How are things in the world of New York City “Big Five” conglomerate publishing?
We at NEW POP LIT took a break from creating an alternative long enough to interview John Colapinto, staff writer at The New Yorker. What he has to say about his own difficulties is revealing. You’ll not read a stronger interview anywhere.
See http://newpoplit.com/2015/07/22/exclusive-john-colapinto-interview/
Read the story and interview—then let us know what you think.
Yes, at the various NEW POP LIT entities we’re running an entire week of baseball celebration.
We begin with the new lead story at our main site, by Tom Tolnay, "Baseball Is Truth, Truth Is Baseball"
Next, we’re running a poll at our Detroit Literary blog, asking which was the best Detroit Tigers baseball team of all time? The choices given are the city’s four world championship campaigns. See
http://detroitliterary.blogspot.com/2015/07/new-pop-lit-celebrates-baseball.html
Finally, for hard-core baseball readers, here’s a link to info about an essay about the great American game which I wrote for North American Review way back in 1994, during the infamous baseball strike. The essay is titled, “The Last Day of Baseball.”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25125837?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Not the last day of baseball after all, it turned out—which allows us to engage in this 2015 celebration.
(Depicted: back cover of New Pop Lit Issue One.)
Here’s some info from NEW POP LIT’s house blog about the progress of the first issue of our print version:
https://newpoplitinteractive.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/how-to-create-the-new-product/
A limited number of sneak-preview copies WILL be available at our table at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, starting June 19!
THE GREATEST AMERICAN NOVEL?
(Here’s the text of a short review I posted today at Goodreads of the 1901 Frank Norris classic, The Octopus. I could say much more about the novel—have elsewhere, and possibly will do so at this blog.)
Not just a great American novel-- this book is THE great American novel, in its scope, its understanding of the American character and of the forces which have shaped the American civilization. The leading figures of the narrative, on both sides of the dispute, are risk-takers. Most of them are quite ruthless-- Presley the poet and Vanamee the mystic the chief exceptions. It's Frank Norris's genius that he makes us care about a man like Annixter despite his hardness and ruthlessness. Annixter and the other members of the League become heroic because they stand up for their work, their land and their principles, against what turn out to be irresistible forces.
I see that some reviewers have a problem getting past Norris's style of writing. His "purple prose." Frank Norris was a naturalist and wrote in that mode-- which means the narrative is heavily detailed. It means that the author makes his points again and again-- he hammers them into you-- which is admittedly a different style from what most readers today are used to, but it also gives the book its unusual power. When conflict comes, it has reverberations beyond the incidents themselves, because Norris makes the conflicts part of his larger themes.
Norris overstates his descriptions because he wants the reader to SEE the setting and the characters; really see them. Few novels are so closely tied to the land and nature. (Tolstoy's Anna Karenina comes to mind.) No novel I've read has so well conveyed the special qualities of California; its landscape and sunlit beauty. Norris emphasizes the wheat as a force of nature because he wants us to see the railroad, and the people of the novel, as natural forces as well.
For all the care Norris put into the novel's construction, few novels carry as much excitement. The shooting at the barn dance; the chase of Dyke; and finally, the sudden showdown between ranchers and railroad men are as tense and exciting-- and ultimately as tragic-- as any scenes ever written.
Scope, power, love, tragedy, compassion, meaning-- no American novel puts every aspect of a great novel together as well as this one. Indeed, it remains topical, in that monopolies, corruption, and cronyism are with us today-- and there remain people who fight against these forces, whether their vehicle to do so be the Tea Party or Occupy. Since 1901, when The Octopus was first published, has all that much really changed?
(Photo: Dirty Franks in Philadelphia.)
Yes, I’m still around, still writing. Still In Detroit—despite a recent visit to the City of Brotherly Love.
I’ve been busy setting up the appearance of NEW POP LIT at the big Allied Media Conference in Detroit June 19-21. We may even debut the print version of our publication there, if all goes well. The journal will include fantastic work from amazing writers and artists.
Stay tuned!
I’ll be back in my second home town, Philadelphia, for several days, including this weekend. While I’m there I may look at some of the writings I have in storage. I once did a newsletter called New Philistine which contained uninhibited literary criticism. Much more striking than anything ever published in the New York Times! Best lit criticism of the 1990’s. Curious whether I still have a few copies. (Did 45 issues.) I’m getting to the point of life, former underground colleagues dropping away, where I worry about saving a smidgen of my writing. Not for posterity so much as for any future open minds.
HERE COME THE REGULATORS
I found it interesting but not surprising to see esteemed establishment novelist Joyce Carol Oates come out strongly in favor of so-called Net Neutrality. She well represents the mindset of the system writer.
What’s a system writer? One who’s operated inside established bureaucracies since university days. In a sense Oates—like so many established authors—has never left the university. (She teaches there now, at Princeton.) These are writers who operate within the present system. Trained in the proper modes at college. If they’re “good” enough they move on to publication at one of the publishing giants. They write within the system as beribboned pets. Given plenty of treats to be compensated for having no control over their art. At all times they are inferior, within the pyramid of publishing, to the publishers, agents, editors; corporate execs and marketing experts, who decide what the final product will look like and how it will be presented. The writer is merely along for the ride.
It’s a stress-free environment, full of security, BECAUSE the writer has abdicated final responsibility and say over the artwork.
The alternative to this is the Do It Yourself writer—who controls every aspect of the process. Including what the publication will look like and how it will be marketed. It’s a tough path—but it allows said writer to maintain integrity.
For the DIY writer, Amazon is merely a necessary vehicle for distribution of the art. Before ebooks came around I published and sold my own zines. I know that the success of much-scorned Amazon is likely temporary. There were vehicles available for the DIY writer before Amazon. There will be vehicles available after it. (We at NEW POP LIT are in the early stages of creating one.) The world is in constant flux and change.
How does this apply to “Net Neutrality”? The system writer is never herself directly subject to regulation. That’s out of her domain. Remain obedient; crank out proper product—properly politically correct—and such issues are handled by the big guys.
Anyone who’s faced government regulators up close is not so complacent. Those who know what it’s like to deal with a gigantic government bureaucracy.
I did so for a portion of the 1990’s, when I worked as a middleman at the Detroit-Canada border; conduit between shippers bringing goods into the country, and the Customs officials whose job it is to ensure that all rules are properly followed. I eventually obtained a Customshouse Brokers license after taking a five-hour exam ensuring I well knew those regulations.
The problem with government bureaucracy as I witnessed it is that it never stops growing. Expanding. Multiplying. More laws passed. More federal regulations designed to enforce those laws added. Every year, the book of regs (CFR) kept getting thicker. The amount of rules one was required to be familiar with always increasing. You try to keep up—to present all paperwork properly—but eventually your mind feels about to explode.
The NAFTA act was sold as “free trade”—yet an entire volume of regulations was added to regulate this “free” trade. I left the business in 1999. I can only imagine what things are like now.
Net Neutrality, by classifying the Internet as a public utility, allows federal regulators in the form of the FCC to put a giant foot into the door of the Internet, all in the name of “freedom.” (See Orwell: Slavery is Freedom.) The Internet of course is enormous. How many bureaucrats will now need to be hired to police it? How many volumes of regulations added to clarify this action or that action? It’s the path toward bureaucratic nightmare.
The saying goes, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Yes, the largest service providers might do this and might do that. I’d prefer a self-policing situation.
Not to worry. Our officially-designated intellectuals—Joyce Carol Oates only one of them—have decided within their carefully-controlled bubble world that all is okay. They’ve never operated outside an institution—are likely more comfortable within one. House cats for whom the system takes care of every need. Well fed and pampered—and naturally scornful of alley cats outside the well-built house, running free and wild on the streets.
The only good news is that the house of publishing at least is in a state of decay, and may at any time collapse.
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Has any American novelist dared to credibly write about THE story of latter-day American civilization: the rise of gigantic bureaucracy? The only one I can think of is James Gould Cozzens, who handled the subject in his World War II novel Guard of Honor. Cozzens was a defender of American Empire. His novel is a picture of its very creation. As much as he defends the growing military complex, he shows at the same time its built-in corruptions, incompetence, and inefficiencies. Afflictions part of any bureaucracy—including the publishing/literary system of today.
Would that we had such novelists now willing to look with unflinching eyes at the hives within which so many of us live and work—the bureaucratic beasts.
What does the Brian Williams fiasco tell us?
The public is gradually discovering that the authority of establishment media’s authority figures is largely bluff. The figures presented to us are no smarter, have no more character and integrity, than the rest of us. They may have less.
This realization applies not just to the world of network news, but also to the critical establishment. For instance, establishment film critics raved about David Fincher’s 2014 flick Gone Girl. Never mind that every character is an unlikable sociopath; that the movie is often incoherent; the cinematography and score are sullenly dark; the acting is robotic; there are plot holes one could drive a freight train through—the movie has not one redeeming quality that I could discover. Something about its technical accomplishment (?) caused the esteemed critics to laud it. One even found it a comedy—which itself is comedic.
The fault is in the critics themselves. When they praise garbage, then garbage is what we’ll continue to be handed as substitute for art.
The situation is no better in the literary field. Jonathan Franzen is the best novelist this great civilization can produce? Really?
Something smells. Something’s rotten—not in the walls of Denmark but more probably in the city of New York.
At NEW POP LIT we’re on an ongoing search for models of Pop Lit—the story, poem, or novel which combines the attributes of pop with relevance and meaning.
At our web site we have three examples of these attempts.
First is an essay by my co-editor, Andrea Nolen, titled “How to Tell Stories to Children.” Andrea looks at the reading experience, and why understanding it is important if we’re to renew literature.
http://newpoplit.com/opinion/how-to-tell-stories-to-children/
Then we have our current story, “Talkin Muhlenberg County Blues,” whose author, “Fishspit,” demonstrates how to create a narrative line.
http://newpoplit.com/portfolio/talkin-muhlenberg-county-blues/
Last we have my own very different pop story, “Press Conference,” an excerpt from my e-novel The Tower. In the book I aimed first for readability, while at the same time trying to capture the moment. It’s about an NFL press conference.
http://newpoplit.com/portfolio/the-tower-press-conference/
We want others to tell us what Pop Lit should look like. Or send us examples!
I just received word yesterday about the death of underground writer and artist Lisa B. Falour. She was famed as “Bikini Girl” of the 1980’s. Later was a member of the Underground Literary Alliance in its heyday. Lisa had problems with a small press publisher taking advantage of her. Changing her work without her permission and not paying her. One of the ULA’s successes was obtaining a payment from said publisher for her, after some lobbying. I’d been invited several times to visit her and her husband in Paris, but never raised the money or time off for such a journey.
Lisa’s work defined edgy writing. By all accounts she was an edgy personality. RIP, Lisa.
A WORRY common among all writers is whether any of his/her writing will survive the step out of this world. Part of the writing impulse no doubt is a desire to leave the shred of a record behind. A marker that we were here, and tried to make a difference.
Some of my best writing is not available on line. Chief among the lot is a long essay I wrote way back in 1994 for the prestigious literary journal North American Review. The essay was titled, “Detroit: Among the Lower Classes.” Though I have yet to find an archived copy anywhere, I do know of an essay about Detroit which references my piece, and has some flattering things to say about it.
I discuss that essay on another blog, here:
http://detroitliterary.blogspot.com/2015/01/making-sense-of-detroit.html
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I did manage to discover the text of a much shorter and lesser piece I wrote in 2011 for the iNewp website, which seems to no longer exist. That essay, “A Tale of Two Literary Worlds,” is linked to the left, under Fun Stuff, if you care to take a look.
The trials of being an underground writer!
WHY ARE PRIVILEGED WRITERS WHINING?
Our friend Keith Gessen at New York’s most chic literary journal, n+1, has been on a campaign of late identifying his journal with the downtrodden. See this post at NEW POP LIT’s Interactive blog:
Was this posture a result of an essay I wrote back in 2011 or so, at the now-defunct “Voice of Anyone” iNewp website, about the defunct Underground Literary Alliance? The essay was titled “A Tale of Two Literary Worlds,” contrasting the fate of two literary groups; one at the center of the literary establishment, with all that entails, and one not.
Keith Gessen misses not having the street cred of a bottom-up, populist literary organization. One not so highly placed; not backed by the rich and the powerful. He generously wishes to change places with a fledgling outfit—to go from top to bottom, and allow someone else to move to the forefront.
You know what? We at NEW POP LIT are going to do everything in our power to help Gessen accomplish this goal!
Will 2015 be the year American literature is finally reinvigorated; made relevant again to the American people? Some of us keep trying! Join the campaign. Much will be happening at New Pop Lit www.newpoplit.com particularly. (Right now you can see who we nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Read the stories and see what you think.)
(NOTE: The photo is NOT a collection of New Pop Lit writers!)
MORE N+1 BASHING?
WE at New Pop Lit (www.newpoplit.com) received a tweet Tuesday from n+1 magazine leader Keith Gessen. The tweet was in response to a question we asked publicly, as to whether n+1 could be said to be “oligarch-backed.” Granted, that phrase might be exaggerating the situation—but only slightly. If media moguls are nice guys, and parents of your officially listed editor, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not oligarchs!
In his tweet, Gessen pleaded poverty. They’re a “nonprofit” (the word “nonprofit” having magical qualities). They’re mostly volunteers, struggling, none of them has any money; it’s all very bleak. A situation with which I can easily identify! Reading the tweet, in fact, I became quite concerned. I expected to run into the n+1 people when turning a corner here in Detroit, the lot of them squatting in rags on the sidewalk holding cardboard signs—Keith, Dayna, everybody—the signs saying “Please help me!” I thought, “What can we at New Pop Lit do to help these beaten-down writers?” A joint presentation?
Then I caught myself and asked myself a few questions. I outlined in my head a few facts and certainties.
Among them, that the n+1 staff consists of the so-called best and brightest. All are from Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and the like. They have access to the so-called best writers in the nation; bonded and branded, well-awarded and certified. Many of them published by the Big Five. n+1’s advisors include some of the shrewdest business people on the planet, including, as I mentioned, a big-time media mogul, as well as two of the publishing world’s most successful literary agents.
On top of this, for ten years n+1 has received more and better publicity than any literary journal in the country—including the McSweeney’s machine—always positive; in the most prestigious and widely-read newspapers and magazines. World-respected newspapers and magazines. Among them, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, the New York Times. And many, many smaller outlets. People love a designated winner. n+1 has received publicity and promotion that ANY business in any field could only dream of, much of it coming from the very center of media empire, New York City, n+1’s home base.
In short, everything has gone their way.
And they’re still not making it?
An intelligent person involved with a more modest project would try to learn from their mistakes. Would analyze the situation. During that analysis, I come up with three possible reasons for n+1’s unhappy plight. Feel free to tell me which one you believe is most, er, on the money.
A.) A bad product.
B.) Flawed thinking.
C.) On the wrong side of literary history.
REVIEWING A REVIEW
Ever see the satirical movie about the art business, “Untitled”? Toward the end of that film, an “artist” appears whose “art” consists of pencil scribblings on sticky notes. When someone interviews him about his work, he’s so intellectually feeble he can respond only with vague mutterings; gurgling his words like a two year old.
I thought of this character when reading a review at L.A. Review of Books by one Tiffany Gilbert of the latest novel by alt-lit icon Blake Butler, 300,000,000.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/god-bend
This single review shows everything wrong with the established literary game and the New York-based book business. The novel is about a man’s quest to kill everyone in the entire country. Ambitious, one could call it, I guess. It’s apparently written in standard postmodern style. Think David Foster Wallace. Only more so. The idea that Harper Perennial would invest a large sum of scarce funds into publishing and promoting this kind of work is, on the surface, incomprehensible.
The people at Harper Perennial (won’t be “perennial” for long!) need to ask themselves: What business are they in? Answer: Selling books! How do they presume to market a novel which is deliberately hostile to the reader? Tiffany Gilbert: “—Butler usually destroys understanding, favoring emotion and instinct over narrative.”
Who needs narrative?!
“Butler remains elusive, creating linguistic puzzles that we must sink into rather than solve.”
Linguistic puzzles! Haven’t we seen that before? from Nabokov, Pynchon, Foster-Wallace et.al.; from all the postmodern academy darlings praised by academy types who love “sink”ing into such shit because they apparently have nothing better to do? Justifies their standing in front of classrooms of the naive and gullible.
Tiffany Gilbert says that we as readers are “often demanding that our narratives conform to conventional rules of sense making.” (Sense making? Who wants sense making?) “Butler defies those expectations.”
Tiffany Gilbert is gushing about Blake Butler’s work, signifying his literary importance. Butler provides more than enough convoluted mish-mash for a Tiffany Gilbert to rationalize about.
Would I be surprised to learn that Tiffany Gilbert has a Phd from somewhere, and works as a university professor? Not at all. You have to be trained to buy into (or “sink into”) a compendium of nonsense. It doesn’t come naturally.
“Unlike many contemporary writers,” Tiffany Gilbert assures us, “Butler does not dabble in darkness. He is ensconced in it.”
(Great. That’s all we need from today’s art. More darkness!)
“Butler’s novel subsumes Bolano’s concerns with death, vilification, and secrecy and multiplies them tenfold.”
There’s a larger point to be made about the new generation of approved writers—their white guilt and self-hatred; their pessimism; their disbelief in God, themselves, anything and everything. Warped, miseducated creatures; casualties of a broken educational system and a twisted, hate-filled philosophy. That’s a point for another essay!
From the start the alt lit writers weren’t literary artists, but con artists. They carried a postmodern philosophy which says there is no truth, nothing means anything and it’s futile to try to know anything. A novel like 300,000,000 is the logical result. The alt lit writers have made no effort to learn the difficult essentials of writing a competent, readable novel. (It takes talent to be readable.) To learn literary tools like structure and form; pace, clarity and plot. The artful weaving of narrative threads (there’s that darn word “narrative” again!) to build interest, suspense, and momentum. The drawing of believable characters.
Why should alt lit authors bother with such quaint notions, when a Harper Perennial will publish their vomitry regardless?
The related question is: Why is Blake Butler shoving so many novels through the crumbling Big Five publishing system? Possibly because he suspects the Big Five’s days are numbered. Or because he realizes a con game can go on for only so long.
There are only so many over-trained professors out there looking for something to laud.
“—at one point, he sucks the eyes out of a miscarried fetus after killing its mother.”
Golly gosh! Isn’t that wonderful?
Did I mention the novel’s about a serial killer?
Think of the sad mindset of those individuals who’d actually care to read this novel. Or would read it. If there are in fact very many of them, this civilization’s in trouble.
The postmodern prose style—not the subject—will be most offputting to general readers.
“Philistine!” a Tiffany Gilbert might say to anyone expecting that a novel make sense.
Anyway, who cares today—in the “intellectual” crowd—about the market?
But a novel is not only subject to the market, it’s subject to aesthetic rules. Rules which conform not to academy dictates, but to the hidden rules of nature and the universe. General rules appreciated by all, except for confused well-brainwashed alt litsters, or professors like Gilbert, who seem to believe there are no aesthetic rules. If nonsense is acceptable, nonsense is not only possible, but probable.
May as well have the proverbial 100 monkeys then pounding on keyboards to see what occurs. The outcome might be better than Blake Butler’s 300,000,000.
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Are there alternatives to Big Five nonsense? Yes! It comes from the DIY ebook crowd, and from New Literary Media outlets like www.newpoplit.com.
(Be sure to read, at New Pop Lit’s Opinion page, my essays on another alt lit figure, Tao Lin.)
Can one predict how the changing publishing environment will shakeout?
With changing technology comes changing art.
One model to look at is what happened to the music industry in the mid-1950’s. (I’ve told this story often.)
A technological happening:
A smaller disc was brought to the market: the 45 rpm. Looked fun. Played music of short duration. Was affordable for everyone. Including the mass public. Including teenagers.
Simultaneous with this, likely because of it, came the rise of more populist music. “Rock n’ roll,” as it came to be known.
The Big Four record companies who controlled 85% of the market scorned the new music. It went against acceptable “taste.” They ended up losing nearly half their market share in a couple-year period. Who took it? Fast-moving entrepreneurs like Alan Freed and Dick Clark. A few years later, in Detroit, Berry Gordy Jr., who created Motown.
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What’s happening in the book business? New technology. Connect the dots. Draw the inescapable conclusions.
What’s coming? New literature pushed by outfits like www.newpoplit.com.
These are exciting times.
THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT THE NEW YORK LITERARY SCENE
I was reminded of this truth—for the umpteenth time—in the follow-up to NEW POP LIT’s revelations about the n+1 lit journal operation:
http://newpoplit.com/opinion/beyond-hypocrisy-the-n1-story/
I’ve been beating up that insulated crowd of “intellectuals” a little bit on twitter, simply to draw attention to our story. I paused to wonder if I would ever get any twitter response or byplay from them. (I did have some guy attacking me anonymously at one of my twitter accounts in advance of the story, but none too effectively.) It occurred to me that I’ll never get byplay from any of them—for the key reason. What’s that shocking reason?
They’re not very bright! I’ve yet to meet one well-hyped New York City “literary” writer who could think very fast on his-or-her feet. And I’ve met more than a few of them, even before the big 2001 debate between the Underground Literary Alliance and the Paris Review staff at CBGB’s. (An affair which was ridiculously one-sided.)
“The shocking truth” is a revelation which disgraced interviewer Ed Champion must’ve come to on more than one occasion. He talked to enough of them. I don’t know to what he attributed it—but the irritating truth led to an 11,000-word online blow-up from him and something akin to a nervous breakdown.
You see, he had bought beforehand the mythology that these are the nation’s best writers.
The question: what’s the reason? Why aren’t Approved literary writers very sharp?
It could be because of the slow and deliberate way they’re trained to write. (Think of a typically slow and excruciatingly long Jonathan Franzen novel.) Such writers end up thinking slow and deliberately.
Or it could be that most of them are trust funders who’ve never been challenged by life, were never required to move fast or think quickly.
Even from the best of them you find scantly a trace of wit in their conversations. Some of them can be humorous—Daniel Handler comes to mind—but it’s a warped, childish, frat boy kind of humor. As I depicted him in a satirical ebook novel (still available!), it’s the kind of humor which takes delight in pulling the wings off butterflies. Bludgeon-like humor. Which I take it didn’t go over very well recently at some swanky Insider Manhattan affair he was hosting!
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Rambling: The last n+1 individuals I met in person was in 2009 at the Philadelphia Free Library’s Book Fair, at which those very radical n+1 people—looking very preppyish—had a table. I think Marco Roth was one of them, along with a collection of staffers or interns who looked like they just got done modeling for either Vogue or GQ magazines. I was with Philly-based poet Frank D. Walsh, who thinks and speaks so fast, with puns and asides, it’s tough for the best of us to keep up with his wide-ranging conversation. We chatted with the n+1’ers, an impromptu debate, for ten or fifteen minutes.
It was like conversing with pets. You know: the slow stare. They know you’re saying something, but they can only look at you with abject stupidity.
I’m not exaggerating!
The last company town in America is New York City, Brooklyn included, and the last out-of-date stodgy business ready to go under is the book biz, which continues to operate as if it were 100 years ago.
Of all the businesses which have had shakeups over the years due to changing economic circumstances, the “Big Five” publishers and their acolytes are the most insulated and the most elitist. Theirs is a clubby little world. Many of them are clueless pampered Ivy League rich kids. Bubble people. The handwriting is on the wall but they refuse to see it, which I suppose from my perspective is fine.
Daniel Handler is the perfect front man for them because in his person, thoughts, and style of speaking he well represents their ignorance and arrogance.
I asked the most “Leftist” of the New York-based lit rags, Guernica, Jacobin Mag, and n+1, if they had spoken out about Handler’s watermelon jokes, and received no response. But what could they say? Daniel Handler is inextricably so much a part of them, it would be unseemly and tactless to say a word. They’re outraged at everything else. About their own privileged world and its in-bred attitudes they remain mum.
Meanwhile, their products—their approved models—are like the Edsel automobile; ridiculously old-fashioned and stodgy Most should be subject to recalls. When NEW POP LIT is up to speed it’ll blow the lot of them out of the water.
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I’m writing an essay about how n+1 operates for the Opinion page at www.newpoplit.com. I’ll try to remain as factual and disinterested as possible. I plan to point out that crowd’s split personality. Stay tuned!
