I liked Cash's short stories, they were a bit on the nose but funny and interesting, and I look forward to her and Anika's novels. So, caveat, I haven't read either yet.
What I'll say in defence of Grace Byron's piece is I think it's notable that Forever Mag was maybe the primary clout-laundering-machine of the Dimes Square era. They included Moldbug on their "30-pushing-30" list, they were huge hype-women for the Red Scare hags, etc. I don't really think either Cash or Anika Levy are fascists, and it's clear that Cash's stories were trying to shake off the ickier bits of the scene (They're not Remilia girls!), but they still were among the primary agents in sanitizing a lot of vile nazi ghouls, even if much of it was probably genuinely unwittingly.
I think that context makes Byron's suspicion rather reasonable. Even if I agree that the "dog-whistles" (women-hating-women, for example) are just normal things, I'm not exactly eager to read them like normal, and some of the dogs are definitely still barking. I do care about their political values (because that was the honey that attracted everyone in the first place), and if they want to be libtards now it'd be far more interesting to see them grapple with those contradictions, rather than just continue to drip careerist ichor of a slightly different hue.
I would say that's fair. I never really paid attention to any of that Forever Mag type stuff because it all felt like alt lit backwash to me, although some assure me it's good stuff, if I had more time with this piece I would have more deeply familiarized myself with it all, and maybe I will for the piece I'm doing on alt lit. But I think Cash's present libtardation comes off to me as genuine vs. say Honor Levy's, and trying to read much out of the WORK contrary to that seems like an uphill battle because the novel is very much working to counter that. It's strange to me that I don't recall Byron attacking what could have been the best sticking point, which is the novel's implicit concern about the "degradation of the family," which is something one COULD make a valid argument about in that respect, although I frankly think that that shouldn't be seen as JUST a reactionary position (capitalism DOES degrade the family! which IS bad! and communist countries tend to feature stronger familial units, not weaker ones!), it at least IS one.
Just to riff off-topic on your last point, the best queer legislation I have ever seen is Cuba's family policies which honour and include queer found-family structures as legal & genuine, which both works against what Engels critiqued in Origin while also pushing back against the alienation / family-destruction of contemporary capitalism, which is in the west especially punishing to queer people, and is viewed wrongly by the trad right as the vanguard of this dissolution, rather than a disproportionally-applied symptom!
Has a race to produce a zeitgeisty novel ever produced anything really good? I think competition is helpful for writers, but it's usually like, who can better depict insomnia, not "who can best summarize the mood in the moderately edgy parts of the internet." The impatience and obsession with topicality is exhausting.
The conspiracy to elevate Cash's book just seems like the invisible hand at work. It's widely understood that there's a market for zeitgeisty novels by young, attractive women and if everyone cooperates, everyone gets paid, not paid off, just normal paid. I do think the tendency of contemporary publishing to encourage this type of collusion should be criticized, but it needs to be a structural critique of how publishers and critics are incentivized, not a conspiracy theory.
That's the thing re: astroturf or not. Your daddy could be the fucking CEO of Holtzbrinck, and I'm sure that would at least net you a book deal, but if he poured the kind of resources into promoting your vanity nepo book that went into promoting Cash's book and there was NO commercial appeal for it the board would not be particularly happy with him. Even nepotism can only take you so far, and, as I pointed out, there's very obvious commercial calculus here rather than just some sort of irrational favouritism.
As for zeitgeisty novels... well, you said it about as well as I could. It's a race that obscures the prize, it ignores what the goals of art ought to be in pursuit of something nebulous and irrelevant and immediately dated. The merits of any of these books at all are often in spite of their contemporary obsessions rather than because of them.
I don’t want to critique her novel, every review on Substack basically says, “She’s talented, but it’s a flawed book.” That makes her better than most. I think the industry behaves very rationally in the short term, but I do feel that in the medium/long term this isn't working.
I remember reading a Muriel Spark novel set in the publishing industry where her character notes that some novels are flash-in-the-pan (zeitgeisty) and some take a while to sell, but sell for a long time. Publishers make a lot of money off Dostoevsky and the Brontës just putting out new editions once in a while. It sells itself. Whereas with this marketing-first model, there's always this intense effort, running, running, running just to stay in place, not even trying to find books that will last and take the pressure off.
And it turns off readers too. There are so many novels (that I skip) that I hear everyone talking about, and then a few years later there's this general consensus it wasn't very good. Yellowface is a perfect example, but there are many.
Your take is much more reasonable than Byron’s. I probably won’t read either book. my impulse is to back away when anything gets this much buzz, positive or negative, and wait a year or two after the hype dies down. i miss out on being part of the discourse but that’s ok. i’m adding Patricia Lockwood to my list.
Yes, if I didn't have this blog I'd likely have avoided the whole thing too, but felt I had some sort of duty to weigh in on the thing. I've got two more responses to recent books in the pipes but after that I'm going to take a well-deserved break from "hype books" as I think it's bad for my soul. Lockwood's book is stylistically interesting but the second part of the book fell a little flat for me, but it's worth checking out as example imo of "virtual realism" as its been dubbed (perhaps more appropriately "virtual SURrealism," but maybe that's really the same thing at the end of the day). An old collaborator cum bitter rival of mine, Adam Haiun, recently published a book I'd once helped workshop that I think manages something similar, which I think he nearly reaches but falls just short, it's a difficult balancing act to pull off that's for sure.
Well, I'll say that it's at the very least "okay." The one I would recommend would be Cash's first book, Earth Angel. As I said, it's a bit uneven, but when it hits it hits. Reminds me a lot of Fawn Parker's first collection, "Looking Good and Having a Good Time" from ten or so years ago.
I enjoyed your article. The fact that mean writer gurl, Grace Byron sees "Lost Lambs" as 'some kind of Trad Wife/Bimbo Aesthetic submission thing,' makes me think it might be a new novel written by a woman who I might actually enjoy reading.
I don't follow most of what is happening in the literati sphere as it is mostly women writing about women. That's fine that they now own publishing and can write about each other endlessly. But it seems to be mostly stuff I cannot relate to. Yeah, I'm an old white man.
I like the bit about how you think there might be a bit of 'it's not what you know but who you know' in the mighty push the book got from its publisher, Farah something or other.
Also, 'Woke (DEI) might be dead' in government, the Federal for sure, and likely most states, but it is not yet dead in Big Publishing. It is Undead.
I, too, am OVER the lists! I already got it before the first item in the list, please make it stop. Lost Lambs read like it was written neatly for a Netflix movie adaptation, which pissed me off. The wordplay names felt Pynchon in a way that took me out of the novel. The ending for all the characters was too happy.
Lord God forgive me for saying this but of course Grace Byron is a hysterical trans person furious about anybody entertaining any politics outside of whatever blackened, miserable porn-deadened abortion sludge the so-called left can come up with (SORRY!). That Levy passage about discovering there's no more children around was fabulous.
Ngl Cash lost me on page one of Lost Lamba when she referred to a disabled child as “brain-damaged” without taking any time to set up character voice. It’s some kind of Gen Z Marty Supreme shock and awe tactic that only ever subtracts from what might very well be genuine talent and “left of center” values or whatever that means. Having basic respect for disabled kids should be the unquestioned foundation of the next great American novelist, or whoever everyone is trying to be (which doesn’t mean you can’t push limits with some care as an artist not to do real harm to vulnerable groups of people like disabled children)
The references to the kid being "brain-damaged" in the book are usually presented as being the perspective of the focalized characters. I went back to check to be sure, and yes, when her mother is being focalized she doesn't use that language (sticks to "disabled" or "illness").
All that said, while I wasn't crazy about Cash's book myself, I don't think I agree with the sentence "having basic respect for disabled kids should be the unquestioned foundation of the next great American novelist." I think the unquestioned foundation of the "next great American novelist" should probably be "writing really good books."
I think it’s impossible to write a great book if you have no basic respect for humanity (of which respect for the disabled is foundational), but I’m prepared to accept that that’s a subjective opinion. I’m not arguing for didacticism, which is boring, but for an authorial values system that includes disabled people.
I got that it was focalized, but in the first paragraph of the first page, there is no way for a reader to have absorbed yet that it is not in fact the opinion of an omniscient narrator, and that’s a weakness imo in her writing and in whoever edited the book and didn’t suggest she pull that particular punch. I didn’t read any further and didn’t care to. It felt careless, and I don’t trust careless authors.
The message of Trainspotting is that 'conformity and domesticity' are actually good and probably the only thing that will save you, if you're an addict at least.
Cash's book was fun though maybe too reliant on non sequitur asides for humor. Ended up being only about half to two thirds of a book. The politics and social commentary, such as they were, seemed mainly about generational disgust and a very brittle acceptance of family.
Levy's was a standard jealous of friend story against a backdrop of political pessimism and thoughts on not accomplishing anything with one's youth. Good stuff, more interesting writing than Cash, if only because someone took a floor polisher to Cash's prose, but well trodden territory.
Both works remind of Rooney's debut, which I guess means I'm looking forward to seeing more from Cash and Levy?
I liked Cash's short stories, they were a bit on the nose but funny and interesting, and I look forward to her and Anika's novels. So, caveat, I haven't read either yet.
What I'll say in defence of Grace Byron's piece is I think it's notable that Forever Mag was maybe the primary clout-laundering-machine of the Dimes Square era. They included Moldbug on their "30-pushing-30" list, they were huge hype-women for the Red Scare hags, etc. I don't really think either Cash or Anika Levy are fascists, and it's clear that Cash's stories were trying to shake off the ickier bits of the scene (They're not Remilia girls!), but they still were among the primary agents in sanitizing a lot of vile nazi ghouls, even if much of it was probably genuinely unwittingly.
I think that context makes Byron's suspicion rather reasonable. Even if I agree that the "dog-whistles" (women-hating-women, for example) are just normal things, I'm not exactly eager to read them like normal, and some of the dogs are definitely still barking. I do care about their political values (because that was the honey that attracted everyone in the first place), and if they want to be libtards now it'd be far more interesting to see them grapple with those contradictions, rather than just continue to drip careerist ichor of a slightly different hue.
I would say that's fair. I never really paid attention to any of that Forever Mag type stuff because it all felt like alt lit backwash to me, although some assure me it's good stuff, if I had more time with this piece I would have more deeply familiarized myself with it all, and maybe I will for the piece I'm doing on alt lit. But I think Cash's present libtardation comes off to me as genuine vs. say Honor Levy's, and trying to read much out of the WORK contrary to that seems like an uphill battle because the novel is very much working to counter that. It's strange to me that I don't recall Byron attacking what could have been the best sticking point, which is the novel's implicit concern about the "degradation of the family," which is something one COULD make a valid argument about in that respect, although I frankly think that that shouldn't be seen as JUST a reactionary position (capitalism DOES degrade the family! which IS bad! and communist countries tend to feature stronger familial units, not weaker ones!), it at least IS one.
Just to riff off-topic on your last point, the best queer legislation I have ever seen is Cuba's family policies which honour and include queer found-family structures as legal & genuine, which both works against what Engels critiqued in Origin while also pushing back against the alienation / family-destruction of contemporary capitalism, which is in the west especially punishing to queer people, and is viewed wrongly by the trad right as the vanguard of this dissolution, rather than a disproportionally-applied symptom!
word to "careerist ichor"
they're producing slime in their (publishing) houses
Has a race to produce a zeitgeisty novel ever produced anything really good? I think competition is helpful for writers, but it's usually like, who can better depict insomnia, not "who can best summarize the mood in the moderately edgy parts of the internet." The impatience and obsession with topicality is exhausting.
The conspiracy to elevate Cash's book just seems like the invisible hand at work. It's widely understood that there's a market for zeitgeisty novels by young, attractive women and if everyone cooperates, everyone gets paid, not paid off, just normal paid. I do think the tendency of contemporary publishing to encourage this type of collusion should be criticized, but it needs to be a structural critique of how publishers and critics are incentivized, not a conspiracy theory.
That's the thing re: astroturf or not. Your daddy could be the fucking CEO of Holtzbrinck, and I'm sure that would at least net you a book deal, but if he poured the kind of resources into promoting your vanity nepo book that went into promoting Cash's book and there was NO commercial appeal for it the board would not be particularly happy with him. Even nepotism can only take you so far, and, as I pointed out, there's very obvious commercial calculus here rather than just some sort of irrational favouritism.
As for zeitgeisty novels... well, you said it about as well as I could. It's a race that obscures the prize, it ignores what the goals of art ought to be in pursuit of something nebulous and irrelevant and immediately dated. The merits of any of these books at all are often in spite of their contemporary obsessions rather than because of them.
I don’t want to critique her novel, every review on Substack basically says, “She’s talented, but it’s a flawed book.” That makes her better than most. I think the industry behaves very rationally in the short term, but I do feel that in the medium/long term this isn't working.
I remember reading a Muriel Spark novel set in the publishing industry where her character notes that some novels are flash-in-the-pan (zeitgeisty) and some take a while to sell, but sell for a long time. Publishers make a lot of money off Dostoevsky and the Brontës just putting out new editions once in a while. It sells itself. Whereas with this marketing-first model, there's always this intense effort, running, running, running just to stay in place, not even trying to find books that will last and take the pressure off.
And it turns off readers too. There are so many novels (that I skip) that I hear everyone talking about, and then a few years later there's this general consensus it wasn't very good. Yellowface is a perfect example, but there are many.
Your take is much more reasonable than Byron’s. I probably won’t read either book. my impulse is to back away when anything gets this much buzz, positive or negative, and wait a year or two after the hype dies down. i miss out on being part of the discourse but that’s ok. i’m adding Patricia Lockwood to my list.
Yes, if I didn't have this blog I'd likely have avoided the whole thing too, but felt I had some sort of duty to weigh in on the thing. I've got two more responses to recent books in the pipes but after that I'm going to take a well-deserved break from "hype books" as I think it's bad for my soul. Lockwood's book is stylistically interesting but the second part of the book fell a little flat for me, but it's worth checking out as example imo of "virtual realism" as its been dubbed (perhaps more appropriately "virtual SURrealism," but maybe that's really the same thing at the end of the day). An old collaborator cum bitter rival of mine, Adam Haiun, recently published a book I'd once helped workshop that I think manages something similar, which I think he nearly reaches but falls just short, it's a difficult balancing act to pull off that's for sure.
That late capitalism quote is straight out Byung Chul-Han neoliberal critique! What more could you want?
Hey if you say it's good, I'm gonna have to check it out
Well, I'll say that it's at the very least "okay." The one I would recommend would be Cash's first book, Earth Angel. As I said, it's a bit uneven, but when it hits it hits. Reminds me a lot of Fawn Parker's first collection, "Looking Good and Having a Good Time" from ten or so years ago.
I enjoyed your article. The fact that mean writer gurl, Grace Byron sees "Lost Lambs" as 'some kind of Trad Wife/Bimbo Aesthetic submission thing,' makes me think it might be a new novel written by a woman who I might actually enjoy reading.
I don't follow most of what is happening in the literati sphere as it is mostly women writing about women. That's fine that they now own publishing and can write about each other endlessly. But it seems to be mostly stuff I cannot relate to. Yeah, I'm an old white man.
I like the bit about how you think there might be a bit of 'it's not what you know but who you know' in the mighty push the book got from its publisher, Farah something or other.
Also, 'Woke (DEI) might be dead' in government, the Federal for sure, and likely most states, but it is not yet dead in Big Publishing. It is Undead.
I, too, am OVER the lists! I already got it before the first item in the list, please make it stop. Lost Lambs read like it was written neatly for a Netflix movie adaptation, which pissed me off. The wordplay names felt Pynchon in a way that took me out of the novel. The ending for all the characters was too happy.
Lord God forgive me for saying this but of course Grace Byron is a hysterical trans person furious about anybody entertaining any politics outside of whatever blackened, miserable porn-deadened abortion sludge the so-called left can come up with (SORRY!). That Levy passage about discovering there's no more children around was fabulous.
the 1975 has many songs guilty of this listing-to-feel-relevant writing style
Ngl Cash lost me on page one of Lost Lamba when she referred to a disabled child as “brain-damaged” without taking any time to set up character voice. It’s some kind of Gen Z Marty Supreme shock and awe tactic that only ever subtracts from what might very well be genuine talent and “left of center” values or whatever that means. Having basic respect for disabled kids should be the unquestioned foundation of the next great American novelist, or whoever everyone is trying to be (which doesn’t mean you can’t push limits with some care as an artist not to do real harm to vulnerable groups of people like disabled children)
The references to the kid being "brain-damaged" in the book are usually presented as being the perspective of the focalized characters. I went back to check to be sure, and yes, when her mother is being focalized she doesn't use that language (sticks to "disabled" or "illness").
All that said, while I wasn't crazy about Cash's book myself, I don't think I agree with the sentence "having basic respect for disabled kids should be the unquestioned foundation of the next great American novelist." I think the unquestioned foundation of the "next great American novelist" should probably be "writing really good books."
I think it’s impossible to write a great book if you have no basic respect for humanity (of which respect for the disabled is foundational), but I’m prepared to accept that that’s a subjective opinion. I’m not arguing for didacticism, which is boring, but for an authorial values system that includes disabled people.
I got that it was focalized, but in the first paragraph of the first page, there is no way for a reader to have absorbed yet that it is not in fact the opinion of an omniscient narrator, and that’s a weakness imo in her writing and in whoever edited the book and didn’t suggest she pull that particular punch. I didn’t read any further and didn’t care to. It felt careless, and I don’t trust careless authors.
The message of Trainspotting is that 'conformity and domesticity' are actually good and probably the only thing that will save you, if you're an addict at least.
Cash's book was fun though maybe too reliant on non sequitur asides for humor. Ended up being only about half to two thirds of a book. The politics and social commentary, such as they were, seemed mainly about generational disgust and a very brittle acceptance of family.
Levy's was a standard jealous of friend story against a backdrop of political pessimism and thoughts on not accomplishing anything with one's youth. Good stuff, more interesting writing than Cash, if only because someone took a floor polisher to Cash's prose, but well trodden territory.
Both works remind of Rooney's debut, which I guess means I'm looking forward to seeing more from Cash and Levy?
Useful review. I only read Byron's. This one makes a bit more sense. I wanna check out Earth Angels.
Thank god we know Madeline Cash is liberal whew that was fuckin close