See I loved footnotes in academe because they helped me to fill up space! I basically agree with your main thesis here, ditto as well the idea about resuming the quest for wholeness (though as a good protestant heir to a tradition that knowing or unknowing arguably severed itself from the idea of an organic unity five centuries ago, I'm a little apprehensive about what happens if we find it, even if I think we probably won't!) I'm still undecided on the Paerez/Hobart thing, as with so much old news my instinct is probably to say a pox on both houses: He's broadly right but iirc he swung at (imo) the wrong target-yeah, bien-pensant middle class ladies run the show, but when you make writing an accredited profession gatekept on the basis of education of course you'll wind up with everyone's voice getting homogenized! On the other hand though, the response from the other (former) staff of Hobart was so disproportionate even by typical standards to what was actually said that it made me think that the whole thing was a shot in some sort of internal conflict (won by Ellen) inside the magazine that I (and presumably you too, though I had never even heard of the mag before the conflagration) was not privy to.
Yes, there was a backstory there involving her marriage and her ownership of the company or something, I don't know the details, plus she was already controversial: she got canceled 10 years ago during the implosion of alt-lit due to sexual assault allegations, upon which she remarked in a language of women's personal responsibility my mother's generation of women might have used (i.e. did use) but not language the then-under-30 set found at all acceptable. I agree that Perez's target was the "tip of the spear," as Steve Bannon likes to say, of a much larger social process, and I don't personally always love Hobart's aesthetics of transgression, though they do publish good work. I think these poems, for example, are wonderful:
Ah that would do it. Alt lit never moved me, although I was also a tad young and provincial when it was in its heyday. It’s strange that it all seems to have come back so strongly, but it’s maybe systematic of the culture- for whatever reason we seem strangely stuck in 2014. Maybe Major Arcana can reach all the right people and spark something new!
No, I don't care for it either, though, as I've said, I think Tao Lin has successfully transcended it, or turned it into something transcendent. Re:MA, thank you, and from your lips to God's or Christian Lorentzen's ear. (Must stop humorously referring to him—Lorentzen, not God, though Him too, I'm sure—it's just that I take him to be the tastemaker of the hour.)
I’m counting on you to blow up so that I can ride your coattails after you pan my own novel (I jest) I was bored and curious, so I looked up what Ellen was canceled for and it turns out I do know who this person is and the (now deleted and accessible only through wayback machine) article she was cancelled for ten years ago, which I now remember reading at the time! It’s strange to see that sort of sensibility when it still identified with a nuanced liberal humanism, when it still made an argument for innocence till proven guilty or whatever, whereas if someone in an analogous position with the same sensibility wrote that article today it wouldn’t sound like your mother’s generation (or mine) it’d be a tweet that would say something ridiculous like “rape is sexy”
As the crypto bros (are they still around?) say: WAGMI. And as far as a nuanced liberal humanism goes, she wasn't totally wrong, but yes it's all decayed into shock rhetoric now.
See I loved footnotes in academe because they helped me to fill up space! I basically agree with your main thesis here, ditto as well the idea about resuming the quest for wholeness (though as a good protestant heir to a tradition that knowing or unknowing arguably severed itself from the idea of an organic unity five centuries ago, I'm a little apprehensive about what happens if we find it, even if I think we probably won't!) I'm still undecided on the Paerez/Hobart thing, as with so much old news my instinct is probably to say a pox on both houses: He's broadly right but iirc he swung at (imo) the wrong target-yeah, bien-pensant middle class ladies run the show, but when you make writing an accredited profession gatekept on the basis of education of course you'll wind up with everyone's voice getting homogenized! On the other hand though, the response from the other (former) staff of Hobart was so disproportionate even by typical standards to what was actually said that it made me think that the whole thing was a shot in some sort of internal conflict (won by Ellen) inside the magazine that I (and presumably you too, though I had never even heard of the mag before the conflagration) was not privy to.
Yes, there was a backstory there involving her marriage and her ownership of the company or something, I don't know the details, plus she was already controversial: she got canceled 10 years ago during the implosion of alt-lit due to sexual assault allegations, upon which she remarked in a language of women's personal responsibility my mother's generation of women might have used (i.e. did use) but not language the then-under-30 set found at all acceptable. I agree that Perez's target was the "tip of the spear," as Steve Bannon likes to say, of a much larger social process, and I don't personally always love Hobart's aesthetics of transgression, though they do publish good work. I think these poems, for example, are wonderful:
https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/appalachian-road-trip-tych-ivan-f-kennedy
Ah that would do it. Alt lit never moved me, although I was also a tad young and provincial when it was in its heyday. It’s strange that it all seems to have come back so strongly, but it’s maybe systematic of the culture- for whatever reason we seem strangely stuck in 2014. Maybe Major Arcana can reach all the right people and spark something new!
No, I don't care for it either, though, as I've said, I think Tao Lin has successfully transcended it, or turned it into something transcendent. Re:MA, thank you, and from your lips to God's or Christian Lorentzen's ear. (Must stop humorously referring to him—Lorentzen, not God, though Him too, I'm sure—it's just that I take him to be the tastemaker of the hour.)
I’m counting on you to blow up so that I can ride your coattails after you pan my own novel (I jest) I was bored and curious, so I looked up what Ellen was canceled for and it turns out I do know who this person is and the (now deleted and accessible only through wayback machine) article she was cancelled for ten years ago, which I now remember reading at the time! It’s strange to see that sort of sensibility when it still identified with a nuanced liberal humanism, when it still made an argument for innocence till proven guilty or whatever, whereas if someone in an analogous position with the same sensibility wrote that article today it wouldn’t sound like your mother’s generation (or mine) it’d be a tweet that would say something ridiculous like “rape is sexy”
As the crypto bros (are they still around?) say: WAGMI. And as far as a nuanced liberal humanism goes, she wasn't totally wrong, but yes it's all decayed into shock rhetoric now.