My blood is boiling over this L.A. Times piece that purports to examine the question of whether it’s possible to be a young, struggling writer in New York these days, when “bohemian writers have been forced out by hedge-fund guys.”
Literary Young Men and Their First Novels
The three authors the Times uses to illustrate this point are Nathaniel Rich, Ed Park, and Keith Gessen —demonstrably NOT AT ALL young, struggling writers. They each have a wealth of literary and media connections that have led to their books getting exactly this kind of national coverage. Rich is a Yalie and the son of Frank Rich, a New York Times columnist. Park has worked for the Village Voice and the Believer, so he’s in with New York publications and the McSweeney’s machine. And Gessen is an Ivy Leaguer who worked at the New York Review of Books and then started n+1, which created its own whirlwind within the right kind of publishing circles. They exemplify the fact that it’s next to impossible to get anywhere in New York without an inherited network and a literary pedigree.
Perhaps I suffer from outsider's resentment. Of course I envy them their connections that made it easy to get book deals and then land the kind of literary media coverage that most debut novelists would kill for. I will accede that they probably worked very hard on their projects.
But I can’t help but gag someone when someone in the center of this navel-gazing world says he “doesn’t want insularity and chumminess to kill literature and ideas.” Gessen and his n+1 pals are models of insularity! I read his buddy Benjamin Kunkel’s novel and it has the same problem that all of these books do: they are novels by writers writing about their own tiny worlds. Gessen’s book, All the Sad Literary Men, follows three bored, boring, overly cerebral aspiring authors exactly like himself. Park wrote in only slightly veiled manner about his time at the Village Voice. And Rich’s novel follows the quest of a young man with a “passion for literature and language.”
My ire is multi-pronged on this issue. I hate to see such a tiny cadre of writers dominating the ever-shrinking book coverage. I find it disappointing and annoying that these writers lack the imagination to write anything more creative than barely masked accounts of their own lives. And I wish that they’d own up to their own egocentrism and stop pretending they are heirs to the bohemian past.
I won’t hold my breath.
Literary Young Men and Their First Novels
The three authors the Times uses to illustrate this point are Nathaniel Rich, Ed Park, and Keith Gessen —demonstrably NOT AT ALL young, struggling writers. They each have a wealth of literary and media connections that have led to their books getting exactly this kind of national coverage. Rich is a Yalie and the son of Frank Rich, a New York Times columnist. Park has worked for the Village Voice and the Believer, so he’s in with New York publications and the McSweeney’s machine. And Gessen is an Ivy Leaguer who worked at the New York Review of Books and then started n+1, which created its own whirlwind within the right kind of publishing circles. They exemplify the fact that it’s next to impossible to get anywhere in New York without an inherited network and a literary pedigree.
Perhaps I suffer from outsider's resentment. Of course I envy them their connections that made it easy to get book deals and then land the kind of literary media coverage that most debut novelists would kill for. I will accede that they probably worked very hard on their projects.
But I can’t help but gag someone when someone in the center of this navel-gazing world says he “doesn’t want insularity and chumminess to kill literature and ideas.” Gessen and his n+1 pals are models of insularity! I read his buddy Benjamin Kunkel’s novel and it has the same problem that all of these books do: they are novels by writers writing about their own tiny worlds. Gessen’s book, All the Sad Literary Men, follows three bored, boring, overly cerebral aspiring authors exactly like himself. Park wrote in only slightly veiled manner about his time at the Village Voice. And Rich’s novel follows the quest of a young man with a “passion for literature and language.”
My ire is multi-pronged on this issue. I hate to see such a tiny cadre of writers dominating the ever-shrinking book coverage. I find it disappointing and annoying that these writers lack the imagination to write anything more creative than barely masked accounts of their own lives. And I wish that they’d own up to their own egocentrism and stop pretending they are heirs to the bohemian past.
I won’t hold my breath.
9 comments:
Oh, Carolyn! I love you! I only wish I could have heard you recite this post as a monologue performed on your rooftop.
Oh my God. A rooftop monologue series would be so cathartic and so Brooklyn. Let's do it!
You planning to invite guests to this rooftop monologue? If so, I'm there!
Carolyn is right about everything, as usual.
How could anyone believe that novels about young literary NYC editors, written by young literary NYC editors, are representative of anything but young literary NYC editors? But then New York has always suffered under the illusion that it's a universal experience, when in fact it's an insider's game.
I think it's a fallacy to say that authors who put a lot of self-reflection and autobiography into their work are "deep thinkers." You don't have to come out and explain your social and cultural ideas in order to be meaningful. You can also just write a good story, and the action will be the meaning.
A somewhat extended ditto can be found here.
Nathaniel Rich has a story at www.fivechapters.com this week if you want to judge his writing.
His website is pretty neat!
www.nathanielrich.com
You're right about Parks and Gessen just regurgitating their own lives, which is not entirely damning although it is a bit tiresome. (At least Kunkel had an interesting conceit.) Give Rich a little credit, though--he's written a creative and intelligent book.
Post a Comment