Highbrow literature has acquired a fandom. To succeed, writers need to manage it.

Recently I hung out for a few hours with one of my readers: Arjun. This man, Arjun, is a twenty-three year old engineer who reads three literary newsletters: Woman of Letters, The Republic of Letters and The Metropolitan Review . And Arjun had some questions about the contents of these newsletters. He asked me: "What is white male writer discourse? I am so baffled by this discourse. I hear all about these white male writer books, and I go to read them, thinking they will be something reactionary, but then they are not reactionary. They are just the same as all the other books!" It was so funny. He had a series of jokes, all on this topic, about how baffled he is by lit-world discourse. This guy should be a stand-up comic. Anyway Arjun was exaggerating his confusion somewhat for comic effect, but his essential point was that these three newsletters (Woman of Letters, The Republic of Letters, and The Metropolitan Review) often spend a lot of time reacting to perceived iniquities in the p

Recently I hung out for a few hours with one of my readers: Arjun. This man, Arjun, is a twenty-three year old engineer who reads three literary newsletters: Woman of Letters, The Republic of Letters and The Metropolitan Review . And Arjun had some questions about the contents of these newsletters. He asked me: "What is white male writer discourse? I am so baffled by this discourse. I hear all about these white male writer books, and I go to read them, thinking they will be something reactionary, but then they are not reactionary. They are just the same as all the other books!" It was so funny