I think the most egregious thing I heard in this episode was the woman who MeToo’d Junot Diaz referring to herself as a “wide eyed innocent TWENTY SIX YEAR OLD.”
Ma’am. 26 is a fully formed adult. Yes it’s young in the spectrum of adulthood, but FFS.
It's funny that the offended editors called the content of the interview "regressive, harmful, and also just boring." I mean, how can you be bored when you're so full of outrage at what's regressive and harmful?
I just hate this upper class bullshit that I always saw in elite colleges. It always bugged me to have people who were more privileged than me tell me how privileged I am. It sounds like it happens in publishing too. And it is almost always rich white ladies who are having a crisis of conscience.
I have a confession to make, y'all. I was talking with colleagues at lunch today and someone mentioned knitting influencer drama. I know I should have stayed and gotten juicy info for my fellow podlings, but instead I RAN AWAY AS FAST AS I COULD.
Highly (self) regarded audio professional here. You can always reach out for advice, help via zoom or cell, or an in person bespoke experience for reasonable day rate and travel expenses. I can also be a furry if that helps.
“The content that started all this was regressive, harmful, and also just boring writing. The misogyny and white supremacy were treated with empathetic engagement, and that sucked beyond measure.”
“Sucked beyond measure” is a hilarious criticism to level at “boring writing.”
Currently lying down in my backseat in a parking garage in Arlington after my drive from Pittsburgh area because I came on the wrong day... lol I’m such a ditz sometimes.
GREAT EPISODE!! I’m a writer; what they’re talking about literally happened to me. In 2016 I submitted my YA autobiographical novel to agents in NYC. I had a ton of initial interest. Dozens of agents read and praised it. But. In the end no agent took the book. Two basically said they were looking for ‘other voices.’ I worked on that book for a decade. I guess merit is finished. This is why I started writing on Substack. The Perez interview was fantastic. He’s right on every point. I interned for a literary agent for nine months in 2013. I lived in NYC for 2.5 years. I remember the Junot Diaz thing. Here’s the truth: White Wokeism is racist. Boom 🤯.
Most interesting episode in a spicy little minute! 🌶 When the Iowa program was first mentioned, I thought of Carmen Maria Muchado (CMM) because I think that’s where she went? Then, low and behold, her name came up later in the conversation about Junot Diaz. I couldn’t even remember the details, but his cancellation was one of the first of that sort of perplexed me... Like not to be a jerk, but I thought it was sort of a nonstory unless I was missing something.
I read CMM’s book, In the Dream House, when it came out in 2018 or 2019. While she writes beautiful prose, the plot of the story was... wanting. *Spoiler alert* Allegedly about lesbian domestic abuse, she described what seemed like a toxic relationship and a sorta shitty girlfriend. Honestly, the whole book was less dramatic than my relationships during my freshman year of college. I remember, again, getting to the end of the story and going... like yeah this wasn’t a good relationship, but abusive? That’s maybe a stretch based on what’s written. (I’ll add that I’m not an expert on abuse and Im super open to info that could change my mind.) I super-duper hate to say it, but CMM’s total lack of accountability in that book made me think she was leaving some stuff out - which is her prerogative - there was a disclaimer about how some of it is maybe fiction or whatever.
Ok I’m ready to go to hell - this made me think even more about the info I hear in ~heterodox~ communities about how lesbians allegedly have the highest rates of domestic violence? I have wondered about this and looked into it but can’t find good numbers. But at least when it comes to domestic homocide, women don’t really kill each other very often as far as I can tell. My lesbian friends think women, especially lesbians, may have higher standards for relationship quality and a lower bar for what is considered to be abuse. So maybe I’m just a bad lesbian because I don’t think my college gf yelling at me once or whatever the hell is abuse.
That Alex Perez interview was really good. It’s fascinating to me that people resigned over it. It seems they were just personally insulted. I didn’t find it boring or offensive. I grew up reading Bukowski and London and Kerouac. I find that stuff to be pathetic, misogynistic crap now. BUT, it was reaching for transcendence, as I was then. The whole culture is boring now. Art galleries, fiction, movies, conversations. Everything is scripted and people ARE afraid to speak freely. I’m glad there are some people who are saying: “Fuck it.” Being a member of the cultural class with these “mediocrities” as he puts it, is not worth it.
What’s the LitHub link? I did read the Alex Perez interview but I’m a random electrician in VA, I had no idea it had turned into a whole thing. See y’all in Arlington tomorrow!
I was glad Jesse mentioned, toward the end of the Alex Perez segment, that he found the interview entertaining. I found it so funny that I couldn't stop reading "just one more paragraph" to my spouse, who was attempting to get a little evening work done. I've re-read the most supposedly offensive chunks several times in the course of following the controversy, and they make me laugh out loud every time.
My first teaching gig in my graduate program involved running discussion sections for a very famous professor who began the course with several lectures that offered a feminist deconstruction of a famous comedic work of literature. In the course of running the ensuing discussions, I soon realized that the students were getting the message that talking about literature kills the joke. I resolved to try to avoid giving that impression once I got to teach my own courses.
Humorless reading too often wins the day in elite literary circles. I wonder whether the offended editors didn't get the humor mixed in with Perez's frustration with the industry, or whether they pretended not to get it for the sake of staying mad. Either way, I feel sorry for them.
I was thinking about whether paler skinned Latinos who could pass as white should be considered white. Like Ted Cruz is Cuban-American but is basically considered white by everyone everywhere. Like Argentinians and Cubans could pass as southern European for example. Race is weird and stupid and this shouldn't matter at all but I think in this context to understand the outrage at Alex it might very well matter. In many progressive spaces it's fine for Black, Brown and Asian people to make fun of white women, it's fine for white women to make fun of white women. But when white men do it... it is a different ballgame. I know because I did used to be in these progressive online spaces.
First there was #metoo, and women were infallible. Then someone decided to inject race into it, and the “problematic white woman” idea became a new vector for misogyny.
Jesse and Katie recording in separate rooms in the same apt is just *chef's kiss*.
I think the most egregious thing I heard in this episode was the woman who MeToo’d Junot Diaz referring to herself as a “wide eyed innocent TWENTY SIX YEAR OLD.”
Ma’am. 26 is a fully formed adult. Yes it’s young in the spectrum of adulthood, but FFS.
It's funny that the offended editors called the content of the interview "regressive, harmful, and also just boring." I mean, how can you be bored when you're so full of outrage at what's regressive and harmful?
I just hate this upper class bullshit that I always saw in elite colleges. It always bugged me to have people who were more privileged than me tell me how privileged I am. It sounds like it happens in publishing too. And it is almost always rich white ladies who are having a crisis of conscience.
I have a confession to make, y'all. I was talking with colleagues at lunch today and someone mentioned knitting influencer drama. I know I should have stayed and gotten juicy info for my fellow podlings, but instead I RAN AWAY AS FAST AS I COULD.
Highly (self) regarded audio professional here. You can always reach out for advice, help via zoom or cell, or an in person bespoke experience for reasonable day rate and travel expenses. I can also be a furry if that helps.
“The content that started all this was regressive, harmful, and also just boring writing. The misogyny and white supremacy were treated with empathetic engagement, and that sucked beyond measure.”
“Sucked beyond measure” is a hilarious criticism to level at “boring writing.”
Currently lying down in my backseat in a parking garage in Arlington after my drive from Pittsburgh area because I came on the wrong day... lol I’m such a ditz sometimes.
GREAT EPISODE!! I’m a writer; what they’re talking about literally happened to me. In 2016 I submitted my YA autobiographical novel to agents in NYC. I had a ton of initial interest. Dozens of agents read and praised it. But. In the end no agent took the book. Two basically said they were looking for ‘other voices.’ I worked on that book for a decade. I guess merit is finished. This is why I started writing on Substack. The Perez interview was fantastic. He’s right on every point. I interned for a literary agent for nine months in 2013. I lived in NYC for 2.5 years. I remember the Junot Diaz thing. Here’s the truth: White Wokeism is racist. Boom 🤯.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Most interesting episode in a spicy little minute! 🌶 When the Iowa program was first mentioned, I thought of Carmen Maria Muchado (CMM) because I think that’s where she went? Then, low and behold, her name came up later in the conversation about Junot Diaz. I couldn’t even remember the details, but his cancellation was one of the first of that sort of perplexed me... Like not to be a jerk, but I thought it was sort of a nonstory unless I was missing something.
I read CMM’s book, In the Dream House, when it came out in 2018 or 2019. While she writes beautiful prose, the plot of the story was... wanting. *Spoiler alert* Allegedly about lesbian domestic abuse, she described what seemed like a toxic relationship and a sorta shitty girlfriend. Honestly, the whole book was less dramatic than my relationships during my freshman year of college. I remember, again, getting to the end of the story and going... like yeah this wasn’t a good relationship, but abusive? That’s maybe a stretch based on what’s written. (I’ll add that I’m not an expert on abuse and Im super open to info that could change my mind.) I super-duper hate to say it, but CMM’s total lack of accountability in that book made me think she was leaving some stuff out - which is her prerogative - there was a disclaimer about how some of it is maybe fiction or whatever.
Ok I’m ready to go to hell - this made me think even more about the info I hear in ~heterodox~ communities about how lesbians allegedly have the highest rates of domestic violence? I have wondered about this and looked into it but can’t find good numbers. But at least when it comes to domestic homocide, women don’t really kill each other very often as far as I can tell. My lesbian friends think women, especially lesbians, may have higher standards for relationship quality and a lower bar for what is considered to be abuse. So maybe I’m just a bad lesbian because I don’t think my college gf yelling at me once or whatever the hell is abuse.
If Katie murders the dog murderer I’ll be an alibi.
Oh and, NYC show was awesome!
That Alex Perez interview was really good. It’s fascinating to me that people resigned over it. It seems they were just personally insulted. I didn’t find it boring or offensive. I grew up reading Bukowski and London and Kerouac. I find that stuff to be pathetic, misogynistic crap now. BUT, it was reaching for transcendence, as I was then. The whole culture is boring now. Art galleries, fiction, movies, conversations. Everything is scripted and people ARE afraid to speak freely. I’m glad there are some people who are saying: “Fuck it.” Being a member of the cultural class with these “mediocrities” as he puts it, is not worth it.
What’s the LitHub link? I did read the Alex Perez interview but I’m a random electrician in VA, I had no idea it had turned into a whole thing. See y’all in Arlington tomorrow!
I was glad Jesse mentioned, toward the end of the Alex Perez segment, that he found the interview entertaining. I found it so funny that I couldn't stop reading "just one more paragraph" to my spouse, who was attempting to get a little evening work done. I've re-read the most supposedly offensive chunks several times in the course of following the controversy, and they make me laugh out loud every time.
My first teaching gig in my graduate program involved running discussion sections for a very famous professor who began the course with several lectures that offered a feminist deconstruction of a famous comedic work of literature. In the course of running the ensuing discussions, I soon realized that the students were getting the message that talking about literature kills the joke. I resolved to try to avoid giving that impression once I got to teach my own courses.
Humorless reading too often wins the day in elite literary circles. I wonder whether the offended editors didn't get the humor mixed in with Perez's frustration with the industry, or whether they pretended not to get it for the sake of staying mad. Either way, I feel sorry for them.
I was thinking about whether paler skinned Latinos who could pass as white should be considered white. Like Ted Cruz is Cuban-American but is basically considered white by everyone everywhere. Like Argentinians and Cubans could pass as southern European for example. Race is weird and stupid and this shouldn't matter at all but I think in this context to understand the outrage at Alex it might very well matter. In many progressive spaces it's fine for Black, Brown and Asian people to make fun of white women, it's fine for white women to make fun of white women. But when white men do it... it is a different ballgame. I know because I did used to be in these progressive online spaces.
First there was #metoo, and women were infallible. Then someone decided to inject race into it, and the “problematic white woman” idea became a new vector for misogyny.