were seen as low art but (I think) have become a little more elevated recently.
But the writers themselves? ah well, they're from another era and as far as I can tell completely ignored if not scorned. Too many echoes of Updike, can you really trust a man who writes about a woman like that? Where's the female protagonists, etc. Nevermind that all the stories I remember had queer characters, never mind that they are men themselves and despite their impressive imaginations they are probably more talented at writing from a perspective nearer their own.
Whatever. This is why, even as a literature major, I have no desire to participate in the publishing industry or any of this discourse. People are insisting on doing their (frequently bad) politics through art, and it produces shitty art as it always has and always will.
(and just to be clear art that is more likely to satisfy the politics of the current moment doesn't have to be bad, I loved the Broken Earth Trilogy and I definitely do not like NK Jemisin's politics)
lol literally just opened twitter and this was being shared by the New Republics book critic https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/the-state-of-the-literary-jonathans. I feel like "It's All Just Displacement" is relevant here.
I concede that girls are more susceptible to this because girls are subject to what are legitimately misogynist judgments of their tastes etc and I have sympathy, but this is dominantly a girl thing and, far worse, an ostentatiously literary weepy white dude ally thing
the only person in my life who likes Michael Chabon as much as me is a girl! And yes I agree, but a particular type of girl, the reciprocal form of the weepy white dude ally.
Also not dismissing the displacement thing, the displacement is real. Not gonna make me pretend that good things aren't good though sorry.
If only they could write about what they like instead of constantly obsessing about appearing to dislike things....
Hatred is addictive. As Howard Stern once said, his fans would listen to his show for an hour, dip in and out. His haters would listen attentively, seething all the while, for the entire show.
Plus if you like something you run the risk of liking the *wrong* thing and it might be bad for you. Drink down that cultural cod liver oil instead.
And the fact that this stuff more often than not play out on Twitter makes sense. Twitter is a hate machine.
We girls decided to give up on getting the world to realize that stories about women could be just as universal as stories about men and instead of continuing to strive to elevate women’s stories as another window into the human experience, we decided it would be easier to demote the formerly admired men’s stories and make sure we emphasize that all stories are now best read as narrow representations of specific identities that we can never hope to relate to if we don’t share the same key identity markers.
Ah man. I really disliked the Broken Earth Trilogy, but still found it compelling in a way (?), and I wanted to talk about it so badly, but I couldn't because Jemisin's politics are not to be questioned.
It's just so tiring how literally every cultural artifact in America is scrutinized in this way, and instead of merely saying, "I didn't like this book" or "I didn't like this movie", you have to amp the dislike up to 11 and make a performative display of revulsion, not only for the work itself, and not only for the people who enjoyed it, but also anyone that even consumed it to begin with.
I'd like to think these tedious bores will stop doing this as they get a little older, or grow a little more intellectually curious, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Because what good is it if you not only loudly, performatively display your refined tastes in X without loudly, performatively, displaying your loathing for Y?
If we could float people who do this out to sea on an iceberg, I could die happy the next day. I swear to God almighty.
You mention insecurity, which is indeed at the root of it. Think about the guys in High Fidelity. Why do they endlessly obsess over musical taste, question each other’s taste, sneer at the taste of others? Because they have erroneously mapped onto “taste” the drive to acquire useful knowledge and skills. Ordinarily, young people in the prime of their lives should be acquiring the skills and knowledge of their people, in order to contribute to the survival of the group. A primary motivator in acquiring such skills is the desire for status, and young people get that need satisfied by developing those skills, proving their worth and mettle, and, often, going through an initiation ritual. Now you are an adult of our tribe — a vital member of the group who helps us survive in a difficult world.
In our society, though, we have made many people somewhat vestigial. Nobody is really that critical to our mega-tribe’s survival, and the ratio of really important positions to people who could do them is alarmingly low. Many people are left with a deep, gnawing sense of uselessness. It’s a profound insecurity that the vast majority of our ancestors never dealt with.
The solution? I must just need to acquire MORE of the skills and knowledge that my culture says it values! To prove my worth I should carve out a niche. I’m the one who knows about cult rock 45s! I’m the one who knows which books signal the wrong sort of ideas! I AM THE ONE WHO TWEETS.
All this activity is completely fruitless, of course (analogous to what David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”), but it momentarily salves the anxiety.
Which is why I love High Fidelity so much, because the point of all of the judgment is that Rob is supposed to grow out of it. There's a scene toward the end where his girlfriend takes him to the home of some very lovely people. They have dinner and Rob is just smitten with them. Then Laura shows him their record collection. He has to wrap his head around the fact that such wonderful people have this lousy taste in music. He learns to reconcile what most people did years previously. It really is what you ARE like, not WHAT you like.
One might call such people "phony." ;)
Them in their flitty tatersall vests
Freddie actually addressed this in a way in an essay that was about "you are not the things you love" - good essay, which I hope he revisits.
It seems like criticism has just gotten worse. On one end, you have the "plot hole" side of things, where people nitpick random stuff to prove that a book or film is "objectively" bad. I think the wokes have invented their own type, where you look for things that are "problematic." Both forms of criticism add nothing to our culture.
Never overlook the fact that most of the people in professional "literary culture" have no particular interest in books at all but, again, in appearing to be literary for professional and social hierarchy reasons. Of course the criticism is shitty; they don't really care about what they're reviewing.
"appearing to be literary for professional and social hierarchy reasons"
Back when the office was open, I remember over-hearing a conversation that "it would be a bad look" to hire a certain person. I also remember a poll in like 2019 where the voters preferred Warren, but wouldn't vote for her because she's "unelectable." It's something I've called the meta-ization of the world, or the PR-ification. I hear it at work all the time that we should do X, but it would be a good look to do Y. And that's not for customers, that's for people within the same company! No surprise this would apply to books. We can't just read the books we like. We have to read the books that make good PR for ourselves. Everyone is performing an endless commercial.
I think you're onto something, and I think the meta-ization of the world is 1) an inevitable outcome of an 'information society' and 2) a very handy shield because you can use optics or meta reasons to justify basically anything while farming out responsibility to a nebulous third party, be it Society or Twitter or whatever.
"an inevitable outcome of an 'information society'"
What do you mean by this?
Obviously there's many factors, but I think part of it has to do with financialization. There's more money in appearing to make something than actually making something. Like, I think a lot of companies hire data science/ML/AI people simply because it's a "good look" for investors, not because those people are actually useful (I bet Stats 101 linear regression probably works fine for most of those ML tasks).
Opinion writers in standard journalism get paid by the word, not by the fact, let alone by the truth.
What I mean by this is: a people operating three degrees of abstraction away from anything tangible and hands-on are going to meta-ize and overanalyze everything. Put people behind desks and immerse them in their phones and they'll think in terms of websites and tweets and images.
Ah ok, that's very similar to what I meant about financialization. I've worked in corporate bullshit for years, which is like 28 layers of abstraction from anything real. I really think we shouldn't have permanent management. Everyone should do some like real work (whether it service work, manual labor, call center, whatever) for at least like, a few months every couple of years. Idk if that's naive "anarkiddy" stuff but I really think it would help if some people saw real stuff every now and then.
That's obnoxious because there are plenty of us literature lovers in the world who aren't cynical or ambitious enough to try to elbow our way into that Literary Culture but who would bring more thoughtful ideas to the table out of a genuine love of books. Then again, we have your comments section to mollify us.
This is, again, the transition between the third and fourth stages of adult cognitive development. Stage four of cognitive development has an internal structure of justifications, where stage three cannot process the world through anything but popularity contests.
That $300,000 education you mentioned used to solidly provide a transition from three to four, up until poorly-understood pseudo-postmodernism undermined it in the humanities. (Although it could not do so in STEM, which is why STEM majors took over the world.)
At the risk of every one of my comments here being repetitious, this is yet another reason I would like very much to know what you think if you read Robert Kegan. It seems to have explanatory relevance for every topic you tend to discuss most often. "In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands Of Modern Life" examines the transition between stages three and four specifically.
The short version: Pseudo-post-modern is pre-modern.
The long version: "Pre-modern," "modern", and "post-modern" track with cognitive stages three through four respectively, at the societal level. Reaching the stage three "communal" mode and dying young was perfectly suitable to coordinate a pre-modern village. You did things because you are unaware of any other choice; everyone you've ever met simply does it that way.
The late nineteenth century, and most of the twentieth, scaled up to social structures with more people, requiring abstract impersonal formulaic processes and procedures which served as a labor saving device to make that possible. It was the high-water mark of a sort of blind idiot god, if you will.
The sophisticated founders of postmodernism correctly identified the limits and problems of stage four abstract impersonal formulaic processes and procedures. These were systems of "because of this, therefore that" justifications, in theology, politics and supply chains, in which the labor saving aspect had gotten so far out of control that there was blind faith that somehow it would all work out. For example, we are fools if we don't have our bureaus of land and water management actually talk to indigenous people who lived in the local area for centuries. Stage four believes there is One Right System and it can be applied globally instead of locally by a centralized system, which centralizes power to whoever already has it.
The founders of postmodernism were only able to realize that because they first attained stage four systematicity.
A student or academic in the grip of stage three never internalized or understood systematicity to begin with, and their college education is a non-stop stream of reasons to make sure they never want to. You cannot become meta to systems until you can work with systems. So their rejection of systematicity is recognizable as the lazy activist or sullen teenager. Pseudo-pomo is a simplistic reduction of all systematicity as always being in the service of power and nothing else. Examples of systematicity include elections, education and credentialing, the rule of law, medicine, science, or neutrality in journalism, all of which are to be replaced by pre-modern small groups. Pseudo-pomo replaces systematicity with the naked self-interest of the identities you were born into, jingoism, faith groups, your skin color, i.e. personal relationships with your tribe. Pseudo-pomo expects this to scale up to the level of a complex techno-social complex, through the same sky magic which they believe delivers food to their table and cat photos to their phone.
One brief example: in this comment I just said pre-modern indigenous tribes had a way of life entirely adequate to their small local scale. And also, I just said we are fools if we don't have our bureaus of land and water management actually talk to indigenous people who lived in the local area for centuries. But if you try to apply it now, globally instead of locally, millions of people will die when the infrastructure breaks down. Pseudo-pomo can only see this entire comment as anti-indigenous racism.
Systematic institutional stage-four bureacracy, and communal stage-three sentimental popularity contests, both result in crawling horrors. Freddie de Boer catalogues examples all the time.
"Pseudo-pomo replaces systematicity with the naked self-interest of the identities you were born into, jingoism, faith groups, your skin color, i.e. personal relationships with your tribe." I do believe you just wrote the obituary of Western Civilization, with the quoted line as its epitaph.
Intrigued and sold. But a question before I read it. If stage 3 ends in high school cool kids vs everyone else forever and stage 4 ends in video game-like dystopian overlords crushing our souls, what is the solution? And more importantly does Kegan's book even suggest one?
Just asking ahead of time because after Trump, Covid & the Wokepocolypse I now need, like Lennon when he met Yoko at the gallery, climbed a ladder & read "Yes" on the ceiling, some sort of positivity or else I'll exceed my insurance limit on anti-depression medicine.
So a middle ground maybe? Stage 3.5 or something? Where we at least open our hearts to the Camus like benign indifference of the universe?
Smart question. There's a stage five. Be forewarned. The stages are like a river with switchbacks down a hill, and at the transition between each switchback, the water just surges in random directions in an eddy pool. It was working before, you had been moving along at a good clip, and you don't want to turn around. But you're not "turning around"; it's a switchback. Stages are places of stability, but the transitions between them undermine who you are, and are unpleasant and depressive if you don't know that anything lies ahead.
All the stages are great accomplishments compared to the previous stage (such as the stage two transactionalism of a prepubescent), and Kegan wants you to admire and congratulate them as much as he does. Whereas stage 2 sees one's self as one's interests and desires, stage three steps outside of that and can take the perspective of another person and becomes embedded in one's psychological surround. An extension of it, identifying with one's loved ones and companions. This is an improvement over staying in stage two, which usually lands one in prison.
In stage four, one now steps outside and sees systems between the relationships where one previously *was* one's relationships. Now one identifies with systems-- that is, one's principles, projects, and commitments.
In stage five, one steps outside of systems and can select between them as appropriate to the circumstances, or modify, combine, or design them. Some call it metamodernism.
Fascinating. I've actually heard a bit about meta-modernism, which I found interesting too, but didn't really read up on it.
I heard about it around 2017-18 from an anti-Trump Twitter person of note, who I liked. Then bought it up with an anti-Woke Twitter person who I also liked. The anti-woke guy said Metamodernism was BS. So I passed up on it. That anti-woke guy ended up supporting Trump, which is a deal breaker for me, no matter what rational you give it.
So I'll give it Kegan and Metamoderism a shot. Thanks!
PS - Stage 5 sounds nice, even if I have to brave switchbacks. ;)
I just found another really great description of the distinction between postmodernism and pseudo-pomo, which this article names "the pomoid cluster". https://areomagazine.com/2018/06/30/postmodernism-vs-the-pomo-oid-cluster/
OK I'm ordering it
You could also have a look at David Chapman’s (no, not the «Mark» one) summaries of Kegan et al in his various hypertext books:
https://meaningness.com/political-understanding-stages
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence
Oh, I've been reading vividness (and intend to move on to meaningness when I'm done) for a while now without being able to remember where I heard about it. Is that your fault? If so, thank you.
Disclosure: I narrate the podcast version of his work. https://fluidity.libsyn.com
you cheeky son of a gun!
Ok, now you have to review it for us so I know if I need to read it, too.
Apparently I've owned this for over a year. Now I think I'm going to actually read it. Thank you.
I ordered and began reading that on your recommendation several weeks ago.
I vacillate between whether these attitudes are "making up a guy to get mad at" or "my entire social circle is consists entirely of my MFA classmates" seeing how something like a third of American men don't even read books in the first place.
I'd be utterly stunned if 66% of men read a book in any calendar year. And that's in no way a judgement of those who don't. It's just that books are a niche interest.
Does that include both fiction and non-fiction I wonder? I have to plow through technical books for my job on a regular basis.
"I didn’t like John Grisham’s The Firm but you don’t see me constructing an entire fucking personality out of it." is gold. Pure gold. thank you.
In fairness, I'd love to spend an afternoon with a bold, edgy, contrarian anti-Grishamite. Think of the possibilities. Sneaking into an airport bookstore and hiding his books behind the Tom Clancys. Scouring the subway for people reading it and shout "MITCH EMBEZZLES THE MONEY AND ESCAPES AT THE END." 4,000 word thinkpieces on toxic legalism in literature.
I think what speaks to me about the line is the allusion to a deep, possibly fundamental divide between people who consciously [performatively?] "construct a fucking personality" /at all/, and the silent, mentally healthy (more or less) majority of humanity.
Years ago, when people first started talking fervently about "personal brands" and how it was absolutely necessary to "curate" your own if you ever wanted to get a new job or be "successful" -- that's about the time I checked out and quit social media. I still find the whole concept deeply disturbing. The vocabulary seems to have shifted, but this idea clearly hasn't gone away.
I got into a big dumb argument with a friend because I said that a book she had never even heard of until that day was interesting (not that it was correct or that I believed its premise, just that it was interesting) based entirely on my three sentence synopsis of the book. She decided the book MUST be wrong and I MUST be wrong for thinking it’s interesting, ignoring the fact that she had literally zero functional idea what the book is about. I feel like this scenario is a pretty perfect analogue to the Atlas Shrugged one. What percentage of Atlas Shrugged haters have read the book? Or even know what the book is genuinely and truly about? 5%?
Incredible the number of people who hate Infinite Jest who will readily acknowledge that they have not read it. They are alllllllllmost ready to grasp the fact that none of their opinions about books mean anything and that it's all signaling.
What book was it? Some of the best books challenge our preconceived notions and make us really think. I call that interesting. Part of the crazy woke culture is this absolute shutting down of alternate ideas as if those ideas themselves could be corrosive, toxic and dangerous. That probable explains her reaction : that you had allowed yourself to be contaminated with impure ideas.
It was Self-Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton Williams. The fact that it's such a remarkably inoffensive book - it's literally just a memoir that tells an interesting (albeit modestly controversial) story - made the entire thing so much more frustrating.
See this makes me want to read that book, which seemed appealing to me from the first profile I read about him when the book came out and before he had such a reputation as not woke, but I tend to stick to novels and spurn memoirs because there was such a glut of them in the 90's, but now you have persuaded me to dip back into that pool for someone other than an Obama.
Read it!!!
I thought it was great. When you actually read it, you see that it has very little to do with Blackness or Whiteness, and everything to do with love.