"I don’t really agree, but I also don’t have it in me to defend a core artistic principle in a culture that’s so inimical to my values" #relatablecontent
Yeah this is mostly just the cultural moment that seems to stretch endlessly where "sophisticated" people hate anything "men" would like, as an extension of hating men in general, largely as a way of deflecting accountability for their own poor choices and the entirely predictable bad consequences that followed.
Not only are men not reading, the vast majority of popular books are written by women also, whether literary fiction or more popular stuff. IME as a fiction writer in the starting out stage, most agents are women also. I really think some people believe that literary agents are all men called Wyndham Smythe whose office smells of whiskey and gun smoke or something, and men in linen suits are all having boozy literary lunches. People really can't imagine power in any realistic or modern way.
I also find it tiresome the extent to which people's gender identity is weaponised with fiction, like as if all books can be boiled down to whether they were written by a man or a woman. If someone's book collection was all ancient Roman history written by men would this really be worse than if it was the collected works of Ann Coulter or something?
Books are a conversation between the writer and the reader, it's always a two-person relationship.
I guess I am just so old and so out of what currently passes for culture that I have no idea who any of the people mentioned in this essay are. And I still have no idea what "litbro" is. On the other hand the essay is interestingly written . . . though I was left wondering in which "Bush administration" whoever David Foster Wallace was done himself in. Have I somehow missed someone so very important that there is an airport in Texas named after this fellow David Foster Wallace?
I respected Infinite Jest without liking it. (Reading it was like driving 3,000 miles on a coast-to-coast highway that has a speed bump every 20 yards.) The pain in the book was palpable, but I thought Wallace was trying to treat a sucking chest wound with a box of fireworks. Didn't work.
You know what I really liked? Valley of the Dolls.
I just want to say that I wrote my college application essay on DFW. Then, I got my freshman roommate into him at a liberal arts college and we read Infinite Jest together and we talked about it all the time.
It was me. I was the litbro. Maybe the litbro barely existed but it existed in at least some form, and that form was me and some people on my freshman hall. You’re welcome for the content.
I did it because I enjoyed his writing tremendously and because I thought it made me look cool. Later, I got into drinking straight bourbon for the same reason — a habit that’s persisted longer than reading DFW.
Fwiw, I have more mixed feelings about his writing now but think some of his ideas and work was great and I’d like to read IJ again some day. It didn’t get me laid but there’s still time and I certainly enjoy watching tennis more because of him. Brothers Karamazov I read last year and it is indeed a triumph.
One of the saddest things to happen in the book world is that far too many brown and black writers have entered into the sad-ass self-referential performative state that Freddie references here. It was a white thing, really, and now it's a multicultural thing. Ugh.
These narratives are impossible to stamp out because they lend themselves to publishers making lots of money and allow them to continue to do so unimpeded. DFW is a convenient heel for them, but it's not even really about him. It's about making sure that the books, music, and movies which are currently being produced (and heavily invested in by said publishers) stay profitable. In order for this to continue it is necessary to believe these same media products are the best use of your time (instead of say, I don't know, getting a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets from the library for free).
And you know something? I could almost handle "poptimism" if they were self-aware or even acknowledged that the economics were what was driving the whole process. But the overwhelming majority of the time they do not, they act like these products of the culture industry are somehow intrinsically superior based on artistic merit, which they aren't and even if they were that has nothing whatsoever to do with why they are popular. At it's core its the same canard that the marketplace is a meritocracy and that the best things "naturally" rise to the top under this system.
The reason popular art is completely enthralled with "identity" is because this is the most effective means through which the culture industry can attract customers and create profits. It's a way to brand old things as new and sell the same intellectual property yet another time. I don't think it's controversial to say Marvel films have basically run the exact same playbook for 20 years, but if you slap a veneer of identity politics over it, suddenly it seems novel. Disney paid a lot of money for those intellectual properties and they are going to do whatever it takes to make that money back and then some.
I wish we lived in a world where lit-bros actually existed. It would mean more men were reading fiction, and a more literate and empathetic populace that actually debates and argues about good and bad books on their merits-and not just their reputations-would be a nice world to live in.
"I don’t really agree, but I also don’t have it in me to defend a core artistic principle in a culture that’s so inimical to my values" #relatablecontent
For those of us who are new here...so, you liked Infinite Jest? Or didn't?
Joseph Campbell stuff. Who controls the popular mythology, controls the people. So, who controls is the important point of consideration.
Yeah this is mostly just the cultural moment that seems to stretch endlessly where "sophisticated" people hate anything "men" would like, as an extension of hating men in general, largely as a way of deflecting accountability for their own poor choices and the entirely predictable bad consequences that followed.
Love this scene in the new Netflix series based on Edgar Allen Poe material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIK-q6JoOeU
This entire post was incomprehensible to me, perhaps because I was born in 1962.
I will say that DFW's "Good Old Neon" is one of the best short stories I've ever read.
Not only are men not reading, the vast majority of popular books are written by women also, whether literary fiction or more popular stuff. IME as a fiction writer in the starting out stage, most agents are women also. I really think some people believe that literary agents are all men called Wyndham Smythe whose office smells of whiskey and gun smoke or something, and men in linen suits are all having boozy literary lunches. People really can't imagine power in any realistic or modern way.
I also find it tiresome the extent to which people's gender identity is weaponised with fiction, like as if all books can be boiled down to whether they were written by a man or a woman. If someone's book collection was all ancient Roman history written by men would this really be worse than if it was the collected works of Ann Coulter or something?
Books are a conversation between the writer and the reader, it's always a two-person relationship.
I guess I am just so old and so out of what currently passes for culture that I have no idea who any of the people mentioned in this essay are. And I still have no idea what "litbro" is. On the other hand the essay is interestingly written . . . though I was left wondering in which "Bush administration" whoever David Foster Wallace was done himself in. Have I somehow missed someone so very important that there is an airport in Texas named after this fellow David Foster Wallace?
I respected Infinite Jest without liking it. (Reading it was like driving 3,000 miles on a coast-to-coast highway that has a speed bump every 20 yards.) The pain in the book was palpable, but I thought Wallace was trying to treat a sucking chest wound with a box of fireworks. Didn't work.
You know what I really liked? Valley of the Dolls.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, litbros.
I just want to say that I wrote my college application essay on DFW. Then, I got my freshman roommate into him at a liberal arts college and we read Infinite Jest together and we talked about it all the time.
It was me. I was the litbro. Maybe the litbro barely existed but it existed in at least some form, and that form was me and some people on my freshman hall. You’re welcome for the content.
I did it because I enjoyed his writing tremendously and because I thought it made me look cool. Later, I got into drinking straight bourbon for the same reason — a habit that’s persisted longer than reading DFW.
Fwiw, I have more mixed feelings about his writing now but think some of his ideas and work was great and I’d like to read IJ again some day. It didn’t get me laid but there’s still time and I certainly enjoy watching tennis more because of him. Brothers Karamazov I read last year and it is indeed a triumph.
One of the saddest things to happen in the book world is that far too many brown and black writers have entered into the sad-ass self-referential performative state that Freddie references here. It was a white thing, really, and now it's a multicultural thing. Ugh.
These narratives are impossible to stamp out because they lend themselves to publishers making lots of money and allow them to continue to do so unimpeded. DFW is a convenient heel for them, but it's not even really about him. It's about making sure that the books, music, and movies which are currently being produced (and heavily invested in by said publishers) stay profitable. In order for this to continue it is necessary to believe these same media products are the best use of your time (instead of say, I don't know, getting a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets from the library for free).
And you know something? I could almost handle "poptimism" if they were self-aware or even acknowledged that the economics were what was driving the whole process. But the overwhelming majority of the time they do not, they act like these products of the culture industry are somehow intrinsically superior based on artistic merit, which they aren't and even if they were that has nothing whatsoever to do with why they are popular. At it's core its the same canard that the marketplace is a meritocracy and that the best things "naturally" rise to the top under this system.
The reason popular art is completely enthralled with "identity" is because this is the most effective means through which the culture industry can attract customers and create profits. It's a way to brand old things as new and sell the same intellectual property yet another time. I don't think it's controversial to say Marvel films have basically run the exact same playbook for 20 years, but if you slap a veneer of identity politics over it, suddenly it seems novel. Disney paid a lot of money for those intellectual properties and they are going to do whatever it takes to make that money back and then some.
Also: that insufferable headline.
I wish we lived in a world where lit-bros actually existed. It would mean more men were reading fiction, and a more literate and empathetic populace that actually debates and argues about good and bad books on their merits-and not just their reputations-would be a nice world to live in.
Wait: Rolling Stone still exists? Why?