I appreciate this post and your clarity and directness. Of all the criticisms of TMR, I think mine has been pretty mild (in part because I don't, currently, have a blog of my own, and also because I'm not real interested in the fight). I basically just said the same thing you're saying here, that the journal seems to be more or less based around being against the consensus and establishment, so if you read a positive review of a book somewhere mainstream, you'll find a negative take in TMR. Nothing inherently wrong with that, I mostly just find it a bit boring! I didn't even get into the career-positioning aspect of it, but like you say, that's kind of how the game works.
But the response to my comment, from an editor of the journal, was essentially "no, you're wrong, that's not what we're doing!" But it is! It's right there in the introduction post that launched the journal!
For what it's worth, I much prefer your posts that are more focused on classic literature itself, without the commentary on the publishing industry today (but maybe I'm the weird one, and I don't expect you to pivot away from what works). I think the first of your posts I read was one on Icelandic lit, and I was like "cool! I've never heard of this before and now I want to read it!"
Oh my god, a reader from the saga era! I wondered if anyone remembered that. That is so special. I wish that I could go back to that time. I would do the sagas so much better if I was doing them again today.
I appreciate having you here. I think that's a fair critique of the journal. It's not entirely that, but it's definitely got a lot of that. I think... you have to really feel the anger that fuels this journal. Most people, even most readers of literary fiction, don't necessarily feel that anger. So they read this journal and they're like why are you so angry? I myself have been feeling less and less angry honestly. I just have such bigger things to worry about. I'm pretty sure that as the journal gains traction it will lose a lot of that anger.
Thanks! I've enjoyed being a part of these conversations.
I would also say that the frustration I do have from TMR comes in part because I don't think it's, like, a hatchet job. There have been posts and parts of posts that I've found interesting, I just would find them much more interesting if they dropped the anti-establishment anger and just said the interesting thing. And some of the criticisms I've seen of TMR do get a little silly. There was one the other day that said (I'm paraphrasing) "the world is falling apart to right-wing extremism and what does this new publication give us? A review of a four-year old novel asking if traditional marriage is the way to go." And look, the stuff happening with Trump and Musk and RFK is genuinely terrifying. But you gotta be able to write a thing without the need to always fit into a giant messaging campaign. Not everything has to be about that!
And to your point about having to feel the anger for it to resonate, I do fit the description you gave in this post of someone who's never had a novel out on submission to agents and/or editors. So I don't know what that's like. That will change soon (getting the final touches on my manuscript), so who knows! Maybe in nine months I'll join everyone in their anger.
Exciting! Or it'll happen for you!!!! That would be great. Keep me posted about being on sub??? Happy to commiserate.
Yes, at a certain point I realized that if you add a bunch of highly-debatable points about "how we live now" to your book review, then it'll draw attention away from what you're trying to say about the book. Of course, I also love to opine about how we live now--it's a conundrum.
Thanks! I'll let you know what happens. My advantage in the submission game is that this isn't my pay-the-bills job, and I have no intention of making it so. If I can get enough of an advance to fund a fun vacation and chip away at some home improvement debt, I'll be delighted.
Your saga pieces made me a subscriber and devoted reader! Loved this piece too. It spoke to similar dynamics in my own quasi-literary world (academic history), though we don't quite have a Metropolitan Review yet.
There is one editor who is childish, tedious, and extremely tiresome, and he is definitely the "pick me! pick meeeeeeeeeee!" figure. He is almost certain to be "discovered" and lionized as great, despite being. . .not great.
This is a great, lucid overview of the lit scene, keenly observed throughout - with a few exceptions.
One exception is this strawman argument:
"Johanna has heard a lot of rhetoric about how actually the liberal order was exactly the same, the Democratic Party was exactly the same, it was the liberal elite tyrannizing everyone else. But please, be real. It was different."
Hardly "exactly the same" but both The Cons and the Libs front genocidal, ecocidal plutarchies, wherein the Libs make a few more exceptions for human rights and the climate. Both are pied pipers leading to the final edge, the Cons a bit faster and more ruthless than the Libs. Both major wings of the establishment are plutocratic death cults. Cons are fake populists, Libs are quasi-fake populists. The few Bernie and "Squad" progressive populists who have a toe-hold in and against this horror show are a genuine way forward. Not perfect but a vast improvement.
Lit skews the same way as politics in the establishment. So the strawman mistake, or reality void, results in this:
"...how would you [make the lit world] better? Johanna isn't sure, honestly. Maybe it can't be done better. Maybe she ought to grow up."
What you point to realistically as a problem in lit, the establishment, is the Democratic "liberal elite" that you otherwise valorize in politics as "different" and humanly helpful, in contrast to the monstrous Cons. But that's a contradiction, and it illuminates everything.
Genocidal and ecodical Lib monsters who do a few good deeds along the way are still monsters - and their literature reflects that reality. Liars aside, Libs (and Cons) can't see or choose not to see the limits of their own productions, as monstrous, by the defining features of their ideology.
Until the multicultural, identity explosion in lit and politics, Libs couldn't see or wouldn't grapple with their normie white supremacist limits either. Meanwhile Cons still refuse to, where not still blind.
These identity politics fights show a lot of vitality- what gender's in? what gender's out? race, age, religion - what type of identity is valuable? what type is destructive? what type exists? - the reigning elite liberal literary establishment is very comfortable with these types of struggles - so long as you don't much challenge the fundamental prerogatives of Empire that are broadly monetary and militant: who lives and who dies en masse by way of genocide and profiteering, militancy and capitalism - power politics writ large.
Identity politics are an important field of battle, especially as normie white supremacist identity politics remain so powerful, financed, and weaponized. But the multicultural, identity revolution in lit has happened and continues to happen, meanwhile the class revolution against both quick and slow motion genocide, against the death cult of the police state plutocracy, is what both the Cons and the Libs are so desperate to keep out of literature and politics both. Thus, in politics, Bernie and the Squad must be put down, and in literature, explicit anti-Empire or liberatory socialist and revolutionary writing must be blocked out, distorted, marginalized, its writers cast into external or internal exile.
So you fight that and that's how to make the lit world better, and make the world better. Does the revolution need to grow up? More precisely, it needs to expand and transform beyond itself.
Here's where I would say something witty and deft to make the point more memorable - but, whatever.
The great, cruel irony of this moment is that Trump’s election has given a lot of us who bit their tongues for the last decade permission to finally admit all the ways the last decade of “New Yorker reader/NPR listener” politics and culture failed even as expressing those concerns now fall somewhere between Un and Counter productive.
It’s like complaining about the food on the Titanic as the water is at your neck.
That was an astonishing post. What I found odd this week was the pushback against translated fiction. The argument was essentially, stop being elitist about translated fiction. So, not only is contemporary fiction shit, it’s also wrong to read translated fiction. All that’s left is reading the fiction written by five blokes on Substack. I find it all very frustrating. Yes, there’s some elitism around translated fiction, yes some contemporary fiction is poor, but, fuck me, there’s plenty to read so stop whinging.
Yes I saw John's post about that! Were there others? There is definitely a point that a lot of novels translated from European languages, especially by New Directions and NYRB, feel kind of the same, very modernist, slow-paced, mired in angst. But it seems wild to be against reading books from other countries. Do we really not want to know what life is like in China or Korea or Norway?
It also started from the LARB review that John references in his post. The discussion then moved to X. I was surprised with John’s view though. But my frustration above isn’t as much aimed at him as the general mood which you should beautifully articulate in your post.
John's very dumb comments also ignored because not useful to his supposed point all the presses that publish, e.g., genre fiction from other countries rather than merely the modernist, Faulknerian thing he was complaining about: Europa, Bitter Lemon for instance. It was lazy, like his Wagner review.
"To me, that's the essence of art—figuring out what you can honestly say, what you can honestly commit to." I have found this to be true in my own writing as a non-Maga Christian. I want my writing to be read, to have influence, but I don't want to compromise where I stand. The reference to Moby Dick is spot on with what is happening in the U.S. right now. People are so used to continually making excuses for Ahab, their ubiquitousness may it impossible to take a stand when that line is finally crossed. It is providencial that you write about the Great Books. Immersing yourself in the true, the good, and the beautiful is a safe space in these uncertain times.
Keep it up, don't compromise. I'm agnostic but could never deny the power of the religious experience I find in Flannery O'Connor, Dostoevsky, Graham Greene, and even some Protestants too!
Thanks; laid everything out nice and neat, no evasions, complications or other attempts to hide anything. If everyone communicated as clear as you do, substack would be a much nicer place.
I wrote that question too soon. Now that I've finished reading the post, I believe the name Johanna refers to the post's author. Is this a Henry Adams thing? What is the thinking behind referring to oneself in the third person?
As a first time reader, untainted by comparisons of what you used to write, the clarity of perspective here resonates. Both transcendent of and relevant to the times. Much appreciated.
It's the first internet clique I've wanted to be part of. But I am a bit worried by politics. Part of the reason men kind of got kicked out of literature was over-politicization. So when you write about politics, I get a little worried.
I'm not saying you have to avoid politics. I think Noam Chomsky is a great model. He's far to my left, but he had a stellar academic career and is one of the best known activists of his time, and he kept those two things largely separate. Other academics have generally failed at that, with disastrous consequences imo. A minor suggestion: maybe have two different substacks, one for politics, one for literature?
I will keep reading you regardless, but I hope you understand my concern.
> Every call for greater representation has worked exactly the same way. You inform the industry of some need or gap, and if you agitate enough then they go looking to fill it
I just don't accept this model as valid. On a personal note, I am a straight white man, and I simply wouldn't submit myself to the model of quotas and agitation. I also wouldn't submit myself to whatever inept bullshit this administration is doing. I'd rather be true to myself and less successful.
In terms of Trump, I don't like what's happening (I think very few people do). I struggle with the correct response as well, and I note how people on social media have often made things worse by overreacting.
Earlier this month the NYT reported that the top FBI agent at the NYC field office sent out an email regarding Trump's interference with the agency.
> Mr. Dennehy likened the current situation to his days as a Marine in the early 1990s — when he dug a small foxhole five feet deep and hunkered down for safety.
>
> “It sucked,” he wrote. “But it worked.”
I think that's pretty good advice on how to resist Trump. Hunker down. Help people quietly. Resist passively. Let it blow over.
I understand what you're saying, but I can only do what I think is right and say what I think is true. I am not calling on anyone to call their representative or to vote differently. I'm just stating the facts as I see them. These are the same facts everyone sees, but they feel hopeless and afraid, so they don't talk about it.
I definitely understand your concerns though. I share them, but when the time comes to write these posts it's honestly quite hard to concentrate on anything besides this political situation. I don't think I could just post about Moby-Dick week after week and ignore what's happening.
I respect that and I like a clique with some tension.
I'm trying to talk to & support my friends in-person. I think people often exaggerate the effectiveness of internet communication. In-person means a lot more.
I appreciate this post and your clarity and directness. Of all the criticisms of TMR, I think mine has been pretty mild (in part because I don't, currently, have a blog of my own, and also because I'm not real interested in the fight). I basically just said the same thing you're saying here, that the journal seems to be more or less based around being against the consensus and establishment, so if you read a positive review of a book somewhere mainstream, you'll find a negative take in TMR. Nothing inherently wrong with that, I mostly just find it a bit boring! I didn't even get into the career-positioning aspect of it, but like you say, that's kind of how the game works.
But the response to my comment, from an editor of the journal, was essentially "no, you're wrong, that's not what we're doing!" But it is! It's right there in the introduction post that launched the journal!
For what it's worth, I much prefer your posts that are more focused on classic literature itself, without the commentary on the publishing industry today (but maybe I'm the weird one, and I don't expect you to pivot away from what works). I think the first of your posts I read was one on Icelandic lit, and I was like "cool! I've never heard of this before and now I want to read it!"
Oh my god, a reader from the saga era! I wondered if anyone remembered that. That is so special. I wish that I could go back to that time. I would do the sagas so much better if I was doing them again today.
I appreciate having you here. I think that's a fair critique of the journal. It's not entirely that, but it's definitely got a lot of that. I think... you have to really feel the anger that fuels this journal. Most people, even most readers of literary fiction, don't necessarily feel that anger. So they read this journal and they're like why are you so angry? I myself have been feeling less and less angry honestly. I just have such bigger things to worry about. I'm pretty sure that as the journal gains traction it will lose a lot of that anger.
Thanks! I've enjoyed being a part of these conversations.
I would also say that the frustration I do have from TMR comes in part because I don't think it's, like, a hatchet job. There have been posts and parts of posts that I've found interesting, I just would find them much more interesting if they dropped the anti-establishment anger and just said the interesting thing. And some of the criticisms I've seen of TMR do get a little silly. There was one the other day that said (I'm paraphrasing) "the world is falling apart to right-wing extremism and what does this new publication give us? A review of a four-year old novel asking if traditional marriage is the way to go." And look, the stuff happening with Trump and Musk and RFK is genuinely terrifying. But you gotta be able to write a thing without the need to always fit into a giant messaging campaign. Not everything has to be about that!
And to your point about having to feel the anger for it to resonate, I do fit the description you gave in this post of someone who's never had a novel out on submission to agents and/or editors. So I don't know what that's like. That will change soon (getting the final touches on my manuscript), so who knows! Maybe in nine months I'll join everyone in their anger.
Exciting! Or it'll happen for you!!!! That would be great. Keep me posted about being on sub??? Happy to commiserate.
Yes, at a certain point I realized that if you add a bunch of highly-debatable points about "how we live now" to your book review, then it'll draw attention away from what you're trying to say about the book. Of course, I also love to opine about how we live now--it's a conundrum.
Thanks! I'll let you know what happens. My advantage in the submission game is that this isn't my pay-the-bills job, and I have no intention of making it so. If I can get enough of an advance to fund a fun vacation and chip away at some home improvement debt, I'll be delighted.
Your saga pieces made me a subscriber and devoted reader! Loved this piece too. It spoke to similar dynamics in my own quasi-literary world (academic history), though we don't quite have a Metropolitan Review yet.
There is one editor who is childish, tedious, and extremely tiresome, and he is definitely the "pick me! pick meeeeeeeeeee!" figure. He is almost certain to be "discovered" and lionized as great, despite being. . .not great.
my Princeton University Press book has been confirmed by the editorial board...Congratulations!! Looking forward to reading it.
This is a great, lucid overview of the lit scene, keenly observed throughout - with a few exceptions.
One exception is this strawman argument:
"Johanna has heard a lot of rhetoric about how actually the liberal order was exactly the same, the Democratic Party was exactly the same, it was the liberal elite tyrannizing everyone else. But please, be real. It was different."
Hardly "exactly the same" but both The Cons and the Libs front genocidal, ecocidal plutarchies, wherein the Libs make a few more exceptions for human rights and the climate. Both are pied pipers leading to the final edge, the Cons a bit faster and more ruthless than the Libs. Both major wings of the establishment are plutocratic death cults. Cons are fake populists, Libs are quasi-fake populists. The few Bernie and "Squad" progressive populists who have a toe-hold in and against this horror show are a genuine way forward. Not perfect but a vast improvement.
Lit skews the same way as politics in the establishment. So the strawman mistake, or reality void, results in this:
"...how would you [make the lit world] better? Johanna isn't sure, honestly. Maybe it can't be done better. Maybe she ought to grow up."
What you point to realistically as a problem in lit, the establishment, is the Democratic "liberal elite" that you otherwise valorize in politics as "different" and humanly helpful, in contrast to the monstrous Cons. But that's a contradiction, and it illuminates everything.
Genocidal and ecodical Lib monsters who do a few good deeds along the way are still monsters - and their literature reflects that reality. Liars aside, Libs (and Cons) can't see or choose not to see the limits of their own productions, as monstrous, by the defining features of their ideology.
Until the multicultural, identity explosion in lit and politics, Libs couldn't see or wouldn't grapple with their normie white supremacist limits either. Meanwhile Cons still refuse to, where not still blind.
These identity politics fights show a lot of vitality- what gender's in? what gender's out? race, age, religion - what type of identity is valuable? what type is destructive? what type exists? - the reigning elite liberal literary establishment is very comfortable with these types of struggles - so long as you don't much challenge the fundamental prerogatives of Empire that are broadly monetary and militant: who lives and who dies en masse by way of genocide and profiteering, militancy and capitalism - power politics writ large.
Identity politics are an important field of battle, especially as normie white supremacist identity politics remain so powerful, financed, and weaponized. But the multicultural, identity revolution in lit has happened and continues to happen, meanwhile the class revolution against both quick and slow motion genocide, against the death cult of the police state plutocracy, is what both the Cons and the Libs are so desperate to keep out of literature and politics both. Thus, in politics, Bernie and the Squad must be put down, and in literature, explicit anti-Empire or liberatory socialist and revolutionary writing must be blocked out, distorted, marginalized, its writers cast into external or internal exile.
So you fight that and that's how to make the lit world better, and make the world better. Does the revolution need to grow up? More precisely, it needs to expand and transform beyond itself.
Here's where I would say something witty and deft to make the point more memorable - but, whatever.
The great, cruel irony of this moment is that Trump’s election has given a lot of us who bit their tongues for the last decade permission to finally admit all the ways the last decade of “New Yorker reader/NPR listener” politics and culture failed even as expressing those concerns now fall somewhere between Un and Counter productive.
It’s like complaining about the food on the Titanic as the water is at your neck.
That was an astonishing post. What I found odd this week was the pushback against translated fiction. The argument was essentially, stop being elitist about translated fiction. So, not only is contemporary fiction shit, it’s also wrong to read translated fiction. All that’s left is reading the fiction written by five blokes on Substack. I find it all very frustrating. Yes, there’s some elitism around translated fiction, yes some contemporary fiction is poor, but, fuck me, there’s plenty to read so stop whinging.
Yes I saw John's post about that! Were there others? There is definitely a point that a lot of novels translated from European languages, especially by New Directions and NYRB, feel kind of the same, very modernist, slow-paced, mired in angst. But it seems wild to be against reading books from other countries. Do we really not want to know what life is like in China or Korea or Norway?
It also started from the LARB review that John references in his post. The discussion then moved to X. I was surprised with John’s view though. But my frustration above isn’t as much aimed at him as the general mood which you should beautifully articulate in your post.
Oh yes, the Brodernism piece I've been hearing about but haven't read.
John's very dumb comments also ignored because not useful to his supposed point all the presses that publish, e.g., genre fiction from other countries rather than merely the modernist, Faulknerian thing he was complaining about: Europa, Bitter Lemon for instance. It was lazy, like his Wagner review.
"To me, that's the essence of art—figuring out what you can honestly say, what you can honestly commit to." I have found this to be true in my own writing as a non-Maga Christian. I want my writing to be read, to have influence, but I don't want to compromise where I stand. The reference to Moby Dick is spot on with what is happening in the U.S. right now. People are so used to continually making excuses for Ahab, their ubiquitousness may it impossible to take a stand when that line is finally crossed. It is providencial that you write about the Great Books. Immersing yourself in the true, the good, and the beautiful is a safe space in these uncertain times.
Keep it up, don't compromise. I'm agnostic but could never deny the power of the religious experience I find in Flannery O'Connor, Dostoevsky, Graham Greene, and even some Protestants too!
I didn’t know you were trans.
Thanks; laid everything out nice and neat, no evasions, complications or other attempts to hide anything. If everyone communicated as clear as you do, substack would be a much nicer place.
Who is Johanna?
I wrote that question too soon. Now that I've finished reading the post, I believe the name Johanna refers to the post's author. Is this a Henry Adams thing? What is the thinking behind referring to oneself in the third person?
I appreciate your honesty in this about the lit world!
Congratulations! I shall order it as soon as it is available! I learned a great deal from your post today. Thanks!
As a first time reader, untainted by comparisons of what you used to write, the clarity of perspective here resonates. Both transcendent of and relevant to the times. Much appreciated.
It's the first internet clique I've wanted to be part of. But I am a bit worried by politics. Part of the reason men kind of got kicked out of literature was over-politicization. So when you write about politics, I get a little worried.
I'm not saying you have to avoid politics. I think Noam Chomsky is a great model. He's far to my left, but he had a stellar academic career and is one of the best known activists of his time, and he kept those two things largely separate. Other academics have generally failed at that, with disastrous consequences imo. A minor suggestion: maybe have two different substacks, one for politics, one for literature?
I will keep reading you regardless, but I hope you understand my concern.
> Every call for greater representation has worked exactly the same way. You inform the industry of some need or gap, and if you agitate enough then they go looking to fill it
I just don't accept this model as valid. On a personal note, I am a straight white man, and I simply wouldn't submit myself to the model of quotas and agitation. I also wouldn't submit myself to whatever inept bullshit this administration is doing. I'd rather be true to myself and less successful.
In terms of Trump, I don't like what's happening (I think very few people do). I struggle with the correct response as well, and I note how people on social media have often made things worse by overreacting.
Earlier this month the NYT reported that the top FBI agent at the NYC field office sent out an email regarding Trump's interference with the agency.
> Mr. Dennehy likened the current situation to his days as a Marine in the early 1990s — when he dug a small foxhole five feet deep and hunkered down for safety.
>
> “It sucked,” he wrote. “But it worked.”
I think that's pretty good advice on how to resist Trump. Hunker down. Help people quietly. Resist passively. Let it blow over.
I understand what you're saying, but I can only do what I think is right and say what I think is true. I am not calling on anyone to call their representative or to vote differently. I'm just stating the facts as I see them. These are the same facts everyone sees, but they feel hopeless and afraid, so they don't talk about it.
I definitely understand your concerns though. I share them, but when the time comes to write these posts it's honestly quite hard to concentrate on anything besides this political situation. I don't think I could just post about Moby-Dick week after week and ignore what's happening.
When the similarities between a book and what's happening are almost painfully clear, I don't know how one could keep 'em separated.
I respect that and I like a clique with some tension.
I'm trying to talk to & support my friends in-person. I think people often exaggerate the effectiveness of internet communication. In-person means a lot more.
Very nicely done, Naomi. I also enjoyed the Melville piece quite a lot.