As a writer, I hope for the immortality of my work, for writing my version of War and Peace or Leaves of Grass. At the very least, I don't want to become the answer to an extremely difficult trivia question.
I’ll forgive the panning of The Substance (although I fully agree that few films deserve to be longer than 90 minutes), but I note the artful dodge of what made the Smith/McClay contretemps noteworthy in the first place. Smith insisted on framing his disagreement with McClay in personal terms, arguing that her claims amount to a “box of poison” deserving “real hatred”. McClay’s stated preference for not writing about people she dislikes lest this warps her judgement sounds more prudent, if less fun. The question of when, and how, to write out of hatred seems to be more immediately relevant to our parasocial times than speculation about whose name will be remembered 200 years hence.
You should write about The Substance! I wanted to like it, and I loved Demi obviously. I could possibly be persuaded.
On the hatred question, I prefer to let violent differences (or similarities) of sensibility speak for themselves. If you can pull off the personal hatred as an aesthetic performance, then go for it, but I think I work better in the mode of a politeness that occasionally has to be read between the lines. Sometimes I let myself go, e.g. Byung-Chul Han or Coralie Fargeat or Nate Silver, but that's only when the person is so remote or so famous that my hatred is irrelevant. Punching up! (I don't hate Byung-Chul Han, btw; he seems intelligent and well-intentioned. I just find his work unintentionally funny.) The more I despise an idea—we could go back to my pandemic-era Bratton review—the more cold and forensic I try to be in combatting it, no matter how angry it makes me personally. I tend to think that's more persuasive to onlookers.
Fair enough! I’ve just been wondering whether there is more than aesthetic judgement at play, having enjoyed Smith’s invective and later (after reading McClay’s gracious response) feeling guilty about having enjoyed it: lapsed Calvinism as a way of life, one could say.
Re The Substance, it is probably a healthy sign to not identify so closely with the heroine’s narcissistic nihilism that you sadomasochistically relish witnessing her disgusting downfall. It’s definitely one for the image-obsessed girlies and gays who face social death at middle age (there’s no question of immortality, literary or otherwise). It’s not a transcendent work of art by any means, but the camp pastiche is very of the moment: I’m waiting for a raunchy remake of The Picture of Dorian Gray…. but I will check out The Beast, thanks!
Yes, we need a camp Cronenbergian Dorian Gray! The Beast has some of the same themes—the heroine is a present-day actress in LA in one of the three time-spanning plotlines—but seems to me to do more with theme and juxtaposes them with other concerns. (It's also two and a half hours but has a lot more plot to justify the length.)
I sometimes use the "gracious" rhetorical technique in response to invective, since it works really well, but it is a technique...
I think big claims about how we ought to live and what the world is like (should we aim for 'immortality', is there an afterlife/God/etc, what is legitimate ambition--'what can I hope?'), presented with whatever degree of 'gracious' smol-beanery, are meant to impose on us and might well be seen as, in that sense, much more outrageous and offensive than whatever apparently mean reaction one might have to them... the combo of vast sweeping claims and apparently demure 'i for one would never make it personal, although my very humility forces me to comment...' style is essential churchladyism
Interesting news about Compact. I used to have a subscription, but I cancelled it because it felt like they were just saying the same things over and over again. Their arts & culture coverage was pretty interesting, though.
I shouldn't admit this, but I've actually never had a subscription and have just made do with what they've put in front of their paywall. I imagine, as with any political journal, the politics gets old after a while.
As a writer, I hope for the immortality of my work, for writing my version of War and Peace or Leaves of Grass. At the very least, I don't want to become the answer to an extremely difficult trivia question.
Yes, I completely agree!
I’ll forgive the panning of The Substance (although I fully agree that few films deserve to be longer than 90 minutes), but I note the artful dodge of what made the Smith/McClay contretemps noteworthy in the first place. Smith insisted on framing his disagreement with McClay in personal terms, arguing that her claims amount to a “box of poison” deserving “real hatred”. McClay’s stated preference for not writing about people she dislikes lest this warps her judgement sounds more prudent, if less fun. The question of when, and how, to write out of hatred seems to be more immediately relevant to our parasocial times than speculation about whose name will be remembered 200 years hence.
You should write about The Substance! I wanted to like it, and I loved Demi obviously. I could possibly be persuaded.
On the hatred question, I prefer to let violent differences (or similarities) of sensibility speak for themselves. If you can pull off the personal hatred as an aesthetic performance, then go for it, but I think I work better in the mode of a politeness that occasionally has to be read between the lines. Sometimes I let myself go, e.g. Byung-Chul Han or Coralie Fargeat or Nate Silver, but that's only when the person is so remote or so famous that my hatred is irrelevant. Punching up! (I don't hate Byung-Chul Han, btw; he seems intelligent and well-intentioned. I just find his work unintentionally funny.) The more I despise an idea—we could go back to my pandemic-era Bratton review—the more cold and forensic I try to be in combatting it, no matter how angry it makes me personally. I tend to think that's more persuasive to onlookers.
Fair enough! I’ve just been wondering whether there is more than aesthetic judgement at play, having enjoyed Smith’s invective and later (after reading McClay’s gracious response) feeling guilty about having enjoyed it: lapsed Calvinism as a way of life, one could say.
Re The Substance, it is probably a healthy sign to not identify so closely with the heroine’s narcissistic nihilism that you sadomasochistically relish witnessing her disgusting downfall. It’s definitely one for the image-obsessed girlies and gays who face social death at middle age (there’s no question of immortality, literary or otherwise). It’s not a transcendent work of art by any means, but the camp pastiche is very of the moment: I’m waiting for a raunchy remake of The Picture of Dorian Gray…. but I will check out The Beast, thanks!
Yes, we need a camp Cronenbergian Dorian Gray! The Beast has some of the same themes—the heroine is a present-day actress in LA in one of the three time-spanning plotlines—but seems to me to do more with theme and juxtaposes them with other concerns. (It's also two and a half hours but has a lot more plot to justify the length.)
I sometimes use the "gracious" rhetorical technique in response to invective, since it works really well, but it is a technique...
I think big claims about how we ought to live and what the world is like (should we aim for 'immortality', is there an afterlife/God/etc, what is legitimate ambition--'what can I hope?'), presented with whatever degree of 'gracious' smol-beanery, are meant to impose on us and might well be seen as, in that sense, much more outrageous and offensive than whatever apparently mean reaction one might have to them... the combo of vast sweeping claims and apparently demure 'i for one would never make it personal, although my very humility forces me to comment...' style is essential churchladyism
I guess I just don't find churchladyism that personally threatening (perhaps because I don't go to church).
Interesting news about Compact. I used to have a subscription, but I cancelled it because it felt like they were just saying the same things over and over again. Their arts & culture coverage was pretty interesting, though.
I shouldn't admit this, but I've actually never had a subscription and have just made do with what they've put in front of their paywall. I imagine, as with any political journal, the politics gets old after a while.