I loved Lorentzen’s article. His main target, to my mind, wasn’t necessarily Sinykin’s argument but rather his approach, an approach that you rightly point out has become dominant in English departments. This is the material, or the sociological, or the cultural approach, the approach that looks to the book as a product which can reveal something about the society that produced it, rather than regarding the book on its own terms as an aesthetic object to be analyzed.
Both approaches have merit, but the issue is that Sinykin’s mode has become so, dare I say, hegemonic in English departments that there’s barely any room left for close reading of the text, as well as analysis of style, form, and language. I was an English major and trying to explain this to non English majors was incredibly difficult. I’d tell them that we don’t really read books as English majors, but we talk about postcolonialism, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis…Usually they’d say, oh that sounds cool, and I’d say, well, actually I just want to read books and talk about them, but apparently there’s nowhere to do that anymore in the university! I’m exaggerating a bit, but anyone who has studied English knows what I’m talking about. The best way to deeply engage with novels at the university is probably via a Comp Lit major or by studying a foreign language. Or, outside of academia, via the local library and substack.
This is true. There’s no close reading any longer. But what would close reading do? It would appreciate quality – or lack thereof. So if you believe that Craft is a Trojan horse that conceals hegemony, hierarchy, and various other gremlins, why would you study it?
The rejoinder to this, I think, is to point at Picasso’s Guernica and say yes, it’s an anti fascist work of art. It’s also a great work of art. Now over here on the other hand is another anti-fascist painting, but it sucks. See the difference?
Yes to this article, yes in every flavour and colour scheme. Cannot get on board with this strange and oxymoronic idea that there's something liberating in saying 'I, unlike the other termites, know full well that I am a termite'.
For god's sake, the sin of the age is its almost total disregard for the dignity of the individual. I'm perfectly aware of the dense weft of social influences even unto the subvocals I get in my head when reading, but we've known this since forever. Aristotle knew it! This really doesn't mean that one isn't also a human being.
In the end, I love reading because I do, because there is something about the communion of voice to mind, the feeling of the universe being opened a little more*. That's enough for me.
(*NB not a clumsy plagiarism effort, surely one of the better known lines of the American novel in the last seventy years. Just a disclaimer.)
I appreciate RB's timely reminder of the insidious influence of conglomerates in publishing. I would caution though against overstating the case. Three "small" Irish writers of fiction come to mind--Paul Lynch, Paul Murray and Colm Toibin. All three wrote for decades fiction that was appreciated by critics but barely noticed by the public. Breakout books like Brooklyn, The Bee Sting and Prophet Song occurred after decades of toiling away with not very much pecuniary reward.
The key of course was to find small publishers who were satisfied with sales of just 5,000 or so. It wasn't big bucks but enough to invest in the potential of the author and for the author to write full time. When a publisher is so small there is no publicity department it can be a blessing--the book has to do the selling. Booker Prizes, best-sellers, movie deals and satisfying "I told ya so" moments did eventually come. I whole-heartedly agree it is shameful and derelict of publishers like Knopf and Scribner to have abandoned their roles. But I do not despair.
In my 50 years of avid reading, there are always great works to discover and relish. Let us keep in mind that even "The Immortal Bard" was far more interested in popularity than admiration or originality. Truth be told if Shakespeare had to choose between being The Bard or a best-selling juggernaut like Dickens he would have ditched Hamlet and happily dashed off dozens of treacly Tiny Tims and jilted a score of Miss Havishams. Fortunately for posterity Will lived during a time when genius and filthy lucre were not mutually exclusive.
I have nothing against Big 5 publishers and I hope to publish with one! I'd just say they take less risks than they used to. They are still good at popularizing very talented people
Wholeheartedly agree they take fewer risks (and I wish you luck finding your blockbuster book deal). My only gripe with mega publishers is the same one I have with Big Hollywood Studios--by all means produce Marvel/DC movies galore. They're a cash cow. But....
Reinvest 2%-3% of the profits in finding unknown film makers (or writers) who take the stipend provided by a studio and publisher and use it to create something tangible. Let them make a movie or have their book published, even though it's not obviously commercial. Financing a half dozen small films or publishing 6-8 new writers with potential each year is not taking a risk, it's investing in talent.
Mega content producers haven't failed by printing and filming what sells, they've failed us by not looking for anything else but what has traditionally sold. That's a shame, I think. It could be worse though--at least you're not trying to be a poet.
Well gravity’s rainbow was a victim of postmodernism’s success in the intellectual sphere. Nothing exists. It’s all just a random creation of the puttering of power back and forth until something is created by accident.
But this post actually reminded me of a podcast I listened to years ago. The British BBC podcast In Our Time had an episode on the Industrial Revolution. Normally, it’s the most measured, languid British podcast you can imagine. You can hear the Edwardian era tweed. Everyone is jolly and professional in the exact manner you would expect. Except on this episode one guest pushed back hard on awarding England special status for starting the Industrial Revolution. One guest claimed it was all chance, just the right coal at the right time. It just happened to start there.
And Melvin Bragg, the host, pushed back and said perhaps individual genius maybe mattered? And the guest essentially accused him of being….you can imagine. He did not take it well and for a brief moment sparks flew. All over the concept of genius.
If postmodernism can be defined as the erasure of any grand narrative of history, of any overarching belief system that can apply to societies, than it has completely
Won. And it’s no coincidence everything feels a little less alive, a little less relevant, because of it.
"The primary change in publishing, I’d argue, that has come in the new century is the diminishment of risk-taking on the side of literary fiction, the abandonment of the concept of a publishing house propping up and nurturing a young literary career, and the end of a certain trust that was invested in individual editors—Sonny Mehta, Gordon Lish, Gary Fisketjon, and a young Toni Morrison come to mind—to curate lists to their taste"
I think you're right, Ross. This is the heart of the matter. Recently, I read (well, listened to Tom Parker's fantastic audiobook rendering of) Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March." What struck me, even in the first few pages, was the audacity and rawness of its prose. And yes, a different time and place, sure, but I imagined the acquisitions editor being unusually farsighted to even consider it. I do think something's "missing" now, though I can't articulate it further. In any case, your and Lorentzen's pieces have certainly challenged Sinykin's conceit.
Long-time reader; first-time commenter. Another related point to your article is how the relatability (of the writer) has become a salient sales point for the reading (and other art-consuming) public. Something that seems not too threatening; someone who matches your politics. This will inevitably result in art that isn't challenging—a pre-fab product-tested object. Mark Fisher:
"...the affects that predominate in late capitalism are fear and cynicism. These emotions do not inspire bold thinking or entrepreneurial leaps, they breed conformity and the cult of the minimal variation, the turning out of products which very closely resemble those that are already successful."
That second paragraph sounds like satire or dystopic sci-fi— I don't think "vulgar" is overstating it regarding that way of thinking.
I loved this essay. But one thing I'm not sure of is whether a young man who would have fallen in love with Pynchon would instead be following Andrew Tate. I think they may be drawing from different pools. I mean I don't know of many normie men or boys who would know who Thomas Pynchon is.
Maybe I misunderstood Ross. I don't think I know one person in real life who knows Thomas Pynchon but I'm sure some know Tate or Rogan. Is the argument that even nerdy English major young men do not read Pynchon anymore? Because it seems like they were the only ones reading him from the start.
I think the original post is kind of incoherent because the author is or was part of the group he's criticizing in some capacity. But yes, I think he's actually annoyed that pretentious, obnoxious young men are not reading pretentious, obnoxious books anymore and are instead turning to YouTube to get their fix.
I'm just saying that it does come from a similar kind of person who would seek out these cultural cult-leaders, but obviously Peterson and Tate are more mainstream versions of that.
It used to be that these types of men would hide in a cave somewhere and read Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow. The internet is probably responsible for this shift. I don't think they ever left the cave, but now they have wi-fi.
I'm with Louis is not understanding the connection between Pynchon cultists and Andrew Tate. Surely, these are entirely different people, right? Maybe the drives that bring them their individual cult leaders are similar? But now, as a Pynchon acolyte, I'm wondering if there's a blindspot in either my understanding of myself or the Andrew Tates of the world that has left me confused
I'm much more comparing him to Jordan Peterson. The world of Peterson and the world of Pynchon are both inane, cryptic and designed to bewilder the laity, which makes the acolytes feel like they're part of a special group, so they tend to end up idolizing the author and searching the texts for hidden revelations, the same way people responded to prophets and their religious/spiritual texts. It's a little bit like a secular version of that with Pynchon. At least, that's been my experience with the way his most devoted fans behave.
As far as I can tell from reviews, Sinykin is really making the point that fiction has always been produced and consumed as a product of a market, and that those of us participating in that market really ought to be aware it exists and how it affects what we get to consume.
I'm pretty agnostic that we need or that Sinykin really is dispensing with the notion of individual genius, but I'm fairly sure that model has resonance precisely because it allows a writer to feel enspecialed by writing which can help motivate the production of the work, not because there is some inherent brilliant spirit within some individuals.
The line about Pynchon readers and Andrew Tate is minorly funny, and might even be correct in the sense that a great deal of the reception of that book was rooted in the way that it provided the glue for a kind of secret(ish) fraternity of smart heads who really grokked it, and understood how it was secretly literature but all well-draped in pulpy genre tropes to confuse and to help its subversive truths go down. But it's also the kind of telling on yourself that allowed Philip Roth to get away with being so completely blinkered and reductive of women and women characters in his fiction. The reason that the Andrew Tate cult would fit is because Gravity's Rainbow is a terrible, terrible book. It has many flashes of brilliance, it clearly dared great things, but it is a really underwhelming book perhaps best appreciated by a reader who is very high and steeped in the paranoia of its date of publication. It is also a very misogynistic book, as so much of the "great" writing of the period was. Being provocative was closely linked to writing about one's cock, and women as objects. I remember being baffled by the love for Ted Berrigan's poetry, as if just using the word "cock" in a poem was revelatory. I later worked with someone who knew him when he was alive, and still loathed him for being a total prick to every woman in sight. This is not just "wokeness," this is the content of the writing telling you it is gross and largely indefensible on aesthetic grounds set by the text, and that fact merely being ignored.
I don't per se disagree that the specific individual making something matters to the making, but I think the emphasis on the ways in which work alters as it collaborates is not wrong. Lish almost literally rewrote Carver, and Carver was lionized for it. Lish may or may not have been sure that the change would meet a market need, but I am sure he was confident that he could SELL this product better than the somewhat blander and more ordinary stuff Carver had written until then. In a similar way, editors or agents routinely advise on rewrites or the like that are meant to make the work more saleable -- though it is couched usually in terms of more smooth-flowing, or more consistent. This is a real pressure and a real change that is specifically made by members of the system on behalf of the system's perceived needs. And the individual genius writer is as much a marketing category as any other part to play in the media ecosystem.
We see the lack of risk-taking in every popular medium, and it is a reflection of the consolidation of the market into bigger hands wanting only big products that are surefire revenue producers. Why the film and music industries used to encourage innovation for profit but now want reactionary consensus IS an interesting and important point to consider, and doing so isn't a threat to your self image unless you make it one.
Finally, I have noted before how incestuous and circular the Substack literary world is, and you quoting Pistelli just makes the point again. Most of the literary folk on Substack seem to be reactionary, elitist thinkers concerned with staking out their personal genius in their field. And they are all here because they are unable to reach or tolerate the academy/market/literary mainstream. Possibly this is also a systems issue; certainly it runs the risk of you all becoming a separate band of fartsniffers who are still busily sniffing farts while proclaiming their delightfulness in comparison to those OTHERS' farts, which are self-evidently disgusting.
Pistelli is a great novelist and a fascinating critic; I'd quote him whether he was on Substack or not. My piece is literally a reaction to something Christian Lorentzen wrote, and Lorentzen has been a part of the literary "establishment" (whatever it is, anymore) for decades, as a staff book critic for New York Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper's, London Review of Books, and elsewhere. I look to talent - I could care less if it's in Substack or the New York Times. Substack "works" because the mainstream has become so desiccated, the talent ends up here. Twenty or thirty years ago, Pistelli would be a regular in the New York Review of Books and a novel like Major Arcana would have been brought out to strong reviews in all the major and regional newspapers. He would've been Chabon. But we don't live in that world. Honestly, Substack has been wonderful for me, as someone who toggles between the mainstream and here. I subscribe to just about every major and little magazine imaginable, and read as widely as I can. And 9/10 of times, no exaggeration, the best and most interesting criticism and essays are on Substack. That's how it is. Lorentzen is in some ways the last of his breed - a great critic given room to cook in a major outlet.
Misogynists and fascists can make great art, just as good, progressive, enlightened people can. And the good progressives can make tedious, terrible art. And so can the women-haters. Roth wrote terrible men; the idea that he only lashed women in his books is absolute nonsense. The subject of his life is literally flawed, ugly, preening, confused men. Men who mean well sometimes, too. Was Sabbath a "good" character? Was he anyone's ideal? A wonderful literary creation, nonetheless.
Not sure what your hang up with Gravity's Rainbow is. Maybe take it up with Sinykin.
Not that "he only lashed men" but that the only characters in his books are men. The women never make it to full human status. That's the difference.
My hangup with Gravity's Rainbow is that it failed on its own terms. It tried things that failed, it reads like a porno comic meshed with a Robert Stone novel but the Stone novel is actually well-written and coherent while GR is simply a mess. For that matter JR is a better novel than GR and it also fails to a great degree. V. was not a failure and neither was Mason & Dixon. But GR was very much an emperor's new clothes kind of moment. For comparison, read Delany's Dhalgren and see how much better it is at the thing GR was trying.
It sounds like you felt so wounded by the fart-sniffers line that you didn't have any attention to the point that genius is as much a product of the market you don't like existing as it is any real thing that exists. I mean, even Shakespeare comes to us edited by a huge number of unknown hands by performance, direction, and transcription error. The idea of a stable text written only by one hand is one for the days of paper and pen and no offset printing.
No one would argue a genius stands alone. Context matters. I am arguing for genius simply existing, for the individual mattering. Everyone has editors, agents, market pressures etc.
Dhalgren is one of my favorite books, so I don't have a problem calling it more successful than GR. V. is my favorite Pynchon, for the record.
The war on genius? Or, the war on the novel. More interesting is any more or less original novel on war, whether financial, military, ecological, civil, or sociological. Regardless of what's marketed. I think we could do worse than to look to Kenneth Burke's "The Philosophy of Literary Form" for insight on the novel and literature of our time:
"...the contemporary emphasis must be placed largely upon propaganda, rather than upon “pure” art…. Since pure art makes for acceptance, it tends to become a social menace in so far as it assists us in tolerating the intolerable. And if it leads us to a state of acquiescence at a time when the very basis of moral integration is in question, we get a paradox whereby the soundest adjunct to ethics, the aesthetic, threatens to uphold an unethical condition. For this reason it seems that under conditions of competitive capitalism there must necessarily be a large corrective or propaganda element in art. ...much of the so-called “pure” art of the nineteenth century was of a pronouncedly propagandist or corrective coloring. In proportion as the conditions of economic warfare grew in intensity throughout the “century of progress,” and the church proper gradually adapted its doctrines to serve merely the protection of private gain and the upholding of manipulated law, the “priestly” function was carried on by the “secular” poets, often avowedly agnostic.
"Our thesis is by no means intended to imply that “pure” art or “acquiescent” art should be abandoned. There are two kinds of “toleration.” Even if a given state of affairs is found, on intellectualistic grounds, to be intolerable, the fact remains that as long as it is with us we must more or less contrive to “tolerate” it.... Hence, along with our efforts to alter it, must go the demand for an imaginative equipment that helps to make it tolerable while it lasts. Much of the “pure” or acquiescent art of today serves this invaluable psychological end. For this reason the great popular comedians or handsome movie stars are rightly the idols of the people. Likewise the literature of sentimentality, however annoying and self-deceptive it may seem to the hardened “intellectual,” is following in a direction basically so sound that one might wish more of our pretentious authors were attempting to do the same thing more pretentiously."
I'd not want to live in a world where individual genius was absent, but things do not look great for the novel, and this genre may have run its course. The kind of focused, sustained effort needed to appreciate/understand novels, especially from an aesthetic perspective, is starting to seem more and more antiquated. Some new genre of prose narrative may have to emerge, executed with the writing tools of our time.
>I linger over books in these pages, reading them through the colophon’s portal
Such a strange line. The colophon is all but meaningless in American publishing today. In Italy, for instance, a reader will know the difference between an Einaudi and and Mondadori and an Adelphi book. In the US, who actually notices a difference between books that are published by Knopf or Penguin or Grand Central, etc.? I'm excited to see what Arcade is doing, carving a path for itself as a publisher of distinctive literary books. Passage is doing the same, in its own way. We'll see what comes of it—there's still the problem that the masses just don't read the way they used to
I loved Lorentzen’s article. His main target, to my mind, wasn’t necessarily Sinykin’s argument but rather his approach, an approach that you rightly point out has become dominant in English departments. This is the material, or the sociological, or the cultural approach, the approach that looks to the book as a product which can reveal something about the society that produced it, rather than regarding the book on its own terms as an aesthetic object to be analyzed.
Both approaches have merit, but the issue is that Sinykin’s mode has become so, dare I say, hegemonic in English departments that there’s barely any room left for close reading of the text, as well as analysis of style, form, and language. I was an English major and trying to explain this to non English majors was incredibly difficult. I’d tell them that we don’t really read books as English majors, but we talk about postcolonialism, Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis…Usually they’d say, oh that sounds cool, and I’d say, well, actually I just want to read books and talk about them, but apparently there’s nowhere to do that anymore in the university! I’m exaggerating a bit, but anyone who has studied English knows what I’m talking about. The best way to deeply engage with novels at the university is probably via a Comp Lit major or by studying a foreign language. Or, outside of academia, via the local library and substack.
This is true. There’s no close reading any longer. But what would close reading do? It would appreciate quality – or lack thereof. So if you believe that Craft is a Trojan horse that conceals hegemony, hierarchy, and various other gremlins, why would you study it?
The rejoinder to this, I think, is to point at Picasso’s Guernica and say yes, it’s an anti fascist work of art. It’s also a great work of art. Now over here on the other hand is another anti-fascist painting, but it sucks. See the difference?
Yes to this article, yes in every flavour and colour scheme. Cannot get on board with this strange and oxymoronic idea that there's something liberating in saying 'I, unlike the other termites, know full well that I am a termite'.
For god's sake, the sin of the age is its almost total disregard for the dignity of the individual. I'm perfectly aware of the dense weft of social influences even unto the subvocals I get in my head when reading, but we've known this since forever. Aristotle knew it! This really doesn't mean that one isn't also a human being.
In the end, I love reading because I do, because there is something about the communion of voice to mind, the feeling of the universe being opened a little more*. That's enough for me.
(*NB not a clumsy plagiarism effort, surely one of the better known lines of the American novel in the last seventy years. Just a disclaimer.)
I appreciate RB's timely reminder of the insidious influence of conglomerates in publishing. I would caution though against overstating the case. Three "small" Irish writers of fiction come to mind--Paul Lynch, Paul Murray and Colm Toibin. All three wrote for decades fiction that was appreciated by critics but barely noticed by the public. Breakout books like Brooklyn, The Bee Sting and Prophet Song occurred after decades of toiling away with not very much pecuniary reward.
The key of course was to find small publishers who were satisfied with sales of just 5,000 or so. It wasn't big bucks but enough to invest in the potential of the author and for the author to write full time. When a publisher is so small there is no publicity department it can be a blessing--the book has to do the selling. Booker Prizes, best-sellers, movie deals and satisfying "I told ya so" moments did eventually come. I whole-heartedly agree it is shameful and derelict of publishers like Knopf and Scribner to have abandoned their roles. But I do not despair.
In my 50 years of avid reading, there are always great works to discover and relish. Let us keep in mind that even "The Immortal Bard" was far more interested in popularity than admiration or originality. Truth be told if Shakespeare had to choose between being The Bard or a best-selling juggernaut like Dickens he would have ditched Hamlet and happily dashed off dozens of treacly Tiny Tims and jilted a score of Miss Havishams. Fortunately for posterity Will lived during a time when genius and filthy lucre were not mutually exclusive.
I have nothing against Big 5 publishers and I hope to publish with one! I'd just say they take less risks than they used to. They are still good at popularizing very talented people
Wholeheartedly agree they take fewer risks (and I wish you luck finding your blockbuster book deal). My only gripe with mega publishers is the same one I have with Big Hollywood Studios--by all means produce Marvel/DC movies galore. They're a cash cow. But....
Reinvest 2%-3% of the profits in finding unknown film makers (or writers) who take the stipend provided by a studio and publisher and use it to create something tangible. Let them make a movie or have their book published, even though it's not obviously commercial. Financing a half dozen small films or publishing 6-8 new writers with potential each year is not taking a risk, it's investing in talent.
Mega content producers haven't failed by printing and filming what sells, they've failed us by not looking for anything else but what has traditionally sold. That's a shame, I think. It could be worse though--at least you're not trying to be a poet.
Well gravity’s rainbow was a victim of postmodernism’s success in the intellectual sphere. Nothing exists. It’s all just a random creation of the puttering of power back and forth until something is created by accident.
But this post actually reminded me of a podcast I listened to years ago. The British BBC podcast In Our Time had an episode on the Industrial Revolution. Normally, it’s the most measured, languid British podcast you can imagine. You can hear the Edwardian era tweed. Everyone is jolly and professional in the exact manner you would expect. Except on this episode one guest pushed back hard on awarding England special status for starting the Industrial Revolution. One guest claimed it was all chance, just the right coal at the right time. It just happened to start there.
And Melvin Bragg, the host, pushed back and said perhaps individual genius maybe mattered? And the guest essentially accused him of being….you can imagine. He did not take it well and for a brief moment sparks flew. All over the concept of genius.
If postmodernism can be defined as the erasure of any grand narrative of history, of any overarching belief system that can apply to societies, than it has completely
Won. And it’s no coincidence everything feels a little less alive, a little less relevant, because of it.
"The primary change in publishing, I’d argue, that has come in the new century is the diminishment of risk-taking on the side of literary fiction, the abandonment of the concept of a publishing house propping up and nurturing a young literary career, and the end of a certain trust that was invested in individual editors—Sonny Mehta, Gordon Lish, Gary Fisketjon, and a young Toni Morrison come to mind—to curate lists to their taste"
I think you're right, Ross. This is the heart of the matter. Recently, I read (well, listened to Tom Parker's fantastic audiobook rendering of) Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March." What struck me, even in the first few pages, was the audacity and rawness of its prose. And yes, a different time and place, sure, but I imagined the acquisitions editor being unusually farsighted to even consider it. I do think something's "missing" now, though I can't articulate it further. In any case, your and Lorentzen's pieces have certainly challenged Sinykin's conceit.
Fantastic piece. The rhythm at the end!
thank you, I enjoyed writing it!
Long-time reader; first-time commenter. Another related point to your article is how the relatability (of the writer) has become a salient sales point for the reading (and other art-consuming) public. Something that seems not too threatening; someone who matches your politics. This will inevitably result in art that isn't challenging—a pre-fab product-tested object. Mark Fisher:
"...the affects that predominate in late capitalism are fear and cynicism. These emotions do not inspire bold thinking or entrepreneurial leaps, they breed conformity and the cult of the minimal variation, the turning out of products which very closely resemble those that are already successful."
Excellent essay.
That second paragraph sounds like satire or dystopic sci-fi— I don't think "vulgar" is overstating it regarding that way of thinking.
I loved this essay. But one thing I'm not sure of is whether a young man who would have fallen in love with Pynchon would instead be following Andrew Tate. I think they may be drawing from different pools. I mean I don't know of many normie men or boys who would know who Thomas Pynchon is.
There is a lot of overlap, and it comes from the same attitude and outlook deep down. It's just a matter of whether they read or not.
Maybe I misunderstood Ross. I don't think I know one person in real life who knows Thomas Pynchon but I'm sure some know Tate or Rogan. Is the argument that even nerdy English major young men do not read Pynchon anymore? Because it seems like they were the only ones reading him from the start.
I think the original post is kind of incoherent because the author is or was part of the group he's criticizing in some capacity. But yes, I think he's actually annoyed that pretentious, obnoxious young men are not reading pretentious, obnoxious books anymore and are instead turning to YouTube to get their fix.
I'm just saying that it does come from a similar kind of person who would seek out these cultural cult-leaders, but obviously Peterson and Tate are more mainstream versions of that.
It used to be that these types of men would hide in a cave somewhere and read Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow. The internet is probably responsible for this shift. I don't think they ever left the cave, but now they have wi-fi.
I'm with Louis is not understanding the connection between Pynchon cultists and Andrew Tate. Surely, these are entirely different people, right? Maybe the drives that bring them their individual cult leaders are similar? But now, as a Pynchon acolyte, I'm wondering if there's a blindspot in either my understanding of myself or the Andrew Tates of the world that has left me confused
I'm much more comparing him to Jordan Peterson. The world of Peterson and the world of Pynchon are both inane, cryptic and designed to bewilder the laity, which makes the acolytes feel like they're part of a special group, so they tend to end up idolizing the author and searching the texts for hidden revelations, the same way people responded to prophets and their religious/spiritual texts. It's a little bit like a secular version of that with Pynchon. At least, that's been my experience with the way his most devoted fans behave.
Modern hermeneutics
Think Naomi Kanakia more or less said what I was garbling up.
https://open.substack.com/pub/naomik/p/the-incoherence-of-the-literary-critics?r=1r3cpk&utm_medium=ios
As far as I can tell from reviews, Sinykin is really making the point that fiction has always been produced and consumed as a product of a market, and that those of us participating in that market really ought to be aware it exists and how it affects what we get to consume.
I'm pretty agnostic that we need or that Sinykin really is dispensing with the notion of individual genius, but I'm fairly sure that model has resonance precisely because it allows a writer to feel enspecialed by writing which can help motivate the production of the work, not because there is some inherent brilliant spirit within some individuals.
The line about Pynchon readers and Andrew Tate is minorly funny, and might even be correct in the sense that a great deal of the reception of that book was rooted in the way that it provided the glue for a kind of secret(ish) fraternity of smart heads who really grokked it, and understood how it was secretly literature but all well-draped in pulpy genre tropes to confuse and to help its subversive truths go down. But it's also the kind of telling on yourself that allowed Philip Roth to get away with being so completely blinkered and reductive of women and women characters in his fiction. The reason that the Andrew Tate cult would fit is because Gravity's Rainbow is a terrible, terrible book. It has many flashes of brilliance, it clearly dared great things, but it is a really underwhelming book perhaps best appreciated by a reader who is very high and steeped in the paranoia of its date of publication. It is also a very misogynistic book, as so much of the "great" writing of the period was. Being provocative was closely linked to writing about one's cock, and women as objects. I remember being baffled by the love for Ted Berrigan's poetry, as if just using the word "cock" in a poem was revelatory. I later worked with someone who knew him when he was alive, and still loathed him for being a total prick to every woman in sight. This is not just "wokeness," this is the content of the writing telling you it is gross and largely indefensible on aesthetic grounds set by the text, and that fact merely being ignored.
I don't per se disagree that the specific individual making something matters to the making, but I think the emphasis on the ways in which work alters as it collaborates is not wrong. Lish almost literally rewrote Carver, and Carver was lionized for it. Lish may or may not have been sure that the change would meet a market need, but I am sure he was confident that he could SELL this product better than the somewhat blander and more ordinary stuff Carver had written until then. In a similar way, editors or agents routinely advise on rewrites or the like that are meant to make the work more saleable -- though it is couched usually in terms of more smooth-flowing, or more consistent. This is a real pressure and a real change that is specifically made by members of the system on behalf of the system's perceived needs. And the individual genius writer is as much a marketing category as any other part to play in the media ecosystem.
We see the lack of risk-taking in every popular medium, and it is a reflection of the consolidation of the market into bigger hands wanting only big products that are surefire revenue producers. Why the film and music industries used to encourage innovation for profit but now want reactionary consensus IS an interesting and important point to consider, and doing so isn't a threat to your self image unless you make it one.
Finally, I have noted before how incestuous and circular the Substack literary world is, and you quoting Pistelli just makes the point again. Most of the literary folk on Substack seem to be reactionary, elitist thinkers concerned with staking out their personal genius in their field. And they are all here because they are unable to reach or tolerate the academy/market/literary mainstream. Possibly this is also a systems issue; certainly it runs the risk of you all becoming a separate band of fartsniffers who are still busily sniffing farts while proclaiming their delightfulness in comparison to those OTHERS' farts, which are self-evidently disgusting.
Pistelli is a great novelist and a fascinating critic; I'd quote him whether he was on Substack or not. My piece is literally a reaction to something Christian Lorentzen wrote, and Lorentzen has been a part of the literary "establishment" (whatever it is, anymore) for decades, as a staff book critic for New York Magazine, a frequent contributor to Harper's, London Review of Books, and elsewhere. I look to talent - I could care less if it's in Substack or the New York Times. Substack "works" because the mainstream has become so desiccated, the talent ends up here. Twenty or thirty years ago, Pistelli would be a regular in the New York Review of Books and a novel like Major Arcana would have been brought out to strong reviews in all the major and regional newspapers. He would've been Chabon. But we don't live in that world. Honestly, Substack has been wonderful for me, as someone who toggles between the mainstream and here. I subscribe to just about every major and little magazine imaginable, and read as widely as I can. And 9/10 of times, no exaggeration, the best and most interesting criticism and essays are on Substack. That's how it is. Lorentzen is in some ways the last of his breed - a great critic given room to cook in a major outlet.
Misogynists and fascists can make great art, just as good, progressive, enlightened people can. And the good progressives can make tedious, terrible art. And so can the women-haters. Roth wrote terrible men; the idea that he only lashed women in his books is absolute nonsense. The subject of his life is literally flawed, ugly, preening, confused men. Men who mean well sometimes, too. Was Sabbath a "good" character? Was he anyone's ideal? A wonderful literary creation, nonetheless.
Not sure what your hang up with Gravity's Rainbow is. Maybe take it up with Sinykin.
Not that "he only lashed men" but that the only characters in his books are men. The women never make it to full human status. That's the difference.
My hangup with Gravity's Rainbow is that it failed on its own terms. It tried things that failed, it reads like a porno comic meshed with a Robert Stone novel but the Stone novel is actually well-written and coherent while GR is simply a mess. For that matter JR is a better novel than GR and it also fails to a great degree. V. was not a failure and neither was Mason & Dixon. But GR was very much an emperor's new clothes kind of moment. For comparison, read Delany's Dhalgren and see how much better it is at the thing GR was trying.
It sounds like you felt so wounded by the fart-sniffers line that you didn't have any attention to the point that genius is as much a product of the market you don't like existing as it is any real thing that exists. I mean, even Shakespeare comes to us edited by a huge number of unknown hands by performance, direction, and transcription error. The idea of a stable text written only by one hand is one for the days of paper and pen and no offset printing.
No one would argue a genius stands alone. Context matters. I am arguing for genius simply existing, for the individual mattering. Everyone has editors, agents, market pressures etc.
Dhalgren is one of my favorite books, so I don't have a problem calling it more successful than GR. V. is my favorite Pynchon, for the record.
The war on genius? Or, the war on the novel. More interesting is any more or less original novel on war, whether financial, military, ecological, civil, or sociological. Regardless of what's marketed. I think we could do worse than to look to Kenneth Burke's "The Philosophy of Literary Form" for insight on the novel and literature of our time:
"...the contemporary emphasis must be placed largely upon propaganda, rather than upon “pure” art…. Since pure art makes for acceptance, it tends to become a social menace in so far as it assists us in tolerating the intolerable. And if it leads us to a state of acquiescence at a time when the very basis of moral integration is in question, we get a paradox whereby the soundest adjunct to ethics, the aesthetic, threatens to uphold an unethical condition. For this reason it seems that under conditions of competitive capitalism there must necessarily be a large corrective or propaganda element in art. ...much of the so-called “pure” art of the nineteenth century was of a pronouncedly propagandist or corrective coloring. In proportion as the conditions of economic warfare grew in intensity throughout the “century of progress,” and the church proper gradually adapted its doctrines to serve merely the protection of private gain and the upholding of manipulated law, the “priestly” function was carried on by the “secular” poets, often avowedly agnostic.
"Our thesis is by no means intended to imply that “pure” art or “acquiescent” art should be abandoned. There are two kinds of “toleration.” Even if a given state of affairs is found, on intellectualistic grounds, to be intolerable, the fact remains that as long as it is with us we must more or less contrive to “tolerate” it.... Hence, along with our efforts to alter it, must go the demand for an imaginative equipment that helps to make it tolerable while it lasts. Much of the “pure” or acquiescent art of today serves this invaluable psychological end. For this reason the great popular comedians or handsome movie stars are rightly the idols of the people. Likewise the literature of sentimentality, however annoying and self-deceptive it may seem to the hardened “intellectual,” is following in a direction basically so sound that one might wish more of our pretentious authors were attempting to do the same thing more pretentiously."
I'd not want to live in a world where individual genius was absent, but things do not look great for the novel, and this genre may have run its course. The kind of focused, sustained effort needed to appreciate/understand novels, especially from an aesthetic perspective, is starting to seem more and more antiquated. Some new genre of prose narrative may have to emerge, executed with the writing tools of our time.
>I linger over books in these pages, reading them through the colophon’s portal
Such a strange line. The colophon is all but meaningless in American publishing today. In Italy, for instance, a reader will know the difference between an Einaudi and and Mondadori and an Adelphi book. In the US, who actually notices a difference between books that are published by Knopf or Penguin or Grand Central, etc.? I'm excited to see what Arcade is doing, carving a path for itself as a publisher of distinctive literary books. Passage is doing the same, in its own way. We'll see what comes of it—there's still the problem that the masses just don't read the way they used to