Congrats! Well deserved. Very excited to read MA eventually though I'm still working on To The Lighthouse and Portrait atm, my girlfriend always asks if I'm reading "another thing for your little internet guy".
Doing the Yeats and Auden episodes back to back was a good way to actually work through the politics/art question rather than just arguing about it online again. Probably there are people out there who would take Spain 1937 over Easter 1916, but I wouldn't trust them very much.
Thank you! I have no problem with anybody reading Joyce and Woolf before me! And yes, I wish the politics/art debate was less simplistic than the online arguments. (I saw somebody say that anybody who says art is apolitical is just practicing the politics of siding with power...Auden's case makes that completely nonsensical.)
Congratulations again! I don’t want to give too much away from the review I’m writing, but I’ll make this point about ideology nonetheless: I think it helps a great deal that the element of the book I think would be most likely to get it canceled five years ago – the skepticism to ultimate dismissal more or less of non-binary identity (It’s interesting that both MA and Portraits could be described as detransition novels)-is clearly coming from such a specifically philosophical-academic-big picture sociological angle (something I think the Overman 3000 segment really plainly lays out) that it’s hard to read as a denunciation of the way any given individual human being is living their life.
Thanks—I look forward to your review! The writer enjoys no privilege of interpretation over the reader, but I would hesitate at "dismissal." I was going more for "everybody is," not "nobody is." From a certain point of view, though, that might amount to the same thing.
Congratulations from one independently-published literary fiction writer to another. Your experience serializing on Substack (literary fiction, no less) proves just how powerful this platform can be when wielded by authentic artists in a superficial age. I do believe in building genuine foundations before growing out into the world, and your foundations are sound, good sir, and inspiring to boot. I look forward to reading your work and then maybe we can have a conversation and record it for the literary minded amongst us who are curious about venturing down less-trodden paths.
Congrats on the book deal! I am a new subscriber who was convinced to join after Dan Oppenheimer’s article on you. And just wanted to say for anyone else perusing the comments re: art and politics, Alice Gribbin has a few fantastic articles on her stack from a couple years back about this very topic.
Congratulations on your achievement! (And thank you for the word "seigneurial," which was an archaic little treat.)
A quick question about artists needing to "fashion themselves as works of art equivalent to their fictions": where do you place the line between entertaining self-promotion and distracting autofiction? You're one of the few novelists I've seen who sincerely commends and recommends purchasing your writing without becoming a cartoon in the process, which is why I ask. Elsewhere, the entertaining artists online seem to overshadow their work with their personae and fall into their audiences' worst instincts. I understand that self-fashioning is part of these technological platforms, but I'm skeptical that we should use it for anything other than acquiring the status to then give it up.
Thank you! My recommendation sounds more melodramatic than it actually is—but because the online world in literary terms runs loosely on the essay and related forms (aphorism, memoir, treatise, etc.), I really just mean that creative writers have to excel at that form or suite of forms alongside whatever other forms they may practice if they want to draw attention to the latter. This doesn't mean have to mean self-revelation; it does mean the cultivation of a distinct literary persona. I think this is why Didion and Sontag have become such towering figures in retrospect as models of how to achieve this from the last century. Didion's self-revelations on the page were very selective, and Sontag's almost non-existent. (I will leave to a hostile critic the observation that it might be an anxious defense mechanism when I and some of my contemporaries insist that Didion's and Sontag's novels are actually really good, better than you've heard, as good as their essays—really!)
Okay—nonfictional(ish) cultivation as a key tool in generating interest definitely makes sense. I guess it's worth the risk of encouraging readers to conflate the persona and the fictional characters, given that they'll likely do that anyway. (I think of Zadie Smith, whose recent novel set over a century ago couldn't escape the critics' references to her squishy liberal politics as evident in her essays.)
Surveying the e-lettres map, who would you say has cultivated the best personae for their fiction?
That's a good question...probably somebody I wouldn't fully endorse either personally or literarily, like Delicious Tacos. Then there's the "literary 'it' girls," who are doing it reasonably well, if with youth and probably money on their side. More seriously, I think Matthew Gasda's sober meditative aphoristic writings here on Substack lend a gravity to his plays.
Smith is a good example of a pitfall here, which is that you have to be *interesting.* This means, if you're writing about politics, you have to be a fascist, monarchist, communist, anarchist, racialist...anything but a boring liberal. Unless you can make liberalism itself seem mysterious and beguiling, arguably also an achievement of Didion and Sontag in certain of their phases.
I hadn't thought of Gasda in this vein specifically because he stays thoughtful in his diaries, but he does thread that needle. He leverages the miniature essays for his larger theatrical enterprise to at least decent success, from what I can tell from outside NYC.
And re: Smith, that's just one less reason to write formally or too publicly about American politics: it'll force you to have interesting politics, which to me is usually the kind that puts you on a list somewhere. She reads in her nonfiction like someone who wants to be free to be an agnostic, which politically I respect a lot but don't much enjoy.
As a new member, one of the first articles that ever came across my Notes highlighted your success. I started on Substack to embrace a different model of publishing. It is really galvanizing to see you forge a new path. I am so excited by the idea of people thinking differently about standard practices. Congratulations.
Just want to add a "Congratulations, John! " I haven't started on Major Arcana, but I did read The Quarantine of Sebastian House and really liked it. And these weekly roundups are inredible (plus the price is right lol). Ive found a lot of talented writers on substack, but you're among the very best.
There is so much to engage with here, but I'll simply comment here "congratulations" on the book deal, and on the novel's finding a greater and increasingly eager audience!!
I'm so heartened by this. As a literary fiction writer, this is a win for all of us.
Congrats! Well deserved. Very excited to read MA eventually though I'm still working on To The Lighthouse and Portrait atm, my girlfriend always asks if I'm reading "another thing for your little internet guy".
Doing the Yeats and Auden episodes back to back was a good way to actually work through the politics/art question rather than just arguing about it online again. Probably there are people out there who would take Spain 1937 over Easter 1916, but I wouldn't trust them very much.
Thank you! I have no problem with anybody reading Joyce and Woolf before me! And yes, I wish the politics/art debate was less simplistic than the online arguments. (I saw somebody say that anybody who says art is apolitical is just practicing the politics of siding with power...Auden's case makes that completely nonsensical.)
Congratulations again! I don’t want to give too much away from the review I’m writing, but I’ll make this point about ideology nonetheless: I think it helps a great deal that the element of the book I think would be most likely to get it canceled five years ago – the skepticism to ultimate dismissal more or less of non-binary identity (It’s interesting that both MA and Portraits could be described as detransition novels)-is clearly coming from such a specifically philosophical-academic-big picture sociological angle (something I think the Overman 3000 segment really plainly lays out) that it’s hard to read as a denunciation of the way any given individual human being is living their life.
Thanks—I look forward to your review! The writer enjoys no privilege of interpretation over the reader, but I would hesitate at "dismissal." I was going more for "everybody is," not "nobody is." From a certain point of view, though, that might amount to the same thing.
Congrats John! So freaking cool!
Congratulations from one independently-published literary fiction writer to another. Your experience serializing on Substack (literary fiction, no less) proves just how powerful this platform can be when wielded by authentic artists in a superficial age. I do believe in building genuine foundations before growing out into the world, and your foundations are sound, good sir, and inspiring to boot. I look forward to reading your work and then maybe we can have a conversation and record it for the literary minded amongst us who are curious about venturing down less-trodden paths.
Thank you! Yes, we could have a conversation at your convenience.
Congrats on the book deal! I am a new subscriber who was convinced to join after Dan Oppenheimer’s article on you. And just wanted to say for anyone else perusing the comments re: art and politics, Alice Gribbin has a few fantastic articles on her stack from a couple years back about this very topic.
Thank you! Yes, Alice's writings on this topic are great. This one from Tablet is particularly good in relation to the recent debate:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/good-politics-bad-art
Congratulations on your achievement! (And thank you for the word "seigneurial," which was an archaic little treat.)
A quick question about artists needing to "fashion themselves as works of art equivalent to their fictions": where do you place the line between entertaining self-promotion and distracting autofiction? You're one of the few novelists I've seen who sincerely commends and recommends purchasing your writing without becoming a cartoon in the process, which is why I ask. Elsewhere, the entertaining artists online seem to overshadow their work with their personae and fall into their audiences' worst instincts. I understand that self-fashioning is part of these technological platforms, but I'm skeptical that we should use it for anything other than acquiring the status to then give it up.
Thank you! My recommendation sounds more melodramatic than it actually is—but because the online world in literary terms runs loosely on the essay and related forms (aphorism, memoir, treatise, etc.), I really just mean that creative writers have to excel at that form or suite of forms alongside whatever other forms they may practice if they want to draw attention to the latter. This doesn't mean have to mean self-revelation; it does mean the cultivation of a distinct literary persona. I think this is why Didion and Sontag have become such towering figures in retrospect as models of how to achieve this from the last century. Didion's self-revelations on the page were very selective, and Sontag's almost non-existent. (I will leave to a hostile critic the observation that it might be an anxious defense mechanism when I and some of my contemporaries insist that Didion's and Sontag's novels are actually really good, better than you've heard, as good as their essays—really!)
Okay—nonfictional(ish) cultivation as a key tool in generating interest definitely makes sense. I guess it's worth the risk of encouraging readers to conflate the persona and the fictional characters, given that they'll likely do that anyway. (I think of Zadie Smith, whose recent novel set over a century ago couldn't escape the critics' references to her squishy liberal politics as evident in her essays.)
Surveying the e-lettres map, who would you say has cultivated the best personae for their fiction?
That's a good question...probably somebody I wouldn't fully endorse either personally or literarily, like Delicious Tacos. Then there's the "literary 'it' girls," who are doing it reasonably well, if with youth and probably money on their side. More seriously, I think Matthew Gasda's sober meditative aphoristic writings here on Substack lend a gravity to his plays.
Smith is a good example of a pitfall here, which is that you have to be *interesting.* This means, if you're writing about politics, you have to be a fascist, monarchist, communist, anarchist, racialist...anything but a boring liberal. Unless you can make liberalism itself seem mysterious and beguiling, arguably also an achievement of Didion and Sontag in certain of their phases.
I hadn't thought of Gasda in this vein specifically because he stays thoughtful in his diaries, but he does thread that needle. He leverages the miniature essays for his larger theatrical enterprise to at least decent success, from what I can tell from outside NYC.
And re: Smith, that's just one less reason to write formally or too publicly about American politics: it'll force you to have interesting politics, which to me is usually the kind that puts you on a list somewhere. She reads in her nonfiction like someone who wants to be free to be an agnostic, which politically I respect a lot but don't much enjoy.
As a new member, one of the first articles that ever came across my Notes highlighted your success. I started on Substack to embrace a different model of publishing. It is really galvanizing to see you forge a new path. I am so excited by the idea of people thinking differently about standard practices. Congratulations.
Thank you, and good luck with your own Substack!
Just want to add a "Congratulations, John! " I haven't started on Major Arcana, but I did read The Quarantine of Sebastian House and really liked it. And these weekly roundups are inredible (plus the price is right lol). Ive found a lot of talented writers on substack, but you're among the very best.
Thank you!
There is so much to engage with here, but I'll simply comment here "congratulations" on the book deal, and on the novel's finding a greater and increasingly eager audience!!
Thanks very much!