Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
At some point in his career he was designated the unofficial figurehead for the booming Anti-Intellectual movement in America, a movement that he both had a hand in creating and nurtured from its inception. His philosophy was this: big ideas occur when little planning is involved. Simply writing is enough to carve out and establish an identity. Style over substance, because substance comes naturally--effortlessly.
His style was recognized as "profoundly, powerfully simple"--no frills; no fluff. He wrote as a means to expel the insidious thoughts inside his head, for fear that they may possess him entirely otherwise--voices that accumulate and collect, like lent-traps, day-to-day ephemera and threaten mental illness should the keeper of these voices refuse to translate the persistent obsessions onto paper. He was a prisoner of his own mind, though he liked to think of himself as a "free-thinking" spokesperson for the intellectually apathetic.
His whole life was a sham.
Perhaps the most famous quote attributed to him was from a book he wrote at the start of his career (which was widely considered "promising") but which he could no longer remember writing. The quote goes like this: "I try to be well-spoken. Itry to be well-read. But it somehow always comes off as well-rehearsed." This is the quote talking heads liked to bring up in television and radio interviews with him, citing it as the penultimate creed of the Anti-Intellectual--the three terse sentences that set the movement in motion.
To tell you the truth, he had no idea where this quote originated. He certainly didn't remember writing it, so he had only a vague idea of how or in what context it was used in his book. It seemed to him that it was a female character who said this, but he couldn't be sure. Maybe it was an old man. It didn't matter. Everything he wrote, he wrote because it felt right or looked right on paper next to neighboring ideas, images or words. A lot of critics liked to point out that such and such a book, passage, quote, idea meant something profound, usually in relation to some concurrent social issue or event, to which he would just shrug his shoulders and say: "Oh, you think so?" And this is more or less how he went about his days--the apathetic figurehead shrugging his shoulders at the possibility of or provocation for deeper insight.
One day, he met a girl. She was very beautiful. He thought she favored his preconceived idea of what it meant to look like a "New York Jew," an idea--a look--he'd always been attracted to. He thought it would be offensive to tell her this, so he kept his mouth shut and simply told her that she was "beautiful" instead.
He kept his mouth shut about a lot of things with her. This is how he felt it was necessary to interact with her in order to maintain their peaceful, easy-going relationship. When she told him once that she loved him, he parroted the same affectation back to her. But what he really felt was that she was beautiful and fun to have sex with and easy to talk to. He knew he could find others like her but he didn't want her to know this. Saying "I love you" was a way for him to make their relationship sound exclusive and unique when, really, it could be replicated a million times plus. It was a very big secret that he felt he may blabber at any moment--thus, he stifled his natural inclination to talk openly and freely about whatever thought might manifest itself in his head.
on long drives, trips through the country, trips to the country, trips through familiar cities and strange ones, too, he kept his focus on the world outside the driver's side or passenger side window, depending on the arrangement. he would allow her to gush about whatever topic she chose because he knew she would never dare bring up something that might offend him. she may talk incessantly about things he only pretended to care about, but she would never say anything to intentionally hurt his feelings. therefore, he appreciated it even when she went on and on and on about back-stabbing co-workers or unremarkable (to him) childhood memories. he appreciated them solely on the merit that they weren't offensive or taboo topics, but things he could easily listen to and selectively remember.
once, she asked him about his work. they had stopped off at some mom-and-pop owned restaurant in the deep south with an adjoining old-time filling station. she complained that she was hungry and tired of driving--they'd been on the road for an extensive period of time, headed to florida, of all places, and although he wasn't hungry, himself, he complied because the prospect of an unfamiliar detour excited him.
she asked him if he'd run dry on ideas. he looked out the window, at a large yellow billboard with big bold black lettering advertising one of many anonymous smut shops that you find in growing numbers the further south you travel in America. he told her he didn't know. maybe he had. or maybe he'd stopped writing (a decision he made a few years back) because he felt an immediate compulsion to explore other facets of the human experience--travelling, relationships, food, etc.
you know what? she said. i think you're a hack. i think you've lost it. you used to be someone important--someone i gave a damn about.
he was obviously taken aback by this. this was one of the offensive things she never brought up around him. he looked at her, half-amused but mostly startled.
why do you say that? he asked.
you haven't written anything in years, she said. she took a nasty bite of her chicken-fingers, grease adorning the lower part of her mouth and chin like smeared chapstick. he found this funny. he laughed.
why are you laughing? i'm sick of supporting you--a writer that doesn't write. how am i supposed to be in love with someone who can't even afford to take me out for a fast-food dinner? i used to brag to all my friends that you were someone important, a notable literary figure. but now--you're nothing. you're just some poor loser, on his way to florida with his embittered girlfriend.
you're right, he said. if it bothers you, maybe we should break up.
and that's another thing. you don't even care. you don't give a damn. about anything.
there was a momentary silence--one that was tense and new. he found this exciting, though he was afraid to show it. finally, a little drama. a heated argument, the kind normal couples have. it was refreshing--he wondered why he'd been avoiding this sort of thing for so long.
you know what, he said. i was on a book tour once, in Thailand.
i don't give a goddamn about your stupid book tour, she interjected.
well--hold on, now. just listen, he said. i was on a book tour, in Thailand. my publisher sent me there, to do press for either my second or third novel, i can't remember which. i was told that the book was selling well in Thailand, and most of Asia. i was important enough, then, to be translated in languages that weren't my own. imagine that! have you ever had something to say that someone felt was vital enough that people on the opposite side of the world should hear it?
she wasn't amused.
anyway, as soon as i got there--i was running late--they rushed me to a local bookstore. they had a table set up for me and everything. i was supposed to be signing copies of my book from noon until four. then, it was off to the radio stations to do some publicity. the weird thing, however, was that when i got to the bookstore, no one was there. i mean: my pr people were there. but no fans. yet they'd convinced me of my celebrity beforehand. i mean, that was the reason i'd gone over there--because i was told i was famous enough to do so. i ended up drinking free coffee for about an hour at my lonely post--a rickety old aluminum card table dressed in red cloth--until i had this big epiphany. here, in Thailand, i meant nothing. i meant absolute dogshit to these people. i was just another stupid self-obsessed American trying to promote myself in a country that was better off or just fine without me. they didn't need to read my books. they didn't need my ideas. they were all ideas that they could and probably had come across already. who cares if i was the first one to document them in print. who even knows if that's true. here, i was no one. and it was great. you have no idea how liberating it is to see your own self-importance vanish so suddenly before your very eyes.
immediately following this revelation i called my publisher and told him that i was going to explore the country a little bit--the book tour be damned. i'd earned it. of course, he wasn't pleased with the news. but there wasn't much he could do. i was in a different country. i wandered the streets of Thailand all afternoon, all night and well into the morning until i felt no sense that i was in a foreign country at all but a place that very well might have been America had the cards been dealt again and certain variables reversed.
so? she said. what's your point?
he paused. he wasn't sure there was a point. or, if there was, he was having trouble making sense of it, finding the right words to articulate it.
honestly, he said. i don't know. i don't know if there is a point. it just sounded right. like something you needed to hear.
His style was recognized as "profoundly, powerfully simple"--no frills; no fluff. He wrote as a means to expel the insidious thoughts inside his head, for fear that they may possess him entirely otherwise--voices that accumulate and collect, like lent-traps, day-to-day ephemera and threaten mental illness should the keeper of these voices refuse to translate the persistent obsessions onto paper. He was a prisoner of his own mind, though he liked to think of himself as a "free-thinking" spokesperson for the intellectually apathetic.
His whole life was a sham.
Perhaps the most famous quote attributed to him was from a book he wrote at the start of his career (which was widely considered "promising") but which he could no longer remember writing. The quote goes like this: "I try to be well-spoken. Itry to be well-read. But it somehow always comes off as well-rehearsed." This is the quote talking heads liked to bring up in television and radio interviews with him, citing it as the penultimate creed of the Anti-Intellectual--the three terse sentences that set the movement in motion.
To tell you the truth, he had no idea where this quote originated. He certainly didn't remember writing it, so he had only a vague idea of how or in what context it was used in his book. It seemed to him that it was a female character who said this, but he couldn't be sure. Maybe it was an old man. It didn't matter. Everything he wrote, he wrote because it felt right or looked right on paper next to neighboring ideas, images or words. A lot of critics liked to point out that such and such a book, passage, quote, idea meant something profound, usually in relation to some concurrent social issue or event, to which he would just shrug his shoulders and say: "Oh, you think so?" And this is more or less how he went about his days--the apathetic figurehead shrugging his shoulders at the possibility of or provocation for deeper insight.
One day, he met a girl. She was very beautiful. He thought she favored his preconceived idea of what it meant to look like a "New York Jew," an idea--a look--he'd always been attracted to. He thought it would be offensive to tell her this, so he kept his mouth shut and simply told her that she was "beautiful" instead.
He kept his mouth shut about a lot of things with her. This is how he felt it was necessary to interact with her in order to maintain their peaceful, easy-going relationship. When she told him once that she loved him, he parroted the same affectation back to her. But what he really felt was that she was beautiful and fun to have sex with and easy to talk to. He knew he could find others like her but he didn't want her to know this. Saying "I love you" was a way for him to make their relationship sound exclusive and unique when, really, it could be replicated a million times plus. It was a very big secret that he felt he may blabber at any moment--thus, he stifled his natural inclination to talk openly and freely about whatever thought might manifest itself in his head.
on long drives, trips through the country, trips to the country, trips through familiar cities and strange ones, too, he kept his focus on the world outside the driver's side or passenger side window, depending on the arrangement. he would allow her to gush about whatever topic she chose because he knew she would never dare bring up something that might offend him. she may talk incessantly about things he only pretended to care about, but she would never say anything to intentionally hurt his feelings. therefore, he appreciated it even when she went on and on and on about back-stabbing co-workers or unremarkable (to him) childhood memories. he appreciated them solely on the merit that they weren't offensive or taboo topics, but things he could easily listen to and selectively remember.
once, she asked him about his work. they had stopped off at some mom-and-pop owned restaurant in the deep south with an adjoining old-time filling station. she complained that she was hungry and tired of driving--they'd been on the road for an extensive period of time, headed to florida, of all places, and although he wasn't hungry, himself, he complied because the prospect of an unfamiliar detour excited him.
she asked him if he'd run dry on ideas. he looked out the window, at a large yellow billboard with big bold black lettering advertising one of many anonymous smut shops that you find in growing numbers the further south you travel in America. he told her he didn't know. maybe he had. or maybe he'd stopped writing (a decision he made a few years back) because he felt an immediate compulsion to explore other facets of the human experience--travelling, relationships, food, etc.
you know what? she said. i think you're a hack. i think you've lost it. you used to be someone important--someone i gave a damn about.
he was obviously taken aback by this. this was one of the offensive things she never brought up around him. he looked at her, half-amused but mostly startled.
why do you say that? he asked.
you haven't written anything in years, she said. she took a nasty bite of her chicken-fingers, grease adorning the lower part of her mouth and chin like smeared chapstick. he found this funny. he laughed.
why are you laughing? i'm sick of supporting you--a writer that doesn't write. how am i supposed to be in love with someone who can't even afford to take me out for a fast-food dinner? i used to brag to all my friends that you were someone important, a notable literary figure. but now--you're nothing. you're just some poor loser, on his way to florida with his embittered girlfriend.
you're right, he said. if it bothers you, maybe we should break up.
and that's another thing. you don't even care. you don't give a damn. about anything.
there was a momentary silence--one that was tense and new. he found this exciting, though he was afraid to show it. finally, a little drama. a heated argument, the kind normal couples have. it was refreshing--he wondered why he'd been avoiding this sort of thing for so long.
you know what, he said. i was on a book tour once, in Thailand.
i don't give a goddamn about your stupid book tour, she interjected.
well--hold on, now. just listen, he said. i was on a book tour, in Thailand. my publisher sent me there, to do press for either my second or third novel, i can't remember which. i was told that the book was selling well in Thailand, and most of Asia. i was important enough, then, to be translated in languages that weren't my own. imagine that! have you ever had something to say that someone felt was vital enough that people on the opposite side of the world should hear it?
she wasn't amused.
anyway, as soon as i got there--i was running late--they rushed me to a local bookstore. they had a table set up for me and everything. i was supposed to be signing copies of my book from noon until four. then, it was off to the radio stations to do some publicity. the weird thing, however, was that when i got to the bookstore, no one was there. i mean: my pr people were there. but no fans. yet they'd convinced me of my celebrity beforehand. i mean, that was the reason i'd gone over there--because i was told i was famous enough to do so. i ended up drinking free coffee for about an hour at my lonely post--a rickety old aluminum card table dressed in red cloth--until i had this big epiphany. here, in Thailand, i meant nothing. i meant absolute dogshit to these people. i was just another stupid self-obsessed American trying to promote myself in a country that was better off or just fine without me. they didn't need to read my books. they didn't need my ideas. they were all ideas that they could and probably had come across already. who cares if i was the first one to document them in print. who even knows if that's true. here, i was no one. and it was great. you have no idea how liberating it is to see your own self-importance vanish so suddenly before your very eyes.
immediately following this revelation i called my publisher and told him that i was going to explore the country a little bit--the book tour be damned. i'd earned it. of course, he wasn't pleased with the news. but there wasn't much he could do. i was in a different country. i wandered the streets of Thailand all afternoon, all night and well into the morning until i felt no sense that i was in a foreign country at all but a place that very well might have been America had the cards been dealt again and certain variables reversed.
so? she said. what's your point?
he paused. he wasn't sure there was a point. or, if there was, he was having trouble making sense of it, finding the right words to articulate it.
honestly, he said. i don't know. i don't know if there is a point. it just sounded right. like something you needed to hear.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
market strategy
i hate to beat a dead horse, here. i know this is something i've talked about extensively in the past, but it's so true and it's something i think about with great frequency. compelling art--great art--is about sucking the listener, the viewer, the reader, etc. into your own little world. it's almost entirely mythology--creating an entire universe that follows its own logic, its own set of rules, has its own feel, its own essential qualities.
a lot of times i'll hear a band and think: wow. these guys are really good. but they just don't have it--they don't have that all-elusive it factor that draws people in, that keeps people interested--that seemingly inexplicable quality that turns separates the important from the expendable. and i'm pretty sure what i mean by that is that they don't have that mythology--that idiosyncratic pull.
nirvana was a great band because they had that mythology. you know a nirvana song when you hear it. you've heard other songs that sound like nirvana songs but you'll always know the original when you hear it. they created their own little world--defined the seattle sound so that when people think of "grunge" they think of nirvana. they think of kurt cobain--the quintessential tormented artist--his cardigan--his addiction to heroin--his eventual suicide--all of these things add up to the nirvana mythology. they make the band stick out from the rest of the seattle musicians and subsequent imitators, so that they're able to stand entirely on their own.
the same can be said for any number of bands or artists i like. radiohead. the arcade fire. pixies. sigur ros. they all have that thing that people can point to and say (or perhaps not say because they don't think they can find the words): yeah, that's a sigur ros song. that sounds like radiohead. or: that is soooo the arcade fire. and this is ultimately what sets these bands apart from the pack. why it's so easy to get lost in the world of in the aeroplane over the sea vs. a spot-on imitation of neutral milk hotel. it's not just that these bands are innovators or that they're completely original. for one, i don't think that is entirely true. everything is derivative, in one way or another. these bands were just able to take different elements and reconfigure them into one exploitable and very definite sound or image.
at times, i think this is gimmicky or one-dimensional. but then--i'm not entirely convinced this is a bad thing. i mean, that's what people naturally gravitate towards--things they find accessible, relatable, easy to pinpoint. so why shouldn't art be the same way? it's nice when things make sense. when things come in a neat little package. the illusion of order is so damned alluring. it doesn't have to be shallow, necessarily. there's always something deeper under the surface, but it's nice to have an attractive exterior to barrel through. i'd say both are vital to any great piece of art. you need depth but the appearance, no matter how deceiving, of organization is also important. it's like the ideal person: relatively smart, relatively attractive. brains and beauty. a good balance of both.
a lot of times i'll hear a band and think: wow. these guys are really good. but they just don't have it--they don't have that all-elusive it factor that draws people in, that keeps people interested--that seemingly inexplicable quality that turns separates the important from the expendable. and i'm pretty sure what i mean by that is that they don't have that mythology--that idiosyncratic pull.
nirvana was a great band because they had that mythology. you know a nirvana song when you hear it. you've heard other songs that sound like nirvana songs but you'll always know the original when you hear it. they created their own little world--defined the seattle sound so that when people think of "grunge" they think of nirvana. they think of kurt cobain--the quintessential tormented artist--his cardigan--his addiction to heroin--his eventual suicide--all of these things add up to the nirvana mythology. they make the band stick out from the rest of the seattle musicians and subsequent imitators, so that they're able to stand entirely on their own.
the same can be said for any number of bands or artists i like. radiohead. the arcade fire. pixies. sigur ros. they all have that thing that people can point to and say (or perhaps not say because they don't think they can find the words): yeah, that's a sigur ros song. that sounds like radiohead. or: that is soooo the arcade fire. and this is ultimately what sets these bands apart from the pack. why it's so easy to get lost in the world of in the aeroplane over the sea vs. a spot-on imitation of neutral milk hotel. it's not just that these bands are innovators or that they're completely original. for one, i don't think that is entirely true. everything is derivative, in one way or another. these bands were just able to take different elements and reconfigure them into one exploitable and very definite sound or image.
at times, i think this is gimmicky or one-dimensional. but then--i'm not entirely convinced this is a bad thing. i mean, that's what people naturally gravitate towards--things they find accessible, relatable, easy to pinpoint. so why shouldn't art be the same way? it's nice when things make sense. when things come in a neat little package. the illusion of order is so damned alluring. it doesn't have to be shallow, necessarily. there's always something deeper under the surface, but it's nice to have an attractive exterior to barrel through. i'd say both are vital to any great piece of art. you need depth but the appearance, no matter how deceiving, of organization is also important. it's like the ideal person: relatively smart, relatively attractive. brains and beauty. a good balance of both.
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