Weds morning. I'm hungover from most of the day after my book party at Funny Bar on the Lower East Side; I’m hungover because people kept buying me drinks and because the bar gave me drink tickets for hosting the party and because I forgot to drink any water at all and because we were out till 3:45am, and that's what happens after 6 or 7 Fernets (which in some cases may have really been double pours); you get giddy and dizzy and then the next day you somewhat regret it.
If you spend too much time selling1 your book on the internet, like I've had to do the past week—or really more than a week—you start to feel like you have no friends, only memetic rivals and weird antagonistic parasocial lurkers.
In real life—and I mean this is what I learned at the party—it turns out I have a lot of great friends: wonderful, very kind friends who treat me with genuine respect because they actually know me.2
For the past four or five years, I've been online. I've been in the scene. I've been in the liminal, the media world and in Dime Square and the tech world and the crypto world and the literary world and the indie theater world and the Substack world. Sometimes I forget that I'm just in my world. A caring, decent, three-dimensional world amongst caring, decent, three-dimensional people.
Weds night. It's about 2 a.m. I'm reading Stanley Crouch's excellent collection of criticism from the ’70s and ’80s called Notes of a Hanging Judge.
I'm finally getting my appetite back, so I take out some sourdough crispbread, some low-end liver pâté that I bought at Merton Williams, some farmer's market cheese.3 Make a little plate.
Convivial drinking—especially if you're drinking something clean and herbal like Fernet—produces, makes bonds that you just can't make sober, completely sober. Yes, while drunk—you can make an ass out of yourself and say something ridiculous, but so can the person next to you. And not everything's ridiculous; some of it is quite profound.4 The mixture of the profound and the ridiculous is what makes convivial drinking unique.
Book criticism over the past few years has fallen into the click-driven binary of praise or hatchet job.
Books are either perfect, or they're taken down; they're ripped to shreds and left for dead and turned into memes.
What books rarely seem to do—as they used to be able to do—is start arguments. Prove debatable, hard to judge accurately.
Criticism is interesting when there’s something at stake, when intelligence minds risk their reputation judging other intelligent minds.
We're all in the mimetic inferno5 together, I will acknowledge.
The Philistine is marked by their confidence and self-assurance, their invalid belief—really faith—that they speak for everyone else. “Here's the mean and the typical opinion. Here is a one-dimensional take which rules the marketplace: the take backed by the currency of conventional reasoning, conventional experience, limited contact with complex minds.”
The thing about the Philistine is they don't realize that they have been present throughout the history of literature, haranguing the uncategorizable and the strange and the new from the sidelines; they’ve always been on the wrong side of things.
The Philistine is the person who could never, at any time, no matter the circumstance, recognize something that will last beyond a year—the person who has no real rubric for what is lasting and what is future pulp for the paper mill (other than what makes them feel good and self-assured and validates their smugness and their smallness).
This is a basic and fundamental issue of culture. The Philistine rules, but they rule arbitrarily—triumphantly guessing, happily ignoring, blindly participating in trend after trend after trend, happily led by the horse they think they're riding.
A book always has to survive an onslaught of Philistines.
Like a soldier in the First World War poking his head above the firing line, you're lucky to survive the first offensive across no man's land. It's a miracle if you survive the war. That's a book's life. If anyone's reading you in four or five years, your work has a one-in-a-million fate—and you, at the same time, have earned it.6
There's one thing that makes you never want to write a book again: it's book promotion. Necessary but draining... task. Which entails trying to whip the algorithm... that governs... your book's fate. It's putting you in front of more eyeballs... across platforms. In addition to traditional tasks like... conducting interviews... appearing at readings, etc. This in addition to... round-the-clock, 365... promotion... and marketing for BCTR and iPlays. Maybe I'll stop teaching fiction and playwriting... and start teaching digital marketing.
The discourse around my novel The Sleepers has been largely gratifying and intelligent, but there's one brand of comment that nettles me, which I know is Philistine: the claim that The Sleepers isn't worth reading because of where it's set—New York—and because of the time period—2015—and because of the milieu—economically descendant Millennials. Thanks for saving me the time, they say. Readers comment to reviewers, but of course, some of the reviewers have baited them. Philistine categorically dismiss; they can check or uncheck boxes, but they can’t think or think about thinking or someone else’s thinking. And I think: don't judge a book by its category, by perceptions of the author (ad hominem). Don't judge it because you're too lazy to attempt to even read it. Or at least don't comment about it if you haven't. I remember the day my book was announced, some Twitter troll decided to close-read the publisher's Marketplace announcement—as if that were some kind of sign of the book's intrinsic worth. Again: philistinism, philistinism, fobbed off as intelligent discernment. Trolling fobbed off as cultural criticism.
I think the body craves cheese because the enzymes help you process liquor, which is why wine and cheese are traditionally paired. If I'd had cheese last night with my drinks I might not be in this position.
That's the beauty of a book party After a while bookish people can stop worrying about sounding smart because they’re drunk enough to stop caring.
The discourse around The Sleepers reminds me so much of when Dimes Square came out, when people attended the play because they expected to hate it, because a play with THAT title couldn't be good. Those people always walked out loving the play. “It was actually a real play. It was so good, I'm surprised.”
This is curmudgeonly, but I have to get it out of my system.
What can I say, should I pretend a diary entry is immune to critique simply because it’s a diary? In the genre of Samuel pepys and Basho (in Haibun) there can be found no immunity to criticism.
>for hosting the party and because I forgot to drink any water at all and because we were out till 3:45am, and that's what happens after 6 or 7 Fernets
The triple explanation is valley-girlesque, it is so because it is a type of ranting over-sharing which is not aesthetically minded, not narrative minded, not rhetorically pathos based, but based on trying to explain your feelings in a scatter-brained method. It’s never very pleasing especially when the voice doesn’t match the speaker.
>If you spend too much time selling1 your book on the internet, like I've had to do the past week—or really more than a week—you start to feel like you have no friends, only memetic rivals and weird antagonistic parasocial lurkers.
Why are you attempting to couch your personal feelings as if they were some universal proverbs and advice, this has no side scale applicability and you give us no wisdom other than following it with a further bath of emotion, why do you use the conceit of any universalization.
>There's one thing that makes you never want to write a book again: it's book promotion. Necessary but draining... task. Which entails trying to whip the algorithm... that governs... your book's fate. It's putting you in front of more eyeballs... across platforms. In addition to traditional tasks like... conducting interviews... appearing at readings, etc. This in addition to... round-the-clock, 365... promotion... and marketing for BCTR and iPlays. Maybe I'll stop teaching fiction and playwriting... and start teaching digital marketing. “
This doesn’t sound “””draining””” (could you use a more modern, limp-twisted, womanish expression? ) it reeks of IRC channels, fanfiction and so forth, I understand the desire is lethargy but… talking like this… trailing the every sentence… for what I don’t, I can’t… it’s just annoying it’s not skilled.
>The Sleepers isn't worth reading because of where it's set—New York—and because of the time period—2015—and because of the milieu—economically descendant Millennials.
I won’t comment on the novel becuase I’ve not read the novel nor will I comment upon their dismissal, what I will say though, is that leading with plot, locations, narrative, cultural milieu and so forth (as, let’s be honest, this diary entry is just as much advertisement as it is anything else you intended) is a terrible sign for the book. A book can be set anywhere in anytime and be about anything, the determining factors are quality of the writing, ideals behind the style of writing and style itself. When the author ignores these questions and makes the question of artistry in writing itself utilitarian to some ideal of pseudo philosophy (of which I do mean pseudo, while it may not apply to you, the generic writer of these is never capable of dealing with or explaining a systematic philosophy, they haven’t studied and thus find their rhetorically shaped feelings ought be reckoned the equal of the systematics and dedicated thinkers.) such an author admits he has nothing to offer but subpar writing full of topics ideas they do not grasp very well. Regardless I won’t lob these complaints at you directly, this is simply the genus it seems the work belongs.
“For the past four or five years, I've been online. I've been in the scene. I've been in the liminal, the media world and in Dime Square and the tech world and the crypto world and the literary world and the indie theater world and the Substack world. Sometimes I forget that I'm just in my world. A caring, decent, three-dimensional world amongst caring, decent, three-dimensional people. “
You’re so windswept! All of these layers and worlds! And the contrast of these harsh cold (highly regulated) internet spaces against the warm flesh and blood world! It’s just very bathetic, how can I not feel exaggerated bathos when the parallel is the “caring three dimensional world” with the implied cold, sterile, iron world. You’re not a martyr because you use websites. Hahaha.
“I'm finally getting my appetite back, so I take out some sourdough crispbread, some low-end liver pâté that I bought at Merton Williams, some farmer's market cheese.3 Make a little plate.”
I often don’t like to bring up questions of necessity and economy in writing, but I’m required to here. When you write you do a couple of things. You project a mannerism, you structure a voice, you cast images and produce hypnotic sound patterns that ideally harmonize with the labyrinth of conceptual and images selected. What am I supposed to get from this paragraph? That you shop at merton’s? That you’re caught up in the current TikTok trends popularizing sourdough? That you’re a fancy man who eats pâté? That you’re a hipster who loves the cheese at the farmers market? That you’re a journalist recording every inessential moment? That you contemplated your eating hung over? That you’re a son of pound and Williams that believes the particular profane holds the secret to the universal profound? Or, that you just had to do the writing equivalent of posting on instagram your plate of food to pad out the attention you can extract from people? Is that your earnest desire?
“That's the beauty of a book party After a while bookish people can stop worrying about sounding smart because they’re drunk enough to stop caring.”
Drop the Brett easton Ellis act, the contemporary scene in New York is full to the brim with a new culture of anti-intellectualism, grind-culture, fitness culture, adoration of physical fitness and the rugged in general has been in vogue since at least the 90s. The image of the turtle neck or v neck large brim black glasses wearing Frazier caricature is perhaps accessible if you lived in Seattle, but you’re a New Yorker, slurs and the low are all about you. When you pass the bodegas or enter the bodegas surely you don’t feel a drop of pressure to act as an intellectual, if you genuinely interact with any of your book party friends at any length in any sort of social setting, then the drinking and party culture of New York would have already dissolved these mental pressures you pretend to suffer from.
Trying to cash in on the midwit’s imposter syndrome is an ugly thing, sir.
“What books rarely seem to do—as they used to be able to do—is start arguments. Prove debatable, hard to judge accurately. “
No what books used to be able to do what they hardly are able to do when they are believed to be literary, is entertain and capture attention compared to other pastimes. No one was reading Hypnerotomachia Poliphili seeking arguments, they sought pleasures, no one was reading the golden ass for arguments, no one was reading love’s martyrs (written by Shakespeare and friends ) and expecting access into any arguments, no one was reading the works of Thomas Browne and expecting entrance to arguments. No, people read these works because it entertained them, if your work cannot entertain and cannot stand on the merit of entertainment, then you shouldn’t put the effort to widely spread it as a public entertainment.
“The Philistine is the person who could never, at any time, no matter the circumstance, recognize something that will last beyond a year—the person who has no real rubric for what is lasting and what is future pulp for the paper mill (other than what makes them feel good and self-assured and validates their smugness and their smallness). “
Yes yes because the philistine is the enemy of the public common taste to you, right?, the public opinion over the years is the sole judge of quality, right? the likes of starbuck Mayo amount to nothing before moby dick, and all of Herman Melville’s other works amount to nothing. Baudelaire’s favorites like aloysius Bertrand mean nothing because you never seen them on a 100 best books list compiled by popular vote. Absolutely ridiculous. Do you really think nothing has been lost to time or public opinion?
I’ve said my peace, do not take it personally.
Congrats. It is always great to get drunk heavily in those situations ("milestone drinking" I suppose).