I wonder how much this has to do with how malleable a given, talented individual's discipline-specific ambitions are. I don't think it's a terribly controversial claim that the rise of rock n' roll siphoned off a lot of folks who would have gravitated toward poetry or even fiction (just ask the Swedish Academy, lol) or that the 70s Hollywood auteurs were self-consciously occupying a Napoleonic artistic niche that might have previously been filled by serious novelists. It also seems to me unlikely to be a coincidence that the big names of the first decade of prestige television were almost exclusively white guys, while that demographic's star was beginning to fade in literary publishing (the True Detective guy did the MFA route, published a decently-reviewed novel, etc.) It's not that I'm making the tired argument that "X is the new novel" (and I agree more or less with the "lonely at the top" view) but if we're doing some hypothetical calculation of "where does all the genius go?" I think that the question the Art of Darkness guys ask sometimes ("what would such-and-such a writer be doing now?") is not at all irrelevant.
Yes, or, for one more example, those comic book guys I'm always talking about having been working-class and unable to come up through elite education and publishing, and only now, in their twilight years, writing their novels-without-graphics, which is what they probably wanted to do in the first place. I definitely think there's something to what you're saying. I don't know what "the new novel" is right now, though, if it's not just podcasting itself, or "influencing" / "poasting" more generally, and I think as "online" has evacuated some of the prestige or centrality of the moving image it's also given literature a new lease on life. Relatedly, I'm always pleased with their answers on Art of Darkness, because they have a good sense of who would still be writing and who would go into other media given the chance (for example, Hemingway: still writing, Dick: other media). For me, I admit I don't have the absolute obsession with words and sentences *as such* of a Hemingway or a Joyce, but I still don't believe any form other than the novel allows one to do so much with so little, to go so deep and so wide at the same time. And, call me anti-social, but you don't have to wait around for someone to finance your movie/show, book your tour, draw your script, or whatever.
Alas, I am afflicted with that selfsame sentence-level obsession (not a very auspicious thing these days, I think, and absent which I can only assume I'd be trying to crank out HBO pilots). On a semi-related note (re: your Tumblr feed) I beg you to give Henry Green a chance, lol. For a demonstrative sample I might go Living-->Loving-->Party Going-->Back (I haven't read his memoir Pack My Bag, but it's supposed to be good). There's something utterly, almost Gothically strange about how he renders interiority and stream-of-consciousness that seems to have so little to do with Joyce, Woolf, et al.
Thanks for the nod to the Manifesto episode - it was an interesting listen. I did find it striking that they started with two cheers for modernity and ended on quite a morose note - although Phil did mount a valiant defence of the nobility of the ordinary, dull and selfish little life. Should we all just lighten up and remember that the world still has grandmothers AND Tolstoy (and maybe hundreds more undiscovered ones)?
Yes, I'm not personally that sympathetic to the critique of modernity that it produces mediocrity, "the last man," etc. Even if you think that, the only thing you can really do about it is try to be exceptional and interesting yourself, not stand around whining and wagging your finger in judgment at others. And every era looks more vital in retrospect. The more persuasive critiques of modernity, to me, are the ones focused on how it introduces unprecedented forms of social control or causes dehumanization via technology, etc., whether in Foucault or Arendt or Adorno.
I’m always moving back-and-forth on the question of genius myself. I might take the wishy-washy middle stance that it IS lonely at the top, but there are probably multiple unpublished contemporaries as good as let’s say Faulkner or Morrison.
They're probably self-published today rather than fully unpublished, if I say so myself. I think Naomi's friend who is better than Moshfegh should put her novel on Substack!
(Though Moshfegh is an interesting example, in that you can't really discern from a sentence or a paragraph or a page what's special about her; it's really the whole "thing" rather than some isolatable evidence or talent. This is obvious now that there's so much imitation Moshfegh out there.)
Naomi's essay is interesting in that it posits not a Melville or Dickinson, but someone who truly never sees the light of day, not while living and not posthumously, even while writing brilliant material in obscurity (so not Shakespeare's sister either, who didn't get to write anything). This is a kind of unknowable hypothetical, since even Melville and Dickinson had a few people pulling for them, or they'd never have reached us at all.
I believe the totally unknown geniuses, if they're out there, are more likely to be poets than novelists, since at least God (or Whomever) probably reads poems, but the idea of no one reading a novel is pretty sad.
I don't think everyone can be Austen. I think Austens are quite rare. I just think only one in a hundred of them even gets published. That still leaves us with a mere hundred out of the millions writing in any era.
I can agree with that, especially in our time, if not hers (the number goes up, I assume, with expanding literacy). Sorry if I interpreted you too shallowly in quest of my own point!
I also think your contention that it is lonely at the top is more supportive of my conclusions than of yours. If we imagine literary talent as being like most other abilities then we would expect a large number of authors near Austen on ability and accomplishment. If we instead imagine that there are two pools of authors: geniuses and duffers, and we imagine that editors generally publish duffers and only publish genius when it superficially resembles a duffer, then we would see something very much like we have, where genius shines out as something very rare amongst a sea of mediocrity. My contention is merely that there are many geniuses who cannot be mistaken for duffers, and hence are never published
I don't necessarily disagree with you, it's just that, as I was saying in the comment thread under your post, if you make it too saleable, then you compromise your standing with the other people who can help you out, namely, the cognoscenti. Austen wasn't that popular in her time, and Scott had to vouch for her, for example. It's a delicate business.
Totes, but you have to get published. And in the present-day the cognoscenti don't respect anything that doesn't come from their own circle. If you're not one of them, they will never think you're a genius. Like, try getting published in, say, n+1 if you've never physically walked into their offices...
As a result, if you're in the position of reading blogs like mine, your best bet is to try something more commercial, because that _is_ accessible to outsiders
Yes, I guess I'm testing this proposition (I mean I've published some stuff, but generally not where it matters). So far I've gotten (some) of these people talking to me, or aware I exist, which is new at least...
Thanks, just read it now! The main point is valuable and worthwhile, as are many of the side points (I especially agree about "the man of letters"), though the tone, a bit caught up in a "find your voice" cult of authenticity I find alien to my own experience of writing, is not really the one I'd strike. Also dispiritingly/amusingly littered with forgotten names. I did read Lynne Sharon Schwartz's 9/11 novel a hundred years ago, but I don't remember anything about it. She might be best remembered now for editing that volume of interviews with Sebald, which just goes to show that "the hieratic model of the writer" doesn't disappear by sentimental fiat—that if you don't become the hierarch or hierophant, someone else will, and in your place.
It's precisely because I am not a Democrat that I am concerned w the fate of exceptional people. I see them suffering and it is heartbreaking.
I wonder how much this has to do with how malleable a given, talented individual's discipline-specific ambitions are. I don't think it's a terribly controversial claim that the rise of rock n' roll siphoned off a lot of folks who would have gravitated toward poetry or even fiction (just ask the Swedish Academy, lol) or that the 70s Hollywood auteurs were self-consciously occupying a Napoleonic artistic niche that might have previously been filled by serious novelists. It also seems to me unlikely to be a coincidence that the big names of the first decade of prestige television were almost exclusively white guys, while that demographic's star was beginning to fade in literary publishing (the True Detective guy did the MFA route, published a decently-reviewed novel, etc.) It's not that I'm making the tired argument that "X is the new novel" (and I agree more or less with the "lonely at the top" view) but if we're doing some hypothetical calculation of "where does all the genius go?" I think that the question the Art of Darkness guys ask sometimes ("what would such-and-such a writer be doing now?") is not at all irrelevant.
Yes, or, for one more example, those comic book guys I'm always talking about having been working-class and unable to come up through elite education and publishing, and only now, in their twilight years, writing their novels-without-graphics, which is what they probably wanted to do in the first place. I definitely think there's something to what you're saying. I don't know what "the new novel" is right now, though, if it's not just podcasting itself, or "influencing" / "poasting" more generally, and I think as "online" has evacuated some of the prestige or centrality of the moving image it's also given literature a new lease on life. Relatedly, I'm always pleased with their answers on Art of Darkness, because they have a good sense of who would still be writing and who would go into other media given the chance (for example, Hemingway: still writing, Dick: other media). For me, I admit I don't have the absolute obsession with words and sentences *as such* of a Hemingway or a Joyce, but I still don't believe any form other than the novel allows one to do so much with so little, to go so deep and so wide at the same time. And, call me anti-social, but you don't have to wait around for someone to finance your movie/show, book your tour, draw your script, or whatever.
Alas, I am afflicted with that selfsame sentence-level obsession (not a very auspicious thing these days, I think, and absent which I can only assume I'd be trying to crank out HBO pilots). On a semi-related note (re: your Tumblr feed) I beg you to give Henry Green a chance, lol. For a demonstrative sample I might go Living-->Loving-->Party Going-->Back (I haven't read his memoir Pack My Bag, but it's supposed to be good). There's something utterly, almost Gothically strange about how he renders interiority and stream-of-consciousness that seems to have so little to do with Joyce, Woolf, et al.
By which I don't mean that he's thematically "Gothic" at all, really, just that there's a hauntedness about his psychological narration...
I will definitely read Green, I know I was being "churlish," if that's the word.
That footnote 6 would look great on a poster (if you're looking for merch ideas).
Thanks! I definitely should do merch...
Thanks for the nod to the Manifesto episode - it was an interesting listen. I did find it striking that they started with two cheers for modernity and ended on quite a morose note - although Phil did mount a valiant defence of the nobility of the ordinary, dull and selfish little life. Should we all just lighten up and remember that the world still has grandmothers AND Tolstoy (and maybe hundreds more undiscovered ones)?
Yes, I'm not personally that sympathetic to the critique of modernity that it produces mediocrity, "the last man," etc. Even if you think that, the only thing you can really do about it is try to be exceptional and interesting yourself, not stand around whining and wagging your finger in judgment at others. And every era looks more vital in retrospect. The more persuasive critiques of modernity, to me, are the ones focused on how it introduces unprecedented forms of social control or causes dehumanization via technology, etc., whether in Foucault or Arendt or Adorno.
I’m always moving back-and-forth on the question of genius myself. I might take the wishy-washy middle stance that it IS lonely at the top, but there are probably multiple unpublished contemporaries as good as let’s say Faulkner or Morrison.
They're probably self-published today rather than fully unpublished, if I say so myself. I think Naomi's friend who is better than Moshfegh should put her novel on Substack!
(Though Moshfegh is an interesting example, in that you can't really discern from a sentence or a paragraph or a page what's special about her; it's really the whole "thing" rather than some isolatable evidence or talent. This is obvious now that there's so much imitation Moshfegh out there.)
Naomi's essay is interesting in that it posits not a Melville or Dickinson, but someone who truly never sees the light of day, not while living and not posthumously, even while writing brilliant material in obscurity (so not Shakespeare's sister either, who didn't get to write anything). This is a kind of unknowable hypothetical, since even Melville and Dickinson had a few people pulling for them, or they'd never have reached us at all.
I believe the totally unknown geniuses, if they're out there, are more likely to be poets than novelists, since at least God (or Whomever) probably reads poems, but the idea of no one reading a novel is pretty sad.
I don't think everyone can be Austen. I think Austens are quite rare. I just think only one in a hundred of them even gets published. That still leaves us with a mere hundred out of the millions writing in any era.
I can agree with that, especially in our time, if not hers (the number goes up, I assume, with expanding literacy). Sorry if I interpreted you too shallowly in quest of my own point!
I also think your contention that it is lonely at the top is more supportive of my conclusions than of yours. If we imagine literary talent as being like most other abilities then we would expect a large number of authors near Austen on ability and accomplishment. If we instead imagine that there are two pools of authors: geniuses and duffers, and we imagine that editors generally publish duffers and only publish genius when it superficially resembles a duffer, then we would see something very much like we have, where genius shines out as something very rare amongst a sea of mediocrity. My contention is merely that there are many geniuses who cannot be mistaken for duffers, and hence are never published
I don't necessarily disagree with you, it's just that, as I was saying in the comment thread under your post, if you make it too saleable, then you compromise your standing with the other people who can help you out, namely, the cognoscenti. Austen wasn't that popular in her time, and Scott had to vouch for her, for example. It's a delicate business.
Totes, but you have to get published. And in the present-day the cognoscenti don't respect anything that doesn't come from their own circle. If you're not one of them, they will never think you're a genius. Like, try getting published in, say, n+1 if you've never physically walked into their offices...
As a result, if you're in the position of reading blogs like mine, your best bet is to try something more commercial, because that _is_ accessible to outsiders
Yes, I guess I'm testing this proposition (I mean I've published some stuff, but generally not where it matters). So far I've gotten (some) of these people talking to me, or aware I exist, which is new at least...
Have you ever read Ted Solotaroff’s essay “Writing in the Cold?” https://granta.com/writing-in-the-cold/
Thanks, just read it now! The main point is valuable and worthwhile, as are many of the side points (I especially agree about "the man of letters"), though the tone, a bit caught up in a "find your voice" cult of authenticity I find alien to my own experience of writing, is not really the one I'd strike. Also dispiritingly/amusingly littered with forgotten names. I did read Lynne Sharon Schwartz's 9/11 novel a hundred years ago, but I don't remember anything about it. She might be best remembered now for editing that volume of interviews with Sebald, which just goes to show that "the hieratic model of the writer" doesn't disappear by sentimental fiat—that if you don't become the hierarch or hierophant, someone else will, and in your place.