This summer has been hot and I’ve been feeling messed up lately. I left a job I didn’t like, but which brought me a certain level of respect, for a job I don’t like that only makes me feel completely disconnected from my life—that is to say, this blog, reading what people are writing everywhere and the full and complete concentration on my own writing.
Time is tight for me now and not in the pretentious way that
the New York Times recently analyzed. I’m trying to fit as many different kinds
of writing into my free time as possible, but it’s been difficult. I caught the
flu and was incorrectly diagnosed with meningitis. A tick bit me and gave me
Lyme’s disease, which makes me feel strange at random times and its hot and all
I want to do is play ball and run and feel exhausted in the heat and then take
a cold shower, drink coffee and write while the sun sets over my neighbor's
window and the white sheet in her window whips in the breeze.
In the face of my unpleasant new job and my lack of time, I
managed to have a piece on the Belmont approved for Grantland, which as anyone
who reads anything I write knows, is a site I admire greatly. But, “I’ll Have
Another” was pulled from the race and my piece was appropriately pulled from
the site before it could run. This kind of thing happens all the time, but, as
I sit each day in the sun of Madison Square Park on break from my very
Bartleby-the-Scrivenerish job and watch beautiful women sunbathe and walk by, I
feel a bit discouraged.
However, no one has ever come to this blog to read me
complain or put down anything. Not everything is bad: I have a used A/C that my
consistently kind old neighbor gave me that works fine and doesn’t run my
electric that high; it’s summer and I can go East and swim and ride on boats with
my friends and swirl in a whirlpool known as Flax Pond. I can write stories
that I feel somewhat good about, stories that begin to touch on whatever it is
to me that never feels right in the world.
And this is what I was telling my father about on Sunday as
we sat by our pool. My parents were putting in new landscaping in our backyard
and around the pool and there was dirt everywhere. My dad was watering the hot
dirt, the mulch and the freshly planted new trees, bushes, flowers and shrubs
as I sat in the sun against my doctor’s orders—a prescription to doxycycline
increases your sensitivity to the sun. My dad dove in the pool to escape the
heat and he asked me about the upcoming election. I told him I thought in terms
of history and that I could never see myself in twenty years saying to friends
or co-workers or a wife, “Remember when Mitt Romney was president?” My dad and
I talked about a lot of things after that. We talked about the 2008 election,
FDR, Barack’s current theme in his speeches of encouraging American’s to be
satisfied with being in the middle class, political parties cleaning their
cabinets by just throwing candidates out there so there is new blood (i.e.
Romney, Kerry), Spain’s unemployment and how the hell we, as a nation, can
parlay the technology at our fingertips into some kind of makeable, tradable commodity.
“As Frank Sobotka put it,” my dad said. “We used to make
shit in this country.”
I then told my father that no matter what kind of dead-ends
I was running into with my day job and my writing that there was always a way
to break through. I felt confident in the technology, in the means of spreading
and sharing my writing that currently existed. I felt that, if I approached
these various means with enough force and from enough different directions
that, eventually, I would break through. My dad, always supportive, agreed. So
as he got out, I jumped in the pool and did messy breaststroke laps while
teaching my dog to stay seated calmly at the edge of the pool. That night, I
took the late train back to Brooklyn, listening to music and idle conversation
and got two new ideas for short stories. I jotted them down, but still had the
strange feeling of excitement and dread that I feel each time I ride the LIRR
in either direction. I hurried home and went to sleep with my new, used, A/C
purring in the dark.
The next morning I woke up and prepared for work. I had
breakfast and coffee, checked for any overnight NBA news, then reviewed all the
overnight tweets on my Twitter feed. I follow Jay Caspian Kang, who is a writer
for Grantland amongst other places as well as a fiction writer—he is one of my
favorite, young writers today. I noticed that he had tweeted a link to this article on a Tumblr called Family Business. If you don’t read the article, it
basically explains that sports-writing on the Internet has gone downhill
because there are too many writers who are content to or looking to write the
same thing, which is a distanced, “expert” account of whatever they are writing
about. The author of the article says that current Internet sports writing (and
to an extent Internet writing in general):
“[reinforces] the notion that everyone can be an expert
while staying at home and living behind a series of screens. The guy who scours
the internet for a news story—big or quirky—repackages it with a block quote, a
picture, some vague “analysis,” and a joke or two thinks he’s an expert.”
This anonymous writer goes on to explain that the cure for
this “illness” is that more websites, magazines and young writers should be
focusing on reporting, reporting in the way that someone like Brian
Phillips—who the writer uses as an example of good sports journalism—handles it, which is to go out to
sporting events, ask bystanders questions and then wrap their answers or
general attitude into sparkling,
concise prose.
The piece on Family Business cut straight to quite a few of
my insecurities as a writer. Mainly the fact that I lack any reporting skills
or reporting courage. I never wanted to go to Journalism School nor did I ever
want to get an MFA. I felt that just living my life and working would provide
me with enough experience to be able to write about sad, funny and interesting
things—it takes just as much or perhaps more intelligence and creativity to make
an average work day memorable or happy, than it does to finish an MFA program.
However, the daily life of someone who wants to write can be quite introverted.
And that kind of turning inward becomes an insecurity for someone, like me, who
wants to write good fiction and who also wouldn’t mind being a sports reporter
or a cultural reporter for a day job. I have never reported an event. In many
ways, I am very much a guy who simply hides behind a screen and voices romantic
and over-prosaic thoughts about TV, basketball and music.
On his Twitter feed, Jay Caspian Kang agreed with most of
the writer’s points, save for the fact that mere reporting will save the
Internet from getting stagnant. However, Kang went on a Twitter rant about the
piece and the state of the Internet that looked like this (read from bottom up):
Clearly, he makes a lot of good points about the state of
Internet writing and how far it has fallen since the early days. Basically,
between the Family Business article and Kang’s Twitter feed, the optimism I was
articulating to my dad by our pool was completed eradicated. However, only in
theory.
See, I’m tired of being told that I’m too late to the party.
I moved to Williamsburg in 2008 and in one of my first weeks there, some older
guy, who was maybe forty—I couldn’t tell from the cigarette smoke and the lines
on his face—told me that I had missed Williamsburg. He told me that
Williamsburg was over. I don’t know if I would have called this guy an aging
hipster or not, probably the term hipster disturbed him. Either way, I just
wanted him to get out of my face. Luckily, I am polite all the time except when
I am too drunk, which doesn’t happen that much and so I let this guy talk on
and eventually he tottered away. I then went on to have one of the best summers
of my life living in Brooklyn as the Animal Collective pre-Merriweather Post Pavilion hype reached some kind of fever
pitch that, even if it was a shadow of those bygone eras, had to be compared to
Seattle and San Francisco if only for reference. I continued to live in
Williamsburg for four more years, always oscillating between hating it and
loving it, until I finally just accepted it, and decided to move to a new
neighborhood.
In Kang’s Twitter thoughts, he touches on the fact that
magazine influence, the success of Internet writers, and the monetization of
content has ruined Internet writing. He remembers fondly his early Internet
writing. And while I love Kang’s writing and the articulate points he makes,
this comes off as a lot of nostalgia. There is always someone telling you what
the party was like; about how the drugs were better; the women hotter and the
sex freer. Even though he astutely points out that he has no right to
romanticize the earlier days of Internet writing since he is a fully employed
and monetized writer, he still goes on to mention, somewhat derogatorily, that
there are writers who want to write about sports just to get on Grantland,
which is something I have been trying to do, came close to doing, and didn’t
get to, simply due to fate and mainly circumstance. I know I voluntarily follow
Kang’s tweets and, for God’s sake, this is all a dissection of A TWITTER FEED,
but it touched on something in me that I didn’t want to just let sit. Maybe it
was the three cups of coffee I drank before leaving my apartment, maybe it was
because I have been listening to this song on repeat, or maybe it was just
because I was didn’t want another instance of someone telling me that I had
missed something.
Yet, Kang did two very important things. First, he provided
what he thought would be a solution to Internet writing’s problem: finding
dynamic ideas and content. It may be a bit vague, but he voiced a complaint,
with a possible solution. Second, he emphasized how important the love and pure
joy of writing comes into his distress over the state of Internet writing. It
was the stress he put on that fact (again, in his tweets) that made me realize I didn’t have to worry about
my fate as a writer. Sure, I may have little to no reporting skills. Sure, I
may spend too much time writing from behind various screens. Sure, I want to
pitch ideas to Grantland or write for SLAM or Montreal Review in an effort to
spread my name so that I, like Kang, can eventually be paid to write. At the
heart of all of that, all of those insecurities and shortcomings, is an engine
that keeps me producing content, which is just simply the love of writing. I
write about rooting for the Heat to win the title because I can’t just sit on
my couch and turn these ideas of “right” and “wrong” over in my head, I have to
put them down and share them immediately. Wilco just can’t release a solid new
album, I have to explain why it is their best album and how it actually fit
prominently into my experience of watching one of my best friends get married.
I can’t let my failed relationship with a co-worker simply just be, I have to
prod at it, turn it over, go through the detritus and turn it into a short
story that I can submit somewhere.
A quick story. The night before the Fourth of July, I went
to a party in Windsor Terrace, which is a suburban, rather out of the way part
of Brooklyn at the far end of Park Slope. It was a men’s ultimate Frisbee
team’s party so, most of the guests still mainly being in their twenties, there
was a collegiate atmosphere to it. Some of my friends were at this party, but
there were many people I didn’t know. One thin kid came up to me and put his
arms around my friends and I.
“Fucking Fourth of July,” he said.
“Jesus, Michael. Didn’t expect to see you here,” my friend
said.
The kid nodded.
“How many semesters you have left?” my friend asked.
“Two more.”
“Grad school?” I asked.
“No, undergrad.”
The kid spun away and started dancing as “Call Me Maybe”
started blasting on the stereo. My friend didn’t know the song, but I did. I
thought it was the best song around because it was about what everyone wants. I
drank more beer (again, against doctor’s wishes) made eyes at girls, sweat and
decided to go home in order to get a good start for the beach the next day. As
I was waiting in the subway, a cute girl I had been making eyes with walked
down the stairs. She started walking towards me with her friends, some guys and
some girls. She waved a little wave at me and I waved back. I stood as she
walked up to me.
“You were at that party right?” she asked.
“I was.”
“Where do you live?”
“Further north in Brooklyn.”
“Where?”
“Cobble Hill.”
“Nice. I live in Williamsburg.”
“Where?”
“Off the Bedford L.”
Just then, the train blew into the station. I was taller
than I her and I looked in her eyes. They sparkled. She wasn’t beautiful, but
she was cute, had athletic legs and was wearing American Flag shorts. The wind
whipped by us and I thought about the Bedford L stop and how it looked to me
when I first got to Williamsburg and how it now looks to me. I wanted to say
something to her but the train was tight up against us as it slowed to a stop. She looked at her friends and I stepped on the train,
assuming she’d follow. But it was an F train—she needed the G. The doors closed
and I went on my way. As I rode, I felt sad but not really. I didn’t really
want to go to Williamsburg with her, nor did I want to tell her that
Williamsburg was over. She was a cute girl and I hoped she was happy in her
American flag shorts. There’d be someone else for me to make love to or
fantasize about.
I respect Jay Caspian Kang and the writer of that Family
Business piece because they both are pointing out a problem that they don’t
want to ignore; they want Internet writing to improve for everyone’s sake. Maybe
they are more jaded than I am, but I’m just a "tool box" guy. I read
the few books and websites that I truly love and I read them over and over.
I’ll throw something new in the mix just to remind me of what’s out there and
what else I’m competing against. But mostly, I just read and write what I want
to. And even if I pitch a thing or two that will put me in a place to do that and get paid, then I can live with that. Maybe I have a
weak soul, but I think I know myself well enough to know the real answer.
Dad, you can stay optimistic.
You are a beautiful soul, Matt. We need rigor in internet writing and that often comes from recognizing that one's voice is in competition with others; that merely speaking as an individual with an individual voice can be radically isolating and alienating; and that editing is a necessary evil. If everyone just wrote the same shit than the process of choosing whose voice was heard in a place like Grantland would be totally unimportant. I like to to think that whoever gets a piece published on a site like that, even if they are saying the same thing as 100 other people, has said it a little bit better. If it is only one editor that is compelled by the piece and no one else gives a shit about it, we still know that one person did give a shit and that, as such, it was a successful communication. Who gets to be these arbiters is a tricky question, but I dont think simple pandering to these paying editors is what is at fault with internet writing, because one must pander better than the next person, which if nothing else makes one polish their piece a little more or simply pay attention to what the audience of that site will respond to. We must afford the website the same discretion and critical eye we allow and expect of the older print mediums. Writers have never existed at such numbers with so little pay. There has always been patronage and/or market forces, blah blah blah. The truly gifted writer will figure out a way to advance critically on to this territory and use this legitimizing space to their advantage and to the advantage of the reader. One must bite the hand that feeds. It’s extra protein after all. This is in many ways what Kang is doing. Participating in the structure while criticising it is one of the most effective way to enact critical consideration of that structure. It is also an easy way to be called a hypocrite, to be a hypocrite, and at worst to be sublimated into a discourse which integrates criticism not as such, but as legitimation of an uncritical, capitalist mode, by which we are all left isolated and alone, with only our own small voices running in our heads.
ReplyDeleteThanks Matt!
Anonymous!
ReplyDeleteYou commenting on my blog is the most reliable and fulfilling relationship I've ever had!
Ah Dear Matt,
ReplyDeleteI have got to speak up and mention that the above statement is not by the Anonymous of this blog. That is me, and just a quick look at the ISP address associated with this post and the past few will prove it. Also, the faux Anonymous above riddles his or her post with so many cliches and so much poor writing that I had to speak up just to maintain whatever semblance of a relationship we shared. The fake anonymous above didn't even write the note in the letter form I always use. You must have noticed that, Matt. I also don't usually use the recondite and lofty term "blah, blah, blah."
Fake Anonymous, why wouldn't you immediately admit you are not the past anonymous on this blog and, also, why would you not simply give your name if you were about to write such trite and, frankly, predictable stuff?
Alas, I am not trying to be mean but I do want to say this: The above post by fake Anon is almost wholly wrong. Matt, I spent a lot of time with you back in the day and trust me when I say you don't need Kang. You are a far better writer than he is. He simply had the good fortune to break into the current literary zeitgeist. One doesn't "bite the hand that feeds" you don't need to pander, you don't need to figure anything out, and the fake Anon can stop skirting the utterly obvious: Kang is a straight up, fully fledged, hypocrite. You don't need to adapt. Good writing only requires the one thing and it is the one thing people don't want to do: walk away.
When I studied at an ivy league college in NYC for one of my grad degrees I saw this scene (I only mention "ivy league" bc it gives you a a sense that I was there to seriously write as best I could). Indeed, most of my old friends and exes still live in the organic chai latte heaven of Brooklyn, NY. The truth is man, you just have to walk away from it all. The whole scene is bullshit. The internet writing largely sucks. The crit lit largely sucks. Kang definitely sucks. I am writing all of this to say this, Matt: You were right in the final paragraph of your post.
All there is to do is read literature we know...that we just completely and utterly KNOW...is great and to write as best we can by listening to ourselves. You got out of Williamsburg. Well, I would keep going. If you want to write even great friends are useless. I just won a rather large writing prize and you know what? It means nothing. In fact, I won the prize for poetry and I decided to write fiction. All you can do is listen to yourself. All that there is is the self. The best thing is to fucking ignore everything.
In the end, look at our greatest writers. Wallace Stevens was an insurance man, Williams was a Doctor. The writing "scene" has nothing to do with writing, in the same way the sappy Anon above has nothing to do with me.
With infinite love and unwavering tenderness,
Anonymous
Dearest Matthew,
ReplyDeleteI also want to express my sincere sadness that the good Dr. Scales has seemingly flown the coop. Then again, all her posts on the trials and tribulations of the single life seemed to come from the perspective of someone in a long-established and concrete relationship. A fact which I found, to say the least, incongruous and somewhat baffling. I love your writing, Matt. And Mark Jack's, as well. Anyway, I still fondly recall my discourse with the good Doctor a few months back. She was a very good sport.
As always,
Anonymous
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ReplyDelete