Is it possible that the writing scene in New York could possibly be as terrible as it sounds?
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Question of the Day
17 Jul 2008 06:13 pm
Comments (53)
"The truth is, we started the blog because we wanted to be heard by the people we respected: Gawker media sites, the n+1 crowd, New York Magazine."
Unfortunately, she has terrible taste.
Gone are the days when Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer would get into fistfights at new York cocktail parties.
Also, just FYI, here is a writing sample from the author's blog:
If someone asked me if a dress looked good on them and I thought it looked horrendous, I would probably tell them that we should keep searching to find something that might look even better. If someone asked me if I thought they were ugly, I would vehemently say NO, even if they were f-u-g-z. In this regard, politeness neatly lends itself to white lies; we tell them so we don't hurt each other, but white lies are different than keeping something important secret. Whereas we tell white lies to make people feel good, we keep secrets to make ourselves feel good, which is inherently selfish, and ultimately not productive for anyone.
Dear self-absorbed NYU girl: Please shut the fuck up.
Everyone there went to Columbia or Harvard or Yale. They argued over grammar and syntax, the difference between a metaphor and a metonymy.
Must have been a different Harvard crowd than Matthew hung around with.
Is it possible that the writing scene in New York could possibly be as terrible as it sounds?
Is it possible that you could possibly be paid to write sentences that sound like this?
The art scene took an enormous dump in NYC during the 90's. SF and LA is where it's been at since.
Let's not even talk about the truly abysmal state of NYC's music scene.
The writing is certainly as bad as it seems - why, a "New York" first person article about the (preening) author's struggle to know the subject and write the article! The originality hurts!
I wouldn't necessarily say the scene is really as terrible as she makes it out to be, but only because everything she wrote about is way way less important than she seems to take it.
It is, however, every bit as annoying as she makes it out to be.
This "scene" is not particularly a literary one. Emily Gould? Ha! Give me a break. At least Gessen tries, with his mediocre magazine and lacking debut novel. The same can't be said for the others. Let's not mistake a better-than-average vocabulary and a fistful of snark for literary.
Jeez, you take her entire post, turn back the clock to the late 80's/early 90's, replace Gawker with Spy Magazine, New York Mag with The Voice, and it's the exact same shit!
Same as it ever was.
Those people are sooo lucky. They
know how to live.
Scenesters are disproportionately a bunch of assholes. It goes with the territory. If you want to avoid the assholes or avoid becoming one yourself, avoid the scene.
Coming from a humbler scene with absolutley zero first hand knowledge, I'm inclined to agree with Volum. I've noticed that a lot of the authors I read these days are from the Bay Area.
Unless you're still trying to figure yourself out, literature is largely a waste of time. Srsly.
I have no idea whether the lit'ry life in New York is any better or worse than it was in the past, but I do no that Ms. Roy's complaints sound fairly typical of the sorts of complaints that one would hear from any aspiring writer, in any era, struggling to make her way in the cosmopolitan fleshpots where young writers have usually gone to congregate and do their thing.
Didn't the aspiring writer Paul Varjek have to bone the socialite Mrs. Failenson on a regular basis in Breakfast at Tiffany's in order to stay afloat?
Maybe callow young people with a literary bent should think less about going to the Big City to become "a writer", and think more about going somewhere more unique and interesting, with fewer aspiring writers around, to develop a different career and learn some stuff. Once they have acquired some knowledge worth sharing, they can then write something and share it. If they don't do something like that, then is it any surprise that others might find them long on verbal fluency but short on interesting things to say?
I will add that my subjective impression, from out here in the provinces, is that the intellectual reputation of New York has changed substantially in recent years. I no longer think of it quite so much as the site of hip ultraliberality, or of the fierce and intense leftism of an even earlier era, but think of it now as the intellectual center of neoconservatism, with a closed circle of middle aged, mugged-by-reality grouches writing angry periodical articles and newspaper opinion pieces back and forth to each other about Israel, evil Arabs, criminally-inclined negroes and the surpassing goodness of the American empire - ready to suck on 9/11 all the way to their graves - and with the publishing houses and leading newspapers all playing along. Who would want to go there to join that scene?
OMG, literary power structures are as much power structures as they are literary? Srsly?
Let's not even talk about the truly abysmal state of NYC's music scene.
??? I don't know from first-hand, but almost without question every band I listen to now is from Brooklyn.
SF's music scene is much, much worse. Quick, name your favorite band from SF. When did they cut their last album/move to LA?
Jeez, you take her entire post, turn back the clock to the late 80's/early 90's, replace Gawker with Spy Magazine, New York Mag with The Voice, and it's the exact same shit!
One major difference is that SPY at least pretended to be about scorn, rather than barely-concealed worship, of the scene it covered.
However, there are probably as many dedicated and talented artists, writers, etc. working in New York now as there ever were. What really sucks is that so much "arts journalism" these days is devoted to "lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous" drivel like the linked story--in the past, at least some art writing wasn't entirely fashion-and-gossip driven.
Arguing about the difference between a metonym and a metaphor? Someone alert the MLA! This genius must be revealed so that all the world can bask in its magnificence.
Whatever she says, it can't possibly be worse than the DC writing scene.
Startling discovery: "If you can fake it there, you'll fake it anywhere," gets only 6 Google hits.
SF's music scene is much, much worse. Quick, name your favorite band from SF. When did they cut their last album/move to LA?
the dodos are good.
The difference between a metonymy and a metaphor is something generally made explicit to students in middle school.. her conclusions seem to be drawn from the false assumption that an aspiring writer has to revere this specific culture of trendy media-buzzers and dilettante penmanship. Maybe she's a bit too impressionable? I dunno.. she even admitted her insecure nature, a little self-examination might do the trick.
The difference between a metonymy and a metaphor is something generally made explicit to students in middle school.. her conclusions seem to be drawn from the false assumption that an aspiring writer has to revere this specific culture of trendy media-buzzers and dilettante penmanship. Maybe she's a bit too impressionable? I dunno.. she even admitted her insecure nature, a little self-examination might do the trick.
The things the privileged class concerns itself with these days. My heart goes out it her, it really does.
Thesis: All industries, all striving, all communities infested in ambition - are just like this.
Even blogging. I plan on sleeping my way to the top - or at least The Atlantic as the Yglesias replacement.
a lot of aspiring writers seem to believe that the best way to produce something worth reading is to congregate with other writers in some sort of "literary scene". This belief is, in fact, totally wrong. writing is an inherently solitary enterprise. it requires experience and reflection, distance and space. the worst mistake a young writer could make is to substitute the pretensions of literary critics for the actual substance of literature.
This is like the cartoon cover post.
Does anybody give a shit?
dear al,
yes, it does sound like a different harvard crowd than matt hung out with. it sounds like the difference between the lit mag and the weekly mag. and there's overlap between the two, but worlds of difference in terms of perspective.
I don't get it. She seems to be confusing "being a writer" with fitting in with a clique of pretentious assholes. She doesn't want to be a writer. Being a writer doesn't require that you go to New York and dole out witticisms and blowjobs at cocktail parties. If you want to be part of some pathetic "literary scene?" Sure, that requires more blowjobs than you can count.
No need to be self-righteous--the incestuous tangle of D.C. bloggers you belong to is just as bad as Gessen's clusterfuck. You may have different fatal flaws (pomposity vs. pretension), but it all evens out in the end. Neither your crowd nor the Gawkeratti has much to do with the serious people doing serious work in either city.
"ryno,"
I'm guessing you were with the lit crowd, because capital letters are just so square, man.
No need to be self-righteous--the incestuous tangle of D.C. bloggers you belong to is just as bad as Gessen's clusterfuck. You may have different fatal flaws (pomposity vs. pretension), but it all evens out in the end. Neither your crowd nor the Gawkeratti has much to do with the serious people doing serious work in either city.
Speaking of which, didn't Spencer Ackerman ask out that Jezebel girl mentioned in the linked article via the internet? These incestuous circles do not seem quite so distinct as Mr. Yglesias would like to suggest.
I drink alone and dread reading,
which is my chosen work.
I out of sugarcane a conchhorn fashion,
earn degrees in gloating.
Would it were all year sunny as now.
Sunny enough
to lure lungfuls of exhaust
off the steep road I pummel my bike up
and not to care.
During European Closing Bell
Beat me as Höss might;
search me like Mengele.
Slum the morning hours
of burnt brumage and a sullen sky.
If I diet every astral fall
every birthday we’re to Bray.
Four o’clock is first light—
I addressed the book ‘To my teachers’—
in summer, so unsure. (To
do nothing well is easy.)
The organhike is affecting lists, candidates.
The imperative to call the buzzwords
of a PR-man
on this many k a year
imperative. With prices as they are
the Vineyard beachfront will soon be affordable.
Artificially to reduce prices, by government,
boosts demand so prices rise.
Belief and faith attend the surf
of Barack in the dry rink.
The rollers frothing whoops, applause.
His fists bump compromise in the ice rink
on cadging way to Arial captions—
adjectives of comparison,
then of supersession,
cracking the throats of conservatives
who should he break the College
have razed the warrentless clearing
the pragmatism he broke it with
forbade him to decry.
The hole and rim are available for licking.
To select bare, downy or Epping
press any key.
Press any key to begin.
I live in New York, and I think the city is the last place where you want to go in this country if you are going to try to do anything creative. The rents are too high. New York is now the place to go after you've sold out.
I also agree with one of the earlier posters in that politically, the vibe here has gotten much more conservative. It hasn't shown up in the election returns because the transplants from the red states who have floooded New York in the past five years are still keeping their old registration addresses.
As an aspiring novelist currently living 12 times zones away from NY, I want to thank the commentators to this post. When I first read this article, I was flipping back and forth with wikipedia-ing and feeling way out of it. Good to know I'm not crazy to think writing has more to do with writing than with being a writer, unless you happen to live in Paris in the 20s.
Also, how does a 20-year-old NYU student complain about underage Lolitas at a literary party? Assume these girls weren't literally 14, it seems like the pot calling the kettle sluttily dressed.
Oops, just wikipedia. No -ing.
These people have an interesting definition of intellect.
have you ever had a profile on Rich ki ss.co m? Someone tells me that you're a certified millionaire there with many nice photos. .Is it ture? Are you still there?
When the people seize power these folks as they call themselves will be sent to work-farms in North Dakota growing rhutabagas. I'd rather read a blog about that.
For most of the 20th century only sleazy, dangerous cities produced interesting cultural scenes. NYC is neither anymore.
People came away from symposiums in Periclean Athens muttering much the same things, although back then, the girls would have been hetairai
have you ever had a profile on Rich ki ss.co m? Someone tells me that you're a certified millionaire there with many nice photos. .Is it ture? Are you still there?
dear al,
yes, it does sound like a different harvard crowd than matt hung out with. it sounds like the difference between the lit mag and the weekly mag. and there's overlap between the two, but worlds of difference in terms of perspective.
I suppose the lit mag crowd is interested in things like grammar and syntax and the weekly mag crowd, er (at least judging by Matthew), isn't.
I'm sure there's a publishing 'scene', but there's no such thing as a writing 'scene'.
People came away from symposiums in Periclean Athens muttering much the same things, although back then, the girls would have been hetairai
No, the girls would have been boys, surely.
And James Gary:
Dear self-absorbed NYU girl: Please shut the fuck up.
You're a jerk. She's 20 years old. Going after a thoughtful intelligent young college student for being "self-absorbed" is some low-hanging fruit.
As someone in publishing, my one-word answer to Jessica Roy is, "no." Just because you have lousy taste in acquaintances (and impaired judgment, even for a quite self-aware 20-year-old), that doesn't mean the rest of the universe has fallen to your level.
Sad thing is, one of my lazy douchebag counterparts somewhere will probably have a contract ready for Jess to sign tonight.
Bill: suck it, okay.
Bill: suck it, okay.
You'd have to get your own mouth off of it first.
I believe that (for example) Eudora Welty found the literary scene in Jackson, Mississippi tolerable.
The author's description of the event is bullshit. How do I know? This is supposedly a party in New York, but no one talked about real estate. That is--just short of literally--all New Yorkers talk about at parties. All New Yorkers. Literary ones. Art types. All of them.
burning flock: "raft, literary criticism can be literature."
sure. But practicing witticisms in front of a mirror is a different thing entirely.
Underage Lolitas? Humbert Humbert would be shocked!
Comments closed July 31, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
What? The Manhattan "literary scene" now consists of sleazy, aging publishing guys and ambitious young women? Say it ain't so!
Oh, for the days when publishing was a genteel, dignified profession!
Posted by James Gary | July 17, 2008 6:41 PM