Without wanting to be a huge jerk about it (though unavoidably a minor jerk), I would note first that one *can* edit inaccurate Wikipedia entries and second that what fascinates me both about this post is that I believe Ann Beattie is the only woman mentioned in it. That's neither here nor there, and as a newcomer to this newsletter, I don't know that it signifies anything other than what a particular set of book critic people were thinking about in the last few decades of the 20th century.
I'll also spare you a recap of the argument I had with my mother the other day about the phrase "guilty pleasure," the purpose of reading, the purpose of existence, Aristotle, my dad, various works by CS Lewis, Lois McMaster Bujold, H. Rider Haggard, and some other things I've forgotten.
I was aware you can edit Wikipedia, but I've never done such a thing and - because of a longstanding character flaw - have no interest in learning how. It's actually similar to how I refuse to switch from Twitter to any other social media platform as the place melts down. I took a look at mastodon and instantly knew I didn't have the stomach for learning something new.
Even learning the Substack interface, which truly could not be easier, kept me from starting this newsletter for months and months. It's a pretty bad trait.
What you note about all those men (particularly white men) is the subject of a future installment of what now appears to be a bit of a series here. In Mr. Difficult, Franzen names 13 white dudes as the status writers he admires, and that's not coincidental, definitely having something to do with who was granted the permission to be treated like a "genius," as well as what writers were valued for inside the industry structures that exert influence on what gets published and paid attention to, and why.
The best novel of 1974 that I'm aware of is Oreo, by Fran Ross, an experimental work deconstructing myth in the service of a picaresque about a half black, half Jewish woman growing up in Philadelphia (based in Ross's own life). It is satirical and hilarious, truly genius, but of course, it was all but forgotten until it was republished a few years ago.
Ross passed away young, and never published another novel, so maybe she would've ultimately been recognized as the genius she was over time, but it is interesting to note that Mark Leyner continues to have genius emeritus status based on a handful of books he published as a very young man in the 1980s that managed to capture the zeitgeist for a time.
These are some of the threads I want to think about more in a future post.
Well, you'll notice I also did not hop in to correct the Wikipedia article. I have edited and written a very few things for Wikipedia, but every time the learning curve involved is steep enough that all my grand ideas for Wikipedia projects I should take on crumble away yet again.
I will look forward to your further exploration of threads. I've forgotten how I came across this Substack, but I've enjoyed reading it (wherein enjoyment does not necessarily mean agreement).
(As for white dudes, I noted the other day on various social media that I had gotten Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller confused in my head for some period of time in the morning, and then I remembered that Keith Richards said they called the album Some Girls "because we couldn't remember their fucking names" and I decided I was never going to apologize for mixing up white dudes again. (I was trying to remember who was married to Marilyn Monroe--was it the guy who tried to kill his wife? Or the one who ran for office? Or wait, this starts a fascinating and complicated Venn diagram that includes neither Marilyn nor Arthur Miller but does pull in Mailer, Thompson, Burroughs, and probably a few others. Etc. Some days it would be nice if my brain had an off switch.)
Without wanting to be a huge jerk about it (though unavoidably a minor jerk), I would note first that one *can* edit inaccurate Wikipedia entries and second that what fascinates me both about this post is that I believe Ann Beattie is the only woman mentioned in it. That's neither here nor there, and as a newcomer to this newsletter, I don't know that it signifies anything other than what a particular set of book critic people were thinking about in the last few decades of the 20th century.
I'll also spare you a recap of the argument I had with my mother the other day about the phrase "guilty pleasure," the purpose of reading, the purpose of existence, Aristotle, my dad, various works by CS Lewis, Lois McMaster Bujold, H. Rider Haggard, and some other things I've forgotten.
I was aware you can edit Wikipedia, but I've never done such a thing and - because of a longstanding character flaw - have no interest in learning how. It's actually similar to how I refuse to switch from Twitter to any other social media platform as the place melts down. I took a look at mastodon and instantly knew I didn't have the stomach for learning something new.
Even learning the Substack interface, which truly could not be easier, kept me from starting this newsletter for months and months. It's a pretty bad trait.
What you note about all those men (particularly white men) is the subject of a future installment of what now appears to be a bit of a series here. In Mr. Difficult, Franzen names 13 white dudes as the status writers he admires, and that's not coincidental, definitely having something to do with who was granted the permission to be treated like a "genius," as well as what writers were valued for inside the industry structures that exert influence on what gets published and paid attention to, and why.
The best novel of 1974 that I'm aware of is Oreo, by Fran Ross, an experimental work deconstructing myth in the service of a picaresque about a half black, half Jewish woman growing up in Philadelphia (based in Ross's own life). It is satirical and hilarious, truly genius, but of course, it was all but forgotten until it was republished a few years ago.
Ross passed away young, and never published another novel, so maybe she would've ultimately been recognized as the genius she was over time, but it is interesting to note that Mark Leyner continues to have genius emeritus status based on a handful of books he published as a very young man in the 1980s that managed to capture the zeitgeist for a time.
These are some of the threads I want to think about more in a future post.
Well, you'll notice I also did not hop in to correct the Wikipedia article. I have edited and written a very few things for Wikipedia, but every time the learning curve involved is steep enough that all my grand ideas for Wikipedia projects I should take on crumble away yet again.
I will look forward to your further exploration of threads. I've forgotten how I came across this Substack, but I've enjoyed reading it (wherein enjoyment does not necessarily mean agreement).
(As for white dudes, I noted the other day on various social media that I had gotten Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller confused in my head for some period of time in the morning, and then I remembered that Keith Richards said they called the album Some Girls "because we couldn't remember their fucking names" and I decided I was never going to apologize for mixing up white dudes again. (I was trying to remember who was married to Marilyn Monroe--was it the guy who tried to kill his wife? Or the one who ran for office? Or wait, this starts a fascinating and complicated Venn diagram that includes neither Marilyn nor Arthur Miller but does pull in Mailer, Thompson, Burroughs, and probably a few others. Etc. Some days it would be nice if my brain had an off switch.)