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Notes -
The decline of the Literary Bloke: "In featuring just four men, Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists confirms what we already knew: the literary male has become terminally uncool."
Just some scattered thoughts.
It has to be pointed out that any such "great upcoming young novelists" list must be comprised of mostly women, out of necessity. Otherwise the organizers of the list would be painted as sexist and privileged and out of touch and it would probably jeopardize their careers. You don't even need to reach for the more subtle types of criticisms that revisionists make of the traditional canon: "yeah, I know like you feel you were just judging works solely on literary merit, and you just so happened to collect a list of 100 deserving authors where 99 of them are men, but actually you were being driven by subconscious patriarchal bias and you need to escape from your historically ossified perspective and so on and so forth". What's going on now in the publishing industry is far more overt: "it's time to hand the reins over to women, period". In such a cultural context, how could a list of the "20 best young British novelists" be taken as unbiased evidence of anything?
It's true that literary fiction is not as cool as it once was, although this in itself is not a great moral catastrophe. It's part of the natural cycle of things. The "cool" things now are happening in TV, film, video games, and comic books. When was the last time a literary fiction author of either gender captured the imaginations of millions of people the way Hajime Isayama did? The literary novel is not eternal (many will argue that historically speaking, it's a relatively recent invention) and it is not inherently superior to other narrative art forms.
Correct, it's not a conspiracy, but only because there is nothing conspiratorial about it. If you were to ask any big (or small!) publishing house if they gave priority to voices from traditionally marginalized groups, they would say yes. If you were to then ask them if women are a traditionally marginalized group, they would say yes.
...
It's not a conspiracy if they just tell you what they're doing!
There's been a meme for some time that goes something like, "men don't understand women, but women understand men - maybe even better than men do themselves", which I find to be quite obnoxious. If there is any "misunderstanding", then it surely goes both ways. There are plenty of things in the male experience that have no natural analogue in the female experience, same as the reverse.
Of course, and as with any endeavor of this nature, all that has happened is that the true talent has been pushed underground. And it will either find another way to reach us or be redirected elsewhere as the carcass of what was once great walks itself proudly into the garbage bin of history.
The people around these parts are all to familiar with this exact process happening to Science-Fiction, and to many other institutions by now. Oh what a Hugo used to mean!
This piece is written as triumph, but it is the epitaph of the institution that penned it. The great wordsmiths of our age won't get published in places so racist and sexist that they refuse to entertain greatness. And this is somehow to be celebrated. This is progress. It certainly is. Nay, this is reactionary. Why
Some will say, with great wisdom, that "get woke go broke" is wish fulfillment, that the tides of ideology can remain staunchly ignorant of market forces and continue to produce drekk with aplomb thanks to a steady supply of magic money.
And they are right in the short term of course, as we have seen. "Institutional buyers" can sustain these sinecures for a long time, for decades possibly.
Things will get worse, they may do so for the rest of our lives.
But eventually, inevitably, every nation runs out of ruin.
I wrote a comment and gave it to my sensitive reader. Here is it's feedback. I am "The auther" for clarity.
"The author believes that institutions have successfully brainwashed young people. The author first noticed this in video games, where games like Diablo II introduced a slot machine-like element that has now become the norm. Young gamers and game developers can hardly imagine games any other way. The author believes that this has destroyed the discerning game audience and the culture of sophisticated gaming.
The author also believes that younger generations have been trained to expect diversity in entertainment and recoil when it is not present. This has led to the removal of great cultural artifacts from curriculums or their presentation as offensive and wrong. The author believes that this has replaced our entire society.
The author believes that our nation ran out of ruin 10-20 years ago and was replaced by a new nation that is still establishing its new order. The author believes that anticipating this new nation to run out of ruin is premature and compares it to anticipating the Roman Empire running out of ruin the day after Caesar was assassinated. The author believes that by the time this new nation finally runs out of ruin, America of old may be just as much an antiquity as the Roman Republic was to the Roman Empire."
I think it's preposterous to think of this regime as bearing the innovation, strength and potency of youth.
Nowhere it goes does it create, and everywhere it steals and vandalizes. Where is the progressive Augustus? Where are its novel institutions? Where is the peace created by its unquestionable bright future? The few rays of sunlight that exists in its grim vision are all coming from technocapital dissidents who would not mind its destruction at all and even they are undermined at every turn by it for fear of becoming a rival castle of managerial moralism.
You are right to analogize us with murdered Caesar. But "such another" hasn't yet come.
Look, I think the metaphors are getting a little mixed here.
We don’t see much in the way of novel institutions because our existing ones work. About as well as they ever did, anyway. No murder there.
Woke media is sort of fashionable at the moment. I don’t think this is the culmination of a Long (Ides of) March. Neither is the counter push for anti-woke products. Who’s supposed to be Caesar, again?
We disagree in premise. The current institutions do not work. They do not work on so many levels I want to ask you to pick any topic and explain to me how you can possibly read their behavior as serviceable. Even basic thing like public order are fubar. The economic system is broken to the point of hilarity, not to mention logistics and infrastructure.
Everything is fucked that is, except remaining in power, which is literally always the last thing to go.
Public order?
I can drive ten minutes down clean, well-lighted streets and get to a functioning police station or courthouse or other outpost of civil society. The worst I might see is a couple homeless. No drugs, no shootings, none of the apocalyptic tenor that shows up on this board. An armed robbery with no casualties is considered shocking, even exciting.
When I vote, I have every reason to believe my vote is fairly counted. Our polling places operate just fine. My vote may not make the difference, given that my neighbors would probably vote for a log with an R next to it, but that’s okay. That log is not a threat.
I can buy gas and groceries. Go to one of the innumerable big box stores flowing goods to the metroplex. Get a good lunch out with my family. Prices are inflated but manageable.
My job is quite secure—I have reasonable skills, and the regime always needs new weapons for its foreign commitments. We impose some level of order on half the planet. It may not always be this way, but for now, America is the best in the world.
That’s public order.
I guess you just don't live in a big city. Good for you D-FENS, but I question the relevance of your personal experience to the health of your regime when those lawless places in your country do exist.
I spent the last Saturday on the train through Dallas, actually. It was…fine. A couple “don’t make eye contact” moments. Certainly less comfortable than my glorified suburb. Do you live in one of these hellholes, or do you just hear about them on TV?
Their existence doesn’t outweigh all the functional, ordered parts of the country. Since you disagree—when was the last time they did?
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I mean if you’re judging by the lifestyle of someone living a middle class life in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area, I mean sure. But there are major portions of almost every major American city that are lawless enough that “good people” no longer go there and if misfortune puts them near those areas, they flee as quickly as their modern automobile will allow them.
My city had more than 250 murders last year. Not even that bad. Chicago had more. There are places in America with such high crime rates that stores have their good — all of their goods locked up, and for good measure have metal bars over their windows. You can look on YouTube for the skid rows of various cities, entire streets filled with people hopelessly addicted to drugs. Or you can look up the Los Angeles feces map. A map to help people avoid steers covered in human feces. In most of the inner cores of the city, it’s common practice to leave a car door unlocked and signs on the windows telling thieves there’s nothing of value and to please not break the windows. That’s the urban rot.
Now if you go to rural areas, especially in the south, it’s often very poor. There are no big stores giving the fruits of civilization to rural Georgia. They don’t have good jobs, they don’t have much in material wealth. Most of the buildings are in poor repair. And most of the people still there live in poverty. Those with means fled when the last good jobs were taken with the factory that left decades ago. No new business has come in, and what remains are the people too poor to move and who don’t have the job skills to make it worthwhile.
You want working institutions? I don’t see them. Politics is mostly for show and at best ignores real problems in favor of theatrics. You mentioned the inflationary pressures on the economy. So what exactly has our government been doing while people struggle to afford healthcare and food and so on? Well, we had a nice conversation about January 6, we overturned Roe, and we’re desperately concerned with the contents of elementary school books. We can muster the energy to condemn various political heresies in public and private life. We can perhaps find time to elevate a trans woman to celebrity status. But we cannot fix any real problems. Roads don’t get fixed, crimes in many larger cities are ignored, kids get shot in schools, and for that matter our schools plain stink as compared to other countries.
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