tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post2965962706975333183..comments2024-02-16T00:48:56.686-08:00Comments on The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes: 4:am fiction : writing in the slipsAgnieszkas Shoeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07831763071877082489noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-7605853847089170502018-11-30T09:18:14.228-08:002018-11-30T09:18:14.228-08:00I cant wait to see your post soon. Your article is...I cant wait to see your post soon. Your article is so convincing that I never stop myself to say something about it.<br />You’re doing a great job.boldaxylhttps://www.massroids.net/injectable-steroids-453/boldaxyl-300-16331.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-1683913403632416322010-11-13T03:30:06.704-08:002010-11-13T03:30:06.704-08:00Most of the bands I like are big - not in a Benny ...Most of the bands I like are big - not in a Benny Goodman kind of way. I also like reading Dan Brown. I have nothing against anyone reaching out to large numbers. The problem is with three things - when something is sold to the public as new that no longer is; when in order to reach larger numbers someone moves away from what they were doing; and when things are sold as cool rather than for quality. The first and last of these are rarely anything to do with the artist themselves. What I'm saying is you can't really both sign big time and be sold as right at the edge - again, not really anything to do with the writers in question so much as the media portrayal thereof. What I'd really like to see is the mainstream media being a little faster on the ball picking these movements up in the first place, rather than pretending to discover new things that aren't new. It's great that Ben and Lee are getting media coverage - they should have had it years ago when they were really news, and the part of the media that's there to tout what's new should now have moved on.<br /><br />I agree on reflection the tone of this piece is too snarky, and that's detracted from the point I was making - but hey, when the Brutalists stuck two fingers to the mainstream they were being snarky. They had a very good point. I think I do too - there is a serious media lag, and the people who are ultimately losing out are the public. There IS a media lag in other art forms of course - but not as much - it's par for the course for music journalists to go round tiny gigs, keep their ears open both to the grapevine and myspace, and try to be the first to out a new talent. I don't think that's the case so much in literary journalism (AND I think there's less of a feed up the chain from tiny zine to mainstream press - and we really miss out not having the equivalent of BBC Introducing). The same journalists who moan about the decline of interest in literature are often the ones who aren't going out of their way to find genuinely exciting new stuff for readers to get buzzed up about.<br /><br />I apologise unreservedly for personal offence caused to Ben and Lee by using them as examples (and of course to Todd and Emma, but I want to reiterate that this piece wasn't really about literary nights) but there IS a scene that sells itself as more than it is, and does so to a public who deserve the goods to do what it says on the tin. So I'm agreeing with what you say about reaching large numbers - but it's the media that create the large numbers, and they really should be a little less introspectivce, a little less lazy and sold on promoting what they've known about for quite some time - and start looking for new stuff, stop being keen to be the first to mention something they know is going mainstream, and start being keen to mention something for no other reason than they think it's good.Agnieszkas Shoeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07831763071877082489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-72779055285869279662010-11-12T11:20:55.981-08:002010-11-12T11:20:55.981-08:00what a load of old shite. you sound like a bit of...what a load of old shite. you sound like a bit of a jealous sort really. the canal is really good, melville house are definitely (last time i checked) and indie, and why shouldnt ben myers - or indeed "the other one" - tony o'neill - have signed with majors? i think any movement is about reaching the maximum amount of people possible, and i remember at the time plenty of statements being made to that effect. you sound like one of those people who starts to hate your favorite band as soon as other people got into them. "sell out!' jesus christ, oure basically someone who is trapped being 15 for the rest of their lives. kind of sad, really.yucknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-77785758994956716412010-11-07T02:52:38.756-08:002010-11-07T02:52:38.756-08:00Todd, McSweeney's is a humdinger of an example...Todd, McSweeney's is a humdinger of an example - it absolutely splits people down the middle here. Before the generalisations, I want to say direct to you how excited I was talking to Suze about LDM and getting a feel for the way you find readers. And I'm very excited about showing you what Oxford's got. I absolutely agree that we should support what we think is great (I remember posting a comment on a Times article that hadn't credited Emma with her hard work for THWTL). And at the end of the day all of us are in it for the same thing - to get people whooped up about literature. But supporting each other on the central cause and the things we agree with should never stop us calling out where we see a problem.<br /><br />On mhp, I absolutely don't have a problem with them - they look like a fantastic outfit. I was charting the progress of the career of someone like Rourke (Myers being the prime example, though), pointing out that these authors who once were really outside the mainstream but are no longer. Which isn't a bad thing. BUT they are still being sold as the cutting edge when they no longer are. And their prose style has become in its own way paradigmatic. It's not the fresh exciting thing it once was but it's still being presented as such (it's not unique to literature - it happened with punk, with New Romanticism, with Northern Soul - the moment the mainstream media picks up something it's no longer cutting edge by and large because there's a media lag). <br /><br />The problem comes when new readers take a look and see that there's nothing new to say to their lives - then they'll lose faith in literature as a whole. <br /><br />There is also (and it again is in no way unique to literature) a tendency for genuine underground movements to be pounced upon by scenesters the moment it hits a sniff of the media. Again, nothing wrong with that - but there is a real danger of the newly-embraced underground believing the hype and turning its attention to the being cool aspect not to its roots which were about the words themselves. <br /><br />In order to stay fresh, basically (the short of this very long comment), movements that are at this juncture need, in order to stay exciting, 1. to remain focused on the thing that made them break out in the first place, not the other stuff that comes with breaking out and 2. to be very sure of itself and self-confident in its dealings with a mainstream that suddenly want a piece of the action - make them come to you not you to them.<br /><br />As for me, I do worry what would happen if eight cuts gallery suddenly got picked up and run with - yet at the same time we want the best for our authors. It's something we all have to look at, but as a project we have a very clear agenda of presenting work in a multi-format, highly-curated fashion that provokes thought in the audience and remains 100% true to the author's vision. I'm delighted to do anything with anyone that doesn't compromise that. <br /><br />To expand on the last bit, I know Emma made a point about the piece I chose to read at LDM and whether it was appropriate. yes, it was said in humour but it's pertinent because it has come up more than once. It's quite clear from the web what I write, and what I represent with my writing (confessional urban fiction that deals with questions of identity and relationship by never flinching). I wasn't dis-invited. I read my best piece because I wanted to give it an airing, but I also vchose it because it has black humour that I thought would suit LDM. I didn't compromise but I tried to enter the spirit of the event. It has come up most frequently not witbh relation to the sexuality of our pieces, but the frank way we deal with suicide. And where we are really asked to limit ourselves at an event where we feel that would misrepresent us, I hope I'll make the right choice (sure, I understand why people ask it, I'll out them for it which is fair enough, but I have to stay focused on those ideals)Agnieszkas Shoeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07831763071877082489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-72891532836105050372010-11-06T18:42:07.119-07:002010-11-06T18:42:07.119-07:00Dan,
The way you feel about these events reminds...Dan, <br /><br />The way you feel about these events reminds me of how I used to feel going to McSwy's events — I felt not-included, but the thing is: that was all ego on my part. McSwy's is great, and has been hugely supportive of the different things I've done that make sense for them to be supportive of (proper English?). So, it was all in my head, and I felt somehow that I wasn't good enough to belong. Now, I don't have that problem. But, looking back, I see that was on me, and it deals more with my own sense of actually giving a shit (I wanted to be accepted, because I felt McSwy's was an ideal counter-culture to the alienating Big 6 that I felt far from). <br /><br />As for MPH: Totally indie. I see why you'd say what you did, but man, I'll tell you, the people that have to fight hard to compete, because they don't have a huge infrastructure (like the BIg 6), they're indie. If they succeed a bit, it doesn't make it any less so.Adrian Todd Zunigahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11324392766221651957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-87139628115125731052010-11-06T13:23:14.862-07:002010-11-06T13:23:14.862-07:00Dennis, what constitutes "indie" in publ...Dennis, what constitutes "indie" in publishing - just like the music industry - is one those things that's impossible to pin down. To someone sitting in Hachette Towers, a place like mhp is beyond the indie-as-fuck pale; to someone slumming out zones on a bootlegged photocopier mhp is The Establishment. Indie can mean anything from "not big 6" to 100% DIY and everything in between. And most of them do amazing things in their niche. The point I was making is that the movement of which Rourke was a part was so out there it feels like he's shifted centreward to go with mhp.Agnieszkas Shoeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07831763071877082489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-10996816476022231542010-11-06T12:12:28.672-07:002010-11-06T12:12:28.672-07:00What makes you call Melville House only "kind...What makes you call Melville House only "kind of" an indie publisher?Dennis Johnsonhttp://mhpbooks.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-31778007657966318122010-11-05T09:10:30.237-07:002010-11-05T09:10:30.237-07:00Well, I don't care how cool they appear to be....Well, I don't care how cool they appear to be. I don't care how they published their work, or how much of an *edge* anything thought they had. <br /><br />I care that they have contributed to 20 years of 'greed is good' and added 'inhuman is better'. As if cruelty was the last fetish.<br /><br />It's got no soul. Fuck it all.Remittance Girlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07902713020074243375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-86966889763773722422010-11-05T02:19:59.924-07:002010-11-05T02:19:59.924-07:00Yes, Philippa, I think it has. There are some real...Yes, Philippa, I think it has. There are some really exciting things going on that are blurring the arts (google something alled "Concrete Operational"). Also, real emotioal depth and an emphasis on beauty. The same honest messages as the blank generation or whatever one calls them, maybe present in some places, but wrapped in a different - and deeper - package. And not necessarily in straight literary fiction as a genreAgnieszkas Shoeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07831763071877082489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-68042948205685752472010-11-05T02:16:46.670-07:002010-11-05T02:16:46.670-07:00And that's where I circle back to the dangers ...And that's where I circle back to the dangers of bringing new people to something that's been sold (not necessarily by the organisers - I think LDM's promo material is a riot) a particular way. It's like a first real life date if you've put on an online act. You can end up leaving people feeling missold. So when (and it's books not events I really mean here, though I think that Guardian article did a disservice) we're told a book is fresh, the brilliant new face of contemporary whathaveyous, and it turns out to be what Brett Easton Ellis was doing 20-something years ago, we think "oh, well if that's the exciting new stuff in books I'll go back to my DVDs". Less media hype about new and edgy, more about content, and a willingness to look for the new and great not the next big thing is what I'm asking for.<br /><br />On THWTL no, I haven't been owing to the lateness and the Londonness and my living in the sticksness, and I would like to go - I would particularly have liked to go to see Natasha Solomons. But only because I know you already, otherwise I'd feel a little intimidated that I was intruding. I think that's the problem with there being a scene - to people not in it, it can remind them of all the times at school they were ostracised, beaten, taunted and shunned for being on the outside. I genuinely think the London scene feels like this - I'm lucky enough to have spent 20 years since school developing a thick skin and not giving a flying what people think of the fact I'm large, beardy (OK, that's only 8 years), have odd taste, and, ahem, wear a leather jacket so I've come and met the people behind the image and they've all been very nice, and many positively lovely - but without that experience, I wouldn't have done, and I'd have just assumed literature was another of those circles that had no place for me.<br /><br />Todd, LDM is slightly different because, being American, it's distanced from the UK scene and like I say your promo stuff is great. You come across as, well, a bit of a geek I'd be happy to go and talk to at a bar, who has this whacky idea about getting people into literature. And that's great. And I had a super time at my so far only LDM. There was a bit of them and us with the seating arrangements (there was a reserved area from which a couple of my friends were ejected - fair enough - whilst another competitor who was allowed an entourage of fans in the area) that felt a bit alienating but the spirit of the event itself was great.Agnieszkas Shoeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07831763071877082489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-26269062000979468422010-11-05T02:16:17.015-07:002010-11-05T02:16:17.015-07:00Thank you both. I have to say, the reference to th...Thank you both. I have to say, the reference to the literary events was kind fo slipped in as an "oh, and as well" to a point that is primarily about the written not the spoken word. And to clarify, because yes, of course I need to clarify and details are always best back and forthed, I think *anything* that gets people reading is great, and anything that gets people talking about literature is great, and events like yours are right at the forefront of that.<br /><br />I'll come back to the specific events but the problem is with the way these then get projected to the media. I reviewed an extraordinary collection of poetry earlier this year, Valve Works by Rob Sherman - whom I subsequently met at LDM100 in London. It's published (free) as an ebook by Philistine Press, and as a limited ed incredibly beautiful zine, and I'd recommend it thoroughly to both of you and anyone else. It's a beautiful series of illustrated Keatsian odes to different parts of the body. Thoughtful, sensitive, and enough to get the most hardened cynic whooped up about poetry. It was sent to me along with a note from the publisher about how they published work at the cutting edge of literature. And that almost deflated the whole thing. It's not cutting edge. But it IS bloody brilliant, and should be sold as just that. That's my problem - you get articles like the one in the Guardian this summer about the new trend in lit nights and they spin them as hot, hip, and happening, and something culturally edgy. It's the spin not the nights I have a thing with.<br /><br />But most of all my problem is with the way the literary scene works, and the way that writers who were on the outside saying something new are sold as though they still were when they've long been assimilated - Todd, I don't know what things are like in the States but in the UK there IS a scene, and in order to get reviews in the right places and mentions in the right nespaper a newcomer has to go and search it out and fit into it. By and large, not exclusively I'm sure. Reviewers and columnists are realy wary of being the first to talk about something. They'd rather be first to break a story they know everyone else is about to break too - which means there is a focus on quite a small number of writers in a small number of places (exactly the same problem as art, of course, there's nothing the literary-peripheral industries are doing that's uniquely heinous), so a writer has to get themselves to those places and play their rules. Just like they would to get a publisher if they wanted to be mainstream. And that kind of manouevring takes the egde off.Agnieszkas Shoeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07831763071877082489noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-46436223806324904492010-11-05T02:10:04.146-07:002010-11-05T02:10:04.146-07:00"so I think the age of blank will give way to..."so I think the age of blank will give way to a new kind of writing that's not ashamed of emotion and adjectives, of scratching the surface and tapping the romance below."<br /><br />My time has come.<br /><br /><br />Great, great rant, Dan. As always.Phillipahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00264700263885367373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-7170496396139996032010-11-04T11:59:24.742-07:002010-11-04T11:59:24.742-07:00This seems like a plea/rant to be more-countercult...This seems like a plea/rant to be more-counterculture-than-thou, which — when I see it — tends to strike me as attention-begging, fist-waving. Point the finger at the "cool kids," and define yourself in opposition, and thus claim counter-cool for yourself. <br /><br />To the lit point, I'm if the Literary Death Match is perceived as cool, and that translates to people showing up that aren't your typical lit-event goers, then fuck yeah. Can't think of anything cooler than luring onlookers that end up fans of at least one of the performers. Moreover, we're in every bit as much a hunt as you, To Hell With..., and the other lit nerds to find transcendent excellence on the page and off it. <br /><br />I have more to say, but it's just easier to have these kind of back/forths over a pint. Gratefully, I'm back in Europe, making that easier.Adrian Todd Zunigahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11324392766221651957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8020036606005757534.post-76642761727860271962010-11-04T11:15:12.081-07:002010-11-04T11:15:12.081-07:00Hi Dan,
My google alerts just picked up your ment...Hi Dan,<br /><br />My google alerts just picked up your mention of my night. Have to say I don't think the night is about appearing cool - I work really hard to get the best writers I can every month that I think people will want to come along and listen to. The night is free and listed in the broadsheets, on facebook and through a mailing list and anyone is very welcome to come. But I appreciate your right to an informed opinion, of course, although I'm not sure I've ever seen you at the night.<br /><br />Emma<br />To Hell with the Lighthouseemmaryounghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16159345418230897987noreply@blogger.com