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…
related reading
- The Cultural Decline of Literary Fictionoyyy.substack.com
- Literary Hub >> Winning the Game You Didn’t Even Want to Play: On Sally Rooney and the Literature of the Poselithub.com
- How the MFA swallowed literatureerikhoel.substack.com
- Like This or Die, by Christian Lorentzenharpers.org
- A writer's career can be rooted in real power or in fake power. Real power is better.substack.com
- intellectualism, but make it curatedpaigereddington.substack.com
- Ignore the pessimists – we are living through a literary golden age - New Statesmannewstatesman.com
- Everything's Finenadastudios.art
- In Praise of Not Not Reading | The Point Magazinethepointmag.com
- No one will read your book - by Elle Griffin - The Elysianelysian.press
- What Was Literary Fiction? | The Nationthenation.com
- The NYT Book Review Is Everything Book Criticism Shouldn't Becurrentaffairs.org