Art has always been unfair. It's never been about merit or elevating the avant garde as you point out yourself. So nothing has changed. The battle has always been against entrenched interest because rich people see art as a way to make money. What yall are failing to admit is the market is liberal in the fiction world, the readers are liberal, so why would a publisher put out a book that isn't gonna make them money from their readers. Plus, honestly if a lot of yall were in the traditional media, you would see it's a humiliation routine that doesn't even treat the people it lets inside well. A lot of people with the big five get screwed. As far as writers going rogue, we also need diversity in thought even in that moment. The rogue writers all sound the same, have the same pet peeves, and get sensitive AF when someone who has their same grievances but different takes, engage them in good faith. So the rogue writers gonna have to toughen up and build a wide coalition if yall actually wanna change something.
I wouldn't say nothing has changed. Publishing today is much more myopic, ideological, political and elitist. Writing honestly with true grit is much tougher today.
Man come on....you know how long artists being whining about some force being unfair to them???? Yes, the force against them changes, but the reality is that a force being against you as an artist is part of making art. The only answer is to make great art and find a way. That's it. Nothing else. its the cold logic of the jungle. Im telling you its not myopic, or any of the other stuff you are blaming. Its the same rich forces holding art back that have always existed. you acting like there's something unique to your time is trying to find a reason to whine. Im telling you, it won't work. It won't matter. Whining never changes anything. It just creates a small community of likeminded whiners. I can tell you without looking too far, that not much has ever been really sacred.
But you say it’s never been about merit. And the OP says MFA programs are to blame and then holds up Iowa grad Perez as a worthy example of an antiestablishment writer. We need some nuance to this critique rather than suggesting that only shit gets published and nothing is worth reading in any literary magazine. Largely true, sure. Absolutely true? No
You really miss the point. If you submitted a book to an agent, let alone an editor, going back 25 years it would not even be considered without MFA credentials and/or from a basically DEI standpoint. It was all in the 'what we're looking for' clauses, all of them.
So no, it wasn't rejected work because it sucked, it wasn't even considered because of who it came from.
You guys are so absurd. The whining is so weak. First off, a shit ton of people with MFAs in fiction, never get a word published. The overwhelming majority. Probably like 90%.
So this idea that you are so stuck on that "i didn't have a MFA so i didn't have a chance at the dance" is cause you are uninformed. Being connected to a celebrity is the actual currency since the publishing industry mainly cares about celebrity books.
Also you conflate a MFA and DEI...which makes no sense, but whatever i already know yall blame DEI for everything.
Here is a sad reality. You probably just aren't that good of a writer and the agent and/or editor that rejected you used those convenient excuses for rejecting you but if you had those things, an MFA or some DEI advantage that never existed, you would have just gotten another excuse cause no one likes telling someone your work ain't that great.
Or maybe your work is great and it got lost to the slush pile and it wasn't even read by an intern so what you got was just a bullshit excuse for your rejection.
I wouldn't even be surprised if this never even happened to you but its just an anecdote you believe to be true.
Regardless, I get your point very clearly. It ain't unique or special, its the most popular song on Substack. im just here to burst your self pity bubble. No one cares. Your excuses are whining. Get the work done and figure out how to get an audience, stop whining that you didn't get someone to give you one like you assumed you deserved.
Great post and says what's needed to be said for at least 25 years now. I remember the change in the late 90's, the cold freeze descending. Fuck MFA writing. I hated it then, hate it now. You could always tell when a book was not backed by a soul with a large sense of life but instead with a large number of college credits. I left the 'creative writing' program at the U of Az specifically because I could see it mediocritize writing in my classes. It was better, as a writer, to go out and get the grit of the world in my teeth.
This is also one of the big reasons men don't read anymore. Literature is no longer of strong spirit. I would love to see this change.
The new and emerging structures that grant alternative art more viability also degrade the audience's ability to receive it. It isn't enough to end-around legacy gates, the art has to adapt to the new attention landscape (even if it is adapt in order to recalibrate the audience).
Yeah, this is it. And I think it takes the kind of solidarity formed by the in-person meetups (like the Impressionists) to have the confidence and power jump back into the digital fray and beckon people out. Like you say, a lone wolf is at a huge disadvantage.
Maybe it's this in-and-out dance where people find each other on the public online forums, take it offline to build the courage (or private digital channels), then come back in full force.
It seems like people, in general, are wanting this kind of old school community, which in turn seems to make the current social situation pretty sympathetic to us guerrillas.
Pretty much. You can have a novel between two covers or you can have it on demand as a potential aspect of a user experience along with every other thing. The form wasn't meant for the new frame it has to live in and doesn't really survive the transition to it.
Great essay on the responsibilities and hardships of truly being an artist and behaving with conviction — thank you. I remember the Hobart scandal with @Alex Perez, remember wondering why so many editors and contributors would resign. The comments section was sooo long, but everything boiled down to criticism of his language and bland, broad ad hominem kinds of stuff. No one effectively refuted his central points. Cultural currents are so strong and deep, and Alex (and so many others, but at least he had the guts to open his mouth) had been subsumed.
This is extremely well written and argued. Thanks Anthony. Gonna share this with few friends. Your emphasis on "fiction" however seems potentially limiting. I might go for prose or literature in general, WG Sebald, a recent weird guerilla genius -- and essentially a nonfiction essayist -- called his writing prose fiction. Henry Miller, Lawrence Darrell, others you mention were essentially writing explosive, literary memoirs, or nonfiction. It's a subtle distinction. But as someone who is pushing boundaries, breaking rules, and bending genres, and who does not write "fiction", I would open the door a little wider or you risk becoming the gatekeeper you deride. In an case, small potatoes here on this point. We need this message. Thanks for your piece! I do wonder though if anyone is writing with as much fucking balls and genius all the people you mention in this essay. I'd like to think my two books come close. But of course they do not! At least nobody seems to have liked them or read them.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with many points in this post, I think we should be highly skeptical of the internet’s ability to foster dissident writing communities. Historically, as you mentioned with various literary movements, these communities emerged because writers were in the same place at the same time, enabling collaboration. Places like New York have become absurdly unaffordable, and only trust-fund kids have the time to cultivate aesthetically focused literary scenes. The handful of working-class writers spend most of their time meeting the demands of their economic class and don’t have the time, energy, or resources. Again, we all know this.
However, what we’ve now come to see is that the internet has stepped in to fill this void. It’s no longer the case that subcultures exist in real life first and then find a home online. Instead, the internet has begun to manufacture physical and social spaces.
Dime Square marks the first time we’ve witnessed the creation of an artificial literary scene—one that came into existence simply because its participants had the financial backing and resources to will it into reality. I lived in New York from 2012 to 2022, and if someone had told me that an aesthetically subversive arts scene would emerge from the Lower East Side, I would have mocked their naïveté.
Nothing interesting had been happening in the LES for years before I moved there. The scene had long since taken the L or JMZ and crossed the bridge, getting pushed further and further east each year until it was entirely priced out. Now, an astroturfed “arts” movement—bankrolled into existence by tech money—has filled that empty cultural space.
Looking at it now, the geographic focal point of the Dime Square phenomenon makes perfect sense. That’s precisely where tech yuppies have lived for decades. In fact, the LES was the target of a major urban planning overhaul in the early 2000s, designed to create desirable housing for young Wall Street workers.
> we should be highly skeptical of the internet’s ability to foster dissident writing communities. Historically, as you mentioned with various literary movements, these communities emerged because writers were in the same place at the same time, enabling collaboration.
Well, they had to be because the internet didn't exist. Of course online communities cannot be as strong as in-person communities, but writing is much more remote-friendly than other art forms. I can see a world where the guerrillas find each other online, share/critique each other's work, and meet up at a reasonable cadence (e.g. once every couple of months in NYC).
> Places like New York have become absurdly unaffordable, and only trust-fund kids have the time to cultivate aesthetically focused literary scenes.
People in tech, law, finance, etc - not just trust fund kids.
> Dime Square marks the first time we’ve witnessed the creation of an artificial literary scene
Yes.
> Looking at it now, the geographic focal point of the Dime Square phenomenon makes perfect sense.
Yes.
Have you read any interesting pieces on Dimes? What do you think about the art that has come out of it so far?
> I can see a world where the guerrillas find each other online, share/critique each other's work, and meet up at a reasonable cadence (e.g. once every couple of months in NYC).
I’m not saying it isn’t possible for people to find each other this way I’m just encouraging the use of caution because the results so far have been largely discouraging.
We should also acknowledge that this is pushed as such an essential point because of how increasingly rare organic in person relationships that build through physical proximity are.
> People in tech, law, finance, etc - not just trust fund kids.
I’m not sure why you’re pointing this out. Yes trust fund kids and yuppies have always been two of the apocalyptic horsemen that usher in cultural decline and its inevitable death.
> Have you read any interesting pieces on Dimes? What do you think about the art that has come out of it so far?
Ngl. I haven’t and I don’t think much of anything about the “art” or content production that’s come out of it. I don’t find it remotely interesting or worth any serious engagement.
> I’m not saying it isn’t possible for people to find each other this way I’m just encouraging the use of caution because the results so far have been largely discouraging.
Well, the question is *why* hasn't it happened in the past? Two possible reasons:
1. There weren't there right platforms; maybe Substack, or another new medium, changes that.
2. The culture did not allow many quality voices to rise up on the existing platforms. If the culture changes, maybe the internet starts to function well for this purpose.
> Yes trust fund kids and yuppies have always been two of the apocalyptic horsemen that usher in cultural decline and its inevitable death.
I should have included doctors and journalists in here too. Plenty of great artists have worked in these fields (TS Eliot at a bank, Carver worked at a subsidiary of IBM, Kafka at an insurance company, Maugham + Chekhov + Verghese as doctors, Saunders as a technical writer, almost everyone as a journalist). It's not easy to live as a journalist in New York, so we can drop that if you like, but one can live off of these other professions in the city.
Of course some of the yuppies ruin the culture with their goddamn brunches. But there are quite a few that earn well and create great art.
> I don’t find it remotely interesting or worth any serious engagement.
Totally agree. Reactionary shit, for the most part.
It's like what I tell a trot when they try to get me to join their party: go for it. I've seen a lot of people attempt the same project, only for it to go nowhere. But if you think you can manage it, then by all means. I'll be pleasantly surprised if something comes of it.
That said, I entirely agree that the internet allows people who would otherwise never interact a "space" in which to do so. I do think there are some potentialities—I'm just hesitant about going all in, especially when toxic internet culture has done incredible damage to the IRL left.
Sure, there are people who make a decent living while making cultural contributions. I don't dismiss someone simply because they're a member of the professional class. So while there are individual exceptions, as a more general economic force and class, the arrival of yuppies signals the death of anything interesting. They're usually voyeuristic tourists who come to pick at the carcass of art, writing, etc., or are interested in participation as an aesthetic.
My point was more about affordability and the young working class not being able to access certain spaces. I think this is one of the main reasons that seemingly no one has anything to say beyond recycled sad lit/chronic illness/Brooklyn girl who writes about her boring sex life, or a young male writer who attempts to be transgressive through the cheap trick of becoming a villainous heel. I'm so sick of reading about bourgeois malaise.
Anytime we got close to the free and the wild, Mama always shouted “You be careful. It might bite.” Or “get away from that, it’s got diseases!”. Same thing with the lit not kept in the zoos and trained to dance for its keepers.
A strong agreement from me. All the writers I know who went through university programmes or creative writing courses have all ended up writing the same way and on the same topics. Not that their work is bad - but it is bland, and it doesn't excite the same way that an outsider can. I think this problem is endemic across all art forms but as of yet the publishing monoliths are yet to be toppled. I honestly think Substack is the best alternative we currently have, and a good home for the writers whose work doesn't fit the publishing mainstream - especially considering writers can make a living by directly connecting with their audiences.
For those looking for outsider writing that goes totally against the grain, check out some of my work - short stories, poetry, and essays galore at: https://egregoreandi.substack.com
And keep writing all you weirdos out there. We want to read it!
I have to look up the definition of sleazy before I comment here. Based on my limited reading of Nin, I think she is honest and courageous , not corrupt and immoral as in the definition. Well, it all depends on who is going to be the judge of morality, I guess.
Nin is responsible for one of the most misused statements on the planet: "You don't see things how they are, you see them as you are." What a load of shit that was.
Art has always been unfair. It's never been about merit or elevating the avant garde as you point out yourself. So nothing has changed. The battle has always been against entrenched interest because rich people see art as a way to make money. What yall are failing to admit is the market is liberal in the fiction world, the readers are liberal, so why would a publisher put out a book that isn't gonna make them money from their readers. Plus, honestly if a lot of yall were in the traditional media, you would see it's a humiliation routine that doesn't even treat the people it lets inside well. A lot of people with the big five get screwed. As far as writers going rogue, we also need diversity in thought even in that moment. The rogue writers all sound the same, have the same pet peeves, and get sensitive AF when someone who has their same grievances but different takes, engage them in good faith. So the rogue writers gonna have to toughen up and build a wide coalition if yall actually wanna change something.
What you said, but longer and with many more words which I'm too tired to type.
I wouldn't say nothing has changed. Publishing today is much more myopic, ideological, political and elitist. Writing honestly with true grit is much tougher today.
Man come on....you know how long artists being whining about some force being unfair to them???? Yes, the force against them changes, but the reality is that a force being against you as an artist is part of making art. The only answer is to make great art and find a way. That's it. Nothing else. its the cold logic of the jungle. Im telling you its not myopic, or any of the other stuff you are blaming. Its the same rich forces holding art back that have always existed. you acting like there's something unique to your time is trying to find a reason to whine. Im telling you, it won't work. It won't matter. Whining never changes anything. It just creates a small community of likeminded whiners. I can tell you without looking too far, that not much has ever been really sacred.
But you say it’s never been about merit. And the OP says MFA programs are to blame and then holds up Iowa grad Perez as a worthy example of an antiestablishment writer. We need some nuance to this critique rather than suggesting that only shit gets published and nothing is worth reading in any literary magazine. Largely true, sure. Absolutely true? No
> Perez as a worthy example of an antiestablishment writer
All I said about Perez in this essay was that he made great points during an interview. I never said anything about his fiction writing skill.
> We need some nuance to this critique rather than suggesting that only shit gets published and nothing is worth reading in any literary magazine.
Where did I say this?
sure but the game certainly has never been solely about merit. i agree there's a middle ground here.
You really miss the point. If you submitted a book to an agent, let alone an editor, going back 25 years it would not even be considered without MFA credentials and/or from a basically DEI standpoint. It was all in the 'what we're looking for' clauses, all of them.
So no, it wasn't rejected work because it sucked, it wasn't even considered because of who it came from.
You guys are so absurd. The whining is so weak. First off, a shit ton of people with MFAs in fiction, never get a word published. The overwhelming majority. Probably like 90%.
So this idea that you are so stuck on that "i didn't have a MFA so i didn't have a chance at the dance" is cause you are uninformed. Being connected to a celebrity is the actual currency since the publishing industry mainly cares about celebrity books.
Also you conflate a MFA and DEI...which makes no sense, but whatever i already know yall blame DEI for everything.
Here is a sad reality. You probably just aren't that good of a writer and the agent and/or editor that rejected you used those convenient excuses for rejecting you but if you had those things, an MFA or some DEI advantage that never existed, you would have just gotten another excuse cause no one likes telling someone your work ain't that great.
Or maybe your work is great and it got lost to the slush pile and it wasn't even read by an intern so what you got was just a bullshit excuse for your rejection.
I wouldn't even be surprised if this never even happened to you but its just an anecdote you believe to be true.
Regardless, I get your point very clearly. It ain't unique or special, its the most popular song on Substack. im just here to burst your self pity bubble. No one cares. Your excuses are whining. Get the work done and figure out how to get an audience, stop whining that you didn't get someone to give you one like you assumed you deserved.
Earn your audience and stop whining.
Great post and says what's needed to be said for at least 25 years now. I remember the change in the late 90's, the cold freeze descending. Fuck MFA writing. I hated it then, hate it now. You could always tell when a book was not backed by a soul with a large sense of life but instead with a large number of college credits. I left the 'creative writing' program at the U of Az specifically because I could see it mediocritize writing in my classes. It was better, as a writer, to go out and get the grit of the world in my teeth.
This is also one of the big reasons men don't read anymore. Literature is no longer of strong spirit. I would love to see this change.
You’re the man Mr Valentine. Thank you
Two problems: (1) attention, (2) coordination.
Getting writers attention from audiences? And coordinating amongst a community of writers, publishers, etc?
The new and emerging structures that grant alternative art more viability also degrade the audience's ability to receive it. It isn't enough to end-around legacy gates, the art has to adapt to the new attention landscape (even if it is adapt in order to recalibrate the audience).
Re coordination: basically yes.
Your diagnosis is good, it's just not the hard part.
> degrade the audience's ability to receive it
Why does it degrade the ability to receive it? Bc it's all on phones, emails, etc. where there isn't real attention given to the art?
> the art has to adapt to the new attention landscape (even if it is adapt in order to recalibrate the audience)
How do you imagine this working?
Your second question is what we all have to figure out. I have my ideas about it but nothing proven, obv. What do you think?
Think we gotta get off the screens bc great art demands attention and the right mediums and these things are killing our minds
Yeah, this is it. And I think it takes the kind of solidarity formed by the in-person meetups (like the Impressionists) to have the confidence and power jump back into the digital fray and beckon people out. Like you say, a lone wolf is at a huge disadvantage.
Maybe it's this in-and-out dance where people find each other on the public online forums, take it offline to build the courage (or private digital channels), then come back in full force.
It seems like people, in general, are wanting this kind of old school community, which in turn seems to make the current social situation pretty sympathetic to us guerrillas.
Right. So we need art that (a) reaches people on the screens, and (b) compels them to put them down. Somehow.
Pretty much. You can have a novel between two covers or you can have it on demand as a potential aspect of a user experience along with every other thing. The form wasn't meant for the new frame it has to live in and doesn't really survive the transition to it.
True, Jason, true.
What are your thoughts, Michael?
This is what I needed to read today. Thank you.
Thank you!
Great essay on the responsibilities and hardships of truly being an artist and behaving with conviction — thank you. I remember the Hobart scandal with @Alex Perez, remember wondering why so many editors and contributors would resign. The comments section was sooo long, but everything boiled down to criticism of his language and bland, broad ad hominem kinds of stuff. No one effectively refuted his central points. Cultural currents are so strong and deep, and Alex (and so many others, but at least he had the guts to open his mouth) had been subsumed.
Thank you!!
I'm really optimistic that there's going to be a shift coming soon. And thankful to Alex Perez for starting that conversation.
Loved the Perez piece.
Well said, Anthony! We wish you success in your own writing and admire your courageous and active spirit.
Thank you!
I didn't know J.K. Simmons looked like Henry Miller. No wonder he always looked so familiar to me.
https://open.substack.com/pub/karlparkinsonwriter/p/henry-millers-face?r=418xpy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Bravo! A great piece mate.
Thank you!
This is extremely well written and argued. Thanks Anthony. Gonna share this with few friends. Your emphasis on "fiction" however seems potentially limiting. I might go for prose or literature in general, WG Sebald, a recent weird guerilla genius -- and essentially a nonfiction essayist -- called his writing prose fiction. Henry Miller, Lawrence Darrell, others you mention were essentially writing explosive, literary memoirs, or nonfiction. It's a subtle distinction. But as someone who is pushing boundaries, breaking rules, and bending genres, and who does not write "fiction", I would open the door a little wider or you risk becoming the gatekeeper you deride. In an case, small potatoes here on this point. We need this message. Thanks for your piece! I do wonder though if anyone is writing with as much fucking balls and genius all the people you mention in this essay. I'd like to think my two books come close. But of course they do not! At least nobody seems to have liked them or read them.
Agreed, definitely applies beyond solely fiction. And I will definitely look into WG Sebald.
Thank you for your support!
While I don’t necessarily disagree with many points in this post, I think we should be highly skeptical of the internet’s ability to foster dissident writing communities. Historically, as you mentioned with various literary movements, these communities emerged because writers were in the same place at the same time, enabling collaboration. Places like New York have become absurdly unaffordable, and only trust-fund kids have the time to cultivate aesthetically focused literary scenes. The handful of working-class writers spend most of their time meeting the demands of their economic class and don’t have the time, energy, or resources. Again, we all know this.
However, what we’ve now come to see is that the internet has stepped in to fill this void. It’s no longer the case that subcultures exist in real life first and then find a home online. Instead, the internet has begun to manufacture physical and social spaces.
Dime Square marks the first time we’ve witnessed the creation of an artificial literary scene—one that came into existence simply because its participants had the financial backing and resources to will it into reality. I lived in New York from 2012 to 2022, and if someone had told me that an aesthetically subversive arts scene would emerge from the Lower East Side, I would have mocked their naïveté.
Nothing interesting had been happening in the LES for years before I moved there. The scene had long since taken the L or JMZ and crossed the bridge, getting pushed further and further east each year until it was entirely priced out. Now, an astroturfed “arts” movement—bankrolled into existence by tech money—has filled that empty cultural space.
Looking at it now, the geographic focal point of the Dime Square phenomenon makes perfect sense. That’s precisely where tech yuppies have lived for decades. In fact, the LES was the target of a major urban planning overhaul in the early 2000s, designed to create desirable housing for young Wall Street workers.
> we should be highly skeptical of the internet’s ability to foster dissident writing communities. Historically, as you mentioned with various literary movements, these communities emerged because writers were in the same place at the same time, enabling collaboration.
Well, they had to be because the internet didn't exist. Of course online communities cannot be as strong as in-person communities, but writing is much more remote-friendly than other art forms. I can see a world where the guerrillas find each other online, share/critique each other's work, and meet up at a reasonable cadence (e.g. once every couple of months in NYC).
> Places like New York have become absurdly unaffordable, and only trust-fund kids have the time to cultivate aesthetically focused literary scenes.
People in tech, law, finance, etc - not just trust fund kids.
> Dime Square marks the first time we’ve witnessed the creation of an artificial literary scene
Yes.
> Looking at it now, the geographic focal point of the Dime Square phenomenon makes perfect sense.
Yes.
Have you read any interesting pieces on Dimes? What do you think about the art that has come out of it so far?
> I can see a world where the guerrillas find each other online, share/critique each other's work, and meet up at a reasonable cadence (e.g. once every couple of months in NYC).
I’m not saying it isn’t possible for people to find each other this way I’m just encouraging the use of caution because the results so far have been largely discouraging.
We should also acknowledge that this is pushed as such an essential point because of how increasingly rare organic in person relationships that build through physical proximity are.
> People in tech, law, finance, etc - not just trust fund kids.
I’m not sure why you’re pointing this out. Yes trust fund kids and yuppies have always been two of the apocalyptic horsemen that usher in cultural decline and its inevitable death.
> Have you read any interesting pieces on Dimes? What do you think about the art that has come out of it so far?
Ngl. I haven’t and I don’t think much of anything about the “art” or content production that’s come out of it. I don’t find it remotely interesting or worth any serious engagement.
> I’m not saying it isn’t possible for people to find each other this way I’m just encouraging the use of caution because the results so far have been largely discouraging.
Well, the question is *why* hasn't it happened in the past? Two possible reasons:
1. There weren't there right platforms; maybe Substack, or another new medium, changes that.
2. The culture did not allow many quality voices to rise up on the existing platforms. If the culture changes, maybe the internet starts to function well for this purpose.
> Yes trust fund kids and yuppies have always been two of the apocalyptic horsemen that usher in cultural decline and its inevitable death.
I should have included doctors and journalists in here too. Plenty of great artists have worked in these fields (TS Eliot at a bank, Carver worked at a subsidiary of IBM, Kafka at an insurance company, Maugham + Chekhov + Verghese as doctors, Saunders as a technical writer, almost everyone as a journalist). It's not easy to live as a journalist in New York, so we can drop that if you like, but one can live off of these other professions in the city.
Of course some of the yuppies ruin the culture with their goddamn brunches. But there are quite a few that earn well and create great art.
> I don’t find it remotely interesting or worth any serious engagement.
Totally agree. Reactionary shit, for the most part.
It's like what I tell a trot when they try to get me to join their party: go for it. I've seen a lot of people attempt the same project, only for it to go nowhere. But if you think you can manage it, then by all means. I'll be pleasantly surprised if something comes of it.
That said, I entirely agree that the internet allows people who would otherwise never interact a "space" in which to do so. I do think there are some potentialities—I'm just hesitant about going all in, especially when toxic internet culture has done incredible damage to the IRL left.
Sure, there are people who make a decent living while making cultural contributions. I don't dismiss someone simply because they're a member of the professional class. So while there are individual exceptions, as a more general economic force and class, the arrival of yuppies signals the death of anything interesting. They're usually voyeuristic tourists who come to pick at the carcass of art, writing, etc., or are interested in participation as an aesthetic.
My point was more about affordability and the young working class not being able to access certain spaces. I think this is one of the main reasons that seemingly no one has anything to say beyond recycled sad lit/chronic illness/Brooklyn girl who writes about her boring sex life, or a young male writer who attempts to be transgressive through the cheap trick of becoming a villainous heel. I'm so sick of reading about bourgeois malaise.
Makes total sense. And greatly enjoyed this back and forth.
A brilliant journey of hope and indictment! I hope I could be one of the floor-crackers (ceiling breakers) in this new/old revolution with you...
Henry Miller was a century ahead of his time
Brought the world forward with him
Absolutely, his work still feels fresh and modern when you read it today. One of the greats in my opinion.
100%. Reading the colossus of maroussi right now and prefer it to the Tropics
My favourite book my Miller. Also think it was his favourite work he ever produced.
Anytime we got close to the free and the wild, Mama always shouted “You be careful. It might bite.” Or “get away from that, it’s got diseases!”. Same thing with the lit not kept in the zoos and trained to dance for its keepers.
Check
A strong agreement from me. All the writers I know who went through university programmes or creative writing courses have all ended up writing the same way and on the same topics. Not that their work is bad - but it is bland, and it doesn't excite the same way that an outsider can. I think this problem is endemic across all art forms but as of yet the publishing monoliths are yet to be toppled. I honestly think Substack is the best alternative we currently have, and a good home for the writers whose work doesn't fit the publishing mainstream - especially considering writers can make a living by directly connecting with their audiences.
For those looking for outsider writing that goes totally against the grain, check out some of my work - short stories, poetry, and essays galore at: https://egregoreandi.substack.com
And keep writing all you weirdos out there. We want to read it!
Couldn't agree more. Will check out your work.
I have to look up the definition of sleazy before I comment here. Based on my limited reading of Nin, I think she is honest and courageous , not corrupt and immoral as in the definition. Well, it all depends on who is going to be the judge of morality, I guess.
Nin is responsible for one of the most misused statements on the planet: "You don't see things how they are, you see them as you are." What a load of shit that was.
😂