This is one of the reasons I dislike Substack's constant urging that writers on the platform brand themselves in precisely this way--as characters in this sense who serve some reliable textual chicken nuggets for an audience that comes to them for those predictable satisfactions. It isn't just characters-to-hate; there's another branding strategy that involves becoming a surrogate figure for an audience, a crusading hero who is also often martyred or attacked by whatever that audience thinks of as evil.
Anybody who writes in public finds that over time, your voice becomes something of a trap, but that's more or less just a miniature example of genre formation. After a decade of blogging in the aughts and 2010s, I had readers who expected me to always be the reasonable figure who would try to bridge between opposing positions, so if I let loose with snark or anger, I'd get responses that complained that this was unworthy of me, or uncharacteristic. That surprised me at first, but it made me realize how much I'd let a sense that blogging required a more idealized or responsible "public" voice shape what I wrote, and how that in turn had created an expectation for my small but persistent readership.
Becoming a character is sometimes a hyper-intensified version of that same process. But sometimes it's exactly as you suggest here: an initial choice to conform to a persona intended to spark strong reactions in order to sell a lot of books and become a memorable archetype/stereotype. I think it's right to suggest that some of the people who make that particular deal with a sort of devil end up regretting it. Genre is a generous kind of writerly prison and it's not that hard to rebuild its walls or escape altogether, but once you're a character, not only will it be very hard to change the minds of a public readership, you likely find that people in your everyday professional and personal life expect you to perform that character and relate to you as if you are really that way.
Longer-form online writing of the kind this platform supports lets us do something more like journaling, about plague years and much else, where our inner complexity spills out and floods over any sense that the writer is just a character to be hated or defended. Maybe that doesn't sell very well, but maybe it's better for the writer and the (small) audiences that come to appreciate that approach.
It's not that I don't see your point about the role he plays in the discourse and the broader point about the existence of such roles, but my issue with your assessment of Thomas Chatterton Williams, among other things, is that it's far too reductionist when it comes to the actual person you're talking about.
He's better and more authentic than you're giving him credit for, and deserves more benefit of the doubt. Given how much attention you in particular have paid to the way that we all inhabit certain roles and make certain strategic career moves, shouldn't you'd be open to the possibility both that these complicated and fraught roles exist and that someone could occupy them without compromising their integrity. We're all reducible to these types if treated with insufficient generosity.
His two books are mixed, but neither of them is phony.
I understand why you don't want to occupy that role yourself, and of course there's nothing wrong with that, but why shouldn't someone who cares passionately about race in America and thinks that the mainstream politics of it are wrong take it upon himself to push back on that. You don't have to agree with him, of course, but I don't see why the endeavor is intrinsically dishonorable.
What's fascinating about Chua is that she had written a New York Times bestseller BEFORE she went on to become Tiger Mama, but she was willing to take on an authorial role that was the literary equivalent of becoming a wrestling heel. Then after that, she just went right on back to writing about geopolitics. The most intellectually free woman of our time?
Fascinating! I didn't know she'd written books before TM, though I knew she'd written books after. I was fascinated by how in TM she downplays her own academic credentials. I was like...I don't think you can just stumble your way into Yale Law School can you? But the narrative demanded her to be a stumbler, and she subsumed herself to its demands
Eh, I understand what you're saying, but I also feel like you're dismissing a lot of people's genuine opinions as some sort of schtick if they go against a certain grain.
I'm constantly confused about your always talking about Thomas Williams Chatterton; he's a relative no one who wrote one book years ago. He did an interview with Brianna Joy Grey where he claimed Blackness on the basis of looking like his dad/getting pulled over (which is racist), and talked about marrying a white French woman but still wanting his white kids to think of themselves as mixed despite their being white. I have his book on my TBR but he's a non figure with no platform or influence.
Coleman Hughes on the other hand has a podcast, substack, did a ted talk where he was censored by both white and black liberals and just released his first book. He even testified about whether or not descendants of slaves should get reperations. There's Glenn Loury, Candace Owens, John McWhorter, etc and a whole host of Black independent or conservative thinkers whose work and ideas are more current and influential (relatively speaking; liberals prefer Black people to be liberals, including other Blacks).
Thomas is a nobody. Why do you keep bringing him up?
This is one of the reasons I dislike Substack's constant urging that writers on the platform brand themselves in precisely this way--as characters in this sense who serve some reliable textual chicken nuggets for an audience that comes to them for those predictable satisfactions. It isn't just characters-to-hate; there's another branding strategy that involves becoming a surrogate figure for an audience, a crusading hero who is also often martyred or attacked by whatever that audience thinks of as evil.
Anybody who writes in public finds that over time, your voice becomes something of a trap, but that's more or less just a miniature example of genre formation. After a decade of blogging in the aughts and 2010s, I had readers who expected me to always be the reasonable figure who would try to bridge between opposing positions, so if I let loose with snark or anger, I'd get responses that complained that this was unworthy of me, or uncharacteristic. That surprised me at first, but it made me realize how much I'd let a sense that blogging required a more idealized or responsible "public" voice shape what I wrote, and how that in turn had created an expectation for my small but persistent readership.
Becoming a character is sometimes a hyper-intensified version of that same process. But sometimes it's exactly as you suggest here: an initial choice to conform to a persona intended to spark strong reactions in order to sell a lot of books and become a memorable archetype/stereotype. I think it's right to suggest that some of the people who make that particular deal with a sort of devil end up regretting it. Genre is a generous kind of writerly prison and it's not that hard to rebuild its walls or escape altogether, but once you're a character, not only will it be very hard to change the minds of a public readership, you likely find that people in your everyday professional and personal life expect you to perform that character and relate to you as if you are really that way.
Longer-form online writing of the kind this platform supports lets us do something more like journaling, about plague years and much else, where our inner complexity spills out and floods over any sense that the writer is just a character to be hated or defended. Maybe that doesn't sell very well, but maybe it's better for the writer and the (small) audiences that come to appreciate that approach.
Didn't reply at the time, but thanks for this response. I really agree.
It's not that I don't see your point about the role he plays in the discourse and the broader point about the existence of such roles, but my issue with your assessment of Thomas Chatterton Williams, among other things, is that it's far too reductionist when it comes to the actual person you're talking about.
He's better and more authentic than you're giving him credit for, and deserves more benefit of the doubt. Given how much attention you in particular have paid to the way that we all inhabit certain roles and make certain strategic career moves, shouldn't you'd be open to the possibility both that these complicated and fraught roles exist and that someone could occupy them without compromising their integrity. We're all reducible to these types if treated with insufficient generosity.
That VQR essay I mentioned is really good.
https://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2015/01/black-and-blue-and-blond
His two books are mixed, but neither of them is phony.
I understand why you don't want to occupy that role yourself, and of course there's nothing wrong with that, but why shouldn't someone who cares passionately about race in America and thinks that the mainstream politics of it are wrong take it upon himself to push back on that. You don't have to agree with him, of course, but I don't see why the endeavor is intrinsically dishonorable.
I am constantly fighting the temptation to be The Heterodox White Male Leftist over here. lots of money in that banana stand
What's fascinating about Chua is that she had written a New York Times bestseller BEFORE she went on to become Tiger Mama, but she was willing to take on an authorial role that was the literary equivalent of becoming a wrestling heel. Then after that, she just went right on back to writing about geopolitics. The most intellectually free woman of our time?
Fascinating! I didn't know she'd written books before TM, though I knew she'd written books after. I was fascinated by how in TM she downplays her own academic credentials. I was like...I don't think you can just stumble your way into Yale Law School can you? But the narrative demanded her to be a stumbler, and she subsumed herself to its demands
NONE OF THE ABOVE
Oh good lord I can see it, lol
Eh, I understand what you're saying, but I also feel like you're dismissing a lot of people's genuine opinions as some sort of schtick if they go against a certain grain.
I'm constantly confused about your always talking about Thomas Williams Chatterton; he's a relative no one who wrote one book years ago. He did an interview with Brianna Joy Grey where he claimed Blackness on the basis of looking like his dad/getting pulled over (which is racist), and talked about marrying a white French woman but still wanting his white kids to think of themselves as mixed despite their being white. I have his book on my TBR but he's a non figure with no platform or influence.
Coleman Hughes on the other hand has a podcast, substack, did a ted talk where he was censored by both white and black liberals and just released his first book. He even testified about whether or not descendants of slaves should get reperations. There's Glenn Loury, Candace Owens, John McWhorter, etc and a whole host of Black independent or conservative thinkers whose work and ideas are more current and influential (relatively speaking; liberals prefer Black people to be liberals, including other Blacks).
Thomas is a nobody. Why do you keep bringing him up?
Because he's what I could become if I wanted to be; the others aren't.
I am confused. You want to be irrelevant and known by no one for nothing?
You know him. I know him. Who knows me?