Traditional publishing's problem isn't gender or race. It's that it's extremely fucking tribal. Thirty years ago, it was run by a tribe of mediocre white men. Now it's run by a tribe of mediocre white women. In today's weird political environment, the mediocre white men are betting on the pendulum swinging in their favor. But this shit is exhausting. None of it has anything to do with books.
Publishing has stopped being a proactive business and a cultural leader. It is now a reactive business. Authors get screwed unless an acquisitions editor can see in 12 seconds how to sell someone, and selling the author to the public is more important than selling the book, because most people—most buyers, but also most agents and editors—don't read. Consequently, platforms and pitches matter, and prose doesn't. This is only getting worse, and it's the real problem.
The tribalism shuts a lot of good people out, for sure, but I don't think it can be set along coarse gender lines. After all, there are male literary agents, but they police the same tribal lines that their female counterparts do. I'm pretty sure that 57-year-old female schoolteachers from Nebraska, who probably have zero bikini pictures on Instagram, are just as shut out of traditional publishing as men. And trade's mediocrity comes not from its reigning tribe (currently, bourgeois neurotypical white women) being mediocre at an individual level, but rather from the fact that they make all decisions by committee. (But men are capable of falling into the same patterns of mediocrity. See: all those venture-funded tech companies with truly stupid ideas.) The age in which an editor can unilaterally make a lead-title offer is over; there are now 15 say-so's that have to be placated to get a serious book deal made, and it shows in the blandness of what is produced. You hear about deals being tanked by marketing teams—why the fuck is marketing making editorial calls? Their job is to market the books they are told to market, not decide which books get in.
As a left-wing writer who happens to be a white man, I hate that calls for seriousness in literature are mistaken as white-male tribal identity signals. They're not. Diversity in literary offerings is a good thing; the talent is distributed everywhere, so writers should come from everywhere. At the same time, the nonseriousness that has infected trade publishing (bourgeois white men invented serious nonseriousness; bourgeois white women mastered it) is a real problem and it must be driven out.
All you can do at the end of the day is follow your conscience. I think a lot of harm comes out of people taking actions they don't really believe in because they think it will "move things in the right direction overall." I think time will be kind to be people who follow their consciences, even if they're called hypocrites now.
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I generally think you overstate the influence of Trump and understate the possibility that a good number of people in the center never really believed in this worldview based on racial & gender grievance. They were just pretending to go along with it because it was the path of least resistance, or they benefited from it, or they wanted the Democratic party to win, which is to say, they weren't following their consciences. But the last election showed pretty definitively that this worldview doesn't have legs, so there's no point in pretending anymore.
OMG - the Johanna stories leave so much to ponder. Right down to the ending painting, which leaves me wondering, "am I in this picture"?
I'm also enthralled by what happens to the timeline here: "the fascist regime had ended" but we read that it's 2025 when Margot falsely critiques Johanna for lending "moral support to the late regime". It really gets at the moral and historical confusion of our current moment as well as the (currently) fictional but (hopefully) inevitable future moment.
This is some depressingly dead-on satire about online culture and online literary culture specifically. Also I really liked how much this was a direct companion to the second Johanna story. The way the Johanna stories are written like a non-fiction, academic article always makes them so much more poignant and melancholy (to me, at least).
Just a comment on the timeline of the left's criticism of a Great Books curriculum. I experienced this view and adopted the position myself in the late 1960's. It was one result of the civil rights, anti-war, and second-wave feminist movements. I recall answering a question on my PhD orals about what works I would choose for a German lit course I would offer and why, and answered that I wouldn't choose works at all but instead would let the students choose what they wanted to read. I told them I was not into perpetuating "the canon" and imposing my preferences and prejudices on a class. We needed to open the curriculum to new works. Thinking back now, this was silly. The only works those potential students probably knew were canonical ones. What non-canonical works were known in the 1960s? Very few and only by the leftist elite. Still, then as now, "great books" meant works that replicated European white male cultural values and issues. Only now, we do have access to lots of other material. Asking students to choose nowadays might actually lead to some fantastic courses! By the way, I passed my orals!
Nonetheless, glad you are still following "Woman of Letters" and reading what it has to say, "Hugh." Just that I don't learn much from a critique like "asinine drivel." The post might be that, but I don't know what you mean. Where did Naomi get it wrong? A couple of examples would help to engage your view.
Traditional publishing's problem isn't gender or race. It's that it's extremely fucking tribal. Thirty years ago, it was run by a tribe of mediocre white men. Now it's run by a tribe of mediocre white women. In today's weird political environment, the mediocre white men are betting on the pendulum swinging in their favor. But this shit is exhausting. None of it has anything to do with books.
Publishing has stopped being a proactive business and a cultural leader. It is now a reactive business. Authors get screwed unless an acquisitions editor can see in 12 seconds how to sell someone, and selling the author to the public is more important than selling the book, because most people—most buyers, but also most agents and editors—don't read. Consequently, platforms and pitches matter, and prose doesn't. This is only getting worse, and it's the real problem.
The tribalism shuts a lot of good people out, for sure, but I don't think it can be set along coarse gender lines. After all, there are male literary agents, but they police the same tribal lines that their female counterparts do. I'm pretty sure that 57-year-old female schoolteachers from Nebraska, who probably have zero bikini pictures on Instagram, are just as shut out of traditional publishing as men. And trade's mediocrity comes not from its reigning tribe (currently, bourgeois neurotypical white women) being mediocre at an individual level, but rather from the fact that they make all decisions by committee. (But men are capable of falling into the same patterns of mediocrity. See: all those venture-funded tech companies with truly stupid ideas.) The age in which an editor can unilaterally make a lead-title offer is over; there are now 15 say-so's that have to be placated to get a serious book deal made, and it shows in the blandness of what is produced. You hear about deals being tanked by marketing teams—why the fuck is marketing making editorial calls? Their job is to market the books they are told to market, not decide which books get in.
As a left-wing writer who happens to be a white man, I hate that calls for seriousness in literature are mistaken as white-male tribal identity signals. They're not. Diversity in literary offerings is a good thing; the talent is distributed everywhere, so writers should come from everywhere. At the same time, the nonseriousness that has infected trade publishing (bourgeois white men invented serious nonseriousness; bourgeois white women mastered it) is a real problem and it must be driven out.
💯 various tribes of mediocrities raging about the “elite” status and elitism of those (purportedly) in power when they (feel that they) are not
I have all but abandoned "literary" for non-fiction. The plots are better, the writing is better, and I almost always get something to think about.
I love these short just-so stories, they scratch an itch I didn't know I had.
All you can do at the end of the day is follow your conscience. I think a lot of harm comes out of people taking actions they don't really believe in because they think it will "move things in the right direction overall." I think time will be kind to be people who follow their consciences, even if they're called hypocrites now.
--
I generally think you overstate the influence of Trump and understate the possibility that a good number of people in the center never really believed in this worldview based on racial & gender grievance. They were just pretending to go along with it because it was the path of least resistance, or they benefited from it, or they wanted the Democratic party to win, which is to say, they weren't following their consciences. But the last election showed pretty definitively that this worldview doesn't have legs, so there's no point in pretending anymore.
OMG - the Johanna stories leave so much to ponder. Right down to the ending painting, which leaves me wondering, "am I in this picture"?
I'm also enthralled by what happens to the timeline here: "the fascist regime had ended" but we read that it's 2025 when Margot falsely critiques Johanna for lending "moral support to the late regime". It really gets at the moral and historical confusion of our current moment as well as the (currently) fictional but (hopefully) inevitable future moment.
🤔
This is some depressingly dead-on satire about online culture and online literary culture specifically. Also I really liked how much this was a direct companion to the second Johanna story. The way the Johanna stories are written like a non-fiction, academic article always makes them so much more poignant and melancholy (to me, at least).
I hope your book earns the accolades (but not the backlash!) foretold here.
Just a comment on the timeline of the left's criticism of a Great Books curriculum. I experienced this view and adopted the position myself in the late 1960's. It was one result of the civil rights, anti-war, and second-wave feminist movements. I recall answering a question on my PhD orals about what works I would choose for a German lit course I would offer and why, and answered that I wouldn't choose works at all but instead would let the students choose what they wanted to read. I told them I was not into perpetuating "the canon" and imposing my preferences and prejudices on a class. We needed to open the curriculum to new works. Thinking back now, this was silly. The only works those potential students probably knew were canonical ones. What non-canonical works were known in the 1960s? Very few and only by the leftist elite. Still, then as now, "great books" meant works that replicated European white male cultural values and issues. Only now, we do have access to lots of other material. Asking students to choose nowadays might actually lead to some fantastic courses! By the way, I passed my orals!
This post is just dripping with left wing condemnation and arrogance. I have never heard such asinine drivel, except perhaps before from this writer
Nonetheless, glad you are still following "Woman of Letters" and reading what it has to say, "Hugh." Just that I don't learn much from a critique like "asinine drivel." The post might be that, but I don't know what you mean. Where did Naomi get it wrong? A couple of examples would help to engage your view.