Brilliant, even canonical, when defining a hack. Especially love the implication that many successful artists are hacks and the idea that novelty/originality taken to extreme is shallow.
The writer seems to be casting a wide net here… And it has the distinct whiff of elitism. Of course, this could very well be dry sarcasm, which, by reacting to it, means I could very well be a hack. So be it.
“The hack is something else, a social as well as artistic type that has existed since the beginning of capitalism, at least.”
Yeah, and capitalism happened way before communism. (Wonder how this writer feels about the hack in communist countries.) My guess is there aren’t many of them. There are the great artists of communist dictatorships, taking their time to create art that glorifies the regime. The hacks in that system were/are probably much like the Refusniks who were run out of society, writers like Solzhenitsyn, penning their poems, their screeds, their samizdat, at hobo encampments and surreptitiously passing them around in the big cities during the proles’ rush hour. (In a modern, soft communist society, they’d likely have to publish their writing in second tier venues, kind of like Amazon Kindle.)
To me, reading between the lines, the ‘hack’ seems to be entrepreneurial, which means he would need to hustle in a capitalist society, hustle more so when capitalism, bereft of compassion, becomes more meanspirited and widespread; while the great artist usually has a sponsor, like the Catholic church in the middle ages, or today, the great liberal literary institutions like Big Publishing, the New York Times, and the MFA camps, making sure the great artist is paid well for creating the new truths of the age.
I guess also that by quickly responding to this writer’s definition of the hack, I might be suspected to be one. Which is not good, because the hack, as portrayed here, is made of clay. The great artists, the ones who publish under the protective mantle of Big Publishing, are of better material; while the hacks who self-publish on Amazon Kindle are low life, talentless… well, hacks. They lack breeding, intelligence and are simply hard-working and clever.
I guess as I’m halfway through this piece, half of the writers on Substack are wondering which of the two—great artist or hack—they are. Or, having found out, they’re texting their analyst for a quicky meetup on Saturday morning.
The ‘hack’ portrayed here is always, it seems, in the moment, highlighting what is going on around him. Conversely, the ‘great artist’ is above that. He or she, nowadays, most likely she, is calmly focused on her master work (had to work a little sexism in here.). The world could be going down the toilet while she works, and just might be. But none of that---dictatorships, war, suppression of free speech, massive unrest, forced inoculations, concentration camps… none of that gets through to her, or him.
A thought just came to me. The Literary World and the great artists likely would and have thrown a few crusts to the lower sorts. They would call them ‘folk artists’ or crafts people. But only if they’re quaint and especially if they’re ethnic. Someone like Grandma Moses comes to mind. They’ll throw a little ink their way.
“More generally, a certain lack of self-consciousness of their lineage gives away the hack.”
As our young people would say, OMG! In other words, they don’t know their place. Or, maybe more exact, they don’t know that they don’t even have a place. Their work is derivative? (Whose isn’t?)
Is this whole list tongue-in-cheek? Like a true hack, I’m in the moment, responding off the cuff. Why don’t I hold my fire and study this? Because I have other things to do, like continue polishing my hack novels, and spending years, yeah—two so far—just trying to get one of them published.
“Indeed, outside of a few big cities, hacks are probably usually at work on conventional novels, landscape paintings, and so on.”
Oooh! This has a bad smell to it. I guess the ‘great artist’ works exclusively in New York, LA, SF, and maybe in Chicago. Actually, no, not Chicago. Maybe Albuquerque. And for all you hacks out there, God forbid the literary swells hand your heartfelt work to someone who believes the above to review.
Again, sorry if I misinterpreted this as someone’s sincerely held beliefs. If I’m way off base, I apologize and you will forgive me because I’m working outside of history and know I won’t be held to aesthetic account because like most hacks I don’t even know what that is.
If this is not dry sarcasm, well, thanks for your truth struggle session.
Lots of interesting thoughts in this one I want to chew on, but this one really leapt out at me:
" '21. The uncanniness of the hack comes in part from the mirror image they reflect back on every working artist.'
This is absolutely true. The hack is what an unskilled and unoriginal person thinks an artist or a writer must look like. Hacks (excluding the ascended kind) are far better at living writerly lives on Instagram than they are actually writing. *Their existence is terrifying to us, because we were all once unskilled and unoriginal, which means that our decisions about how to become skilled were made by an unskilled person. How do we know we got it right?
*Observing a hack, it feels as if something has gone wrong, but diagnosing a root cause is impossible. How did a literate person, one who behaved professionally, one who had so many advantages and so much support on every level, produce so many bad books? Ordinary bad writers are just bad writers. Hacks leave us convinced that we must also be bad writers."
Hackacademia is full of hackacademics
Subhack embraces this description. Thorough. Familiar. Redeeming
i am a hack
Reappropriating the slur as an empowering statement. ✊️
Is there any treatment for when our inner hack metastasizes? Perhaps a few good whacks to the head?
Brilliant, even canonical, when defining a hack. Especially love the implication that many successful artists are hacks and the idea that novelty/originality taken to extreme is shallow.
The writer seems to be casting a wide net here… And it has the distinct whiff of elitism. Of course, this could very well be dry sarcasm, which, by reacting to it, means I could very well be a hack. So be it.
“The hack is something else, a social as well as artistic type that has existed since the beginning of capitalism, at least.”
Yeah, and capitalism happened way before communism. (Wonder how this writer feels about the hack in communist countries.) My guess is there aren’t many of them. There are the great artists of communist dictatorships, taking their time to create art that glorifies the regime. The hacks in that system were/are probably much like the Refusniks who were run out of society, writers like Solzhenitsyn, penning their poems, their screeds, their samizdat, at hobo encampments and surreptitiously passing them around in the big cities during the proles’ rush hour. (In a modern, soft communist society, they’d likely have to publish their writing in second tier venues, kind of like Amazon Kindle.)
To me, reading between the lines, the ‘hack’ seems to be entrepreneurial, which means he would need to hustle in a capitalist society, hustle more so when capitalism, bereft of compassion, becomes more meanspirited and widespread; while the great artist usually has a sponsor, like the Catholic church in the middle ages, or today, the great liberal literary institutions like Big Publishing, the New York Times, and the MFA camps, making sure the great artist is paid well for creating the new truths of the age.
I guess also that by quickly responding to this writer’s definition of the hack, I might be suspected to be one. Which is not good, because the hack, as portrayed here, is made of clay. The great artists, the ones who publish under the protective mantle of Big Publishing, are of better material; while the hacks who self-publish on Amazon Kindle are low life, talentless… well, hacks. They lack breeding, intelligence and are simply hard-working and clever.
I guess as I’m halfway through this piece, half of the writers on Substack are wondering which of the two—great artist or hack—they are. Or, having found out, they’re texting their analyst for a quicky meetup on Saturday morning.
The ‘hack’ portrayed here is always, it seems, in the moment, highlighting what is going on around him. Conversely, the ‘great artist’ is above that. He or she, nowadays, most likely she, is calmly focused on her master work (had to work a little sexism in here.). The world could be going down the toilet while she works, and just might be. But none of that---dictatorships, war, suppression of free speech, massive unrest, forced inoculations, concentration camps… none of that gets through to her, or him.
A thought just came to me. The Literary World and the great artists likely would and have thrown a few crusts to the lower sorts. They would call them ‘folk artists’ or crafts people. But only if they’re quaint and especially if they’re ethnic. Someone like Grandma Moses comes to mind. They’ll throw a little ink their way.
“More generally, a certain lack of self-consciousness of their lineage gives away the hack.”
As our young people would say, OMG! In other words, they don’t know their place. Or, maybe more exact, they don’t know that they don’t even have a place. Their work is derivative? (Whose isn’t?)
Is this whole list tongue-in-cheek? Like a true hack, I’m in the moment, responding off the cuff. Why don’t I hold my fire and study this? Because I have other things to do, like continue polishing my hack novels, and spending years, yeah—two so far—just trying to get one of them published.
“Indeed, outside of a few big cities, hacks are probably usually at work on conventional novels, landscape paintings, and so on.”
Oooh! This has a bad smell to it. I guess the ‘great artist’ works exclusively in New York, LA, SF, and maybe in Chicago. Actually, no, not Chicago. Maybe Albuquerque. And for all you hacks out there, God forbid the literary swells hand your heartfelt work to someone who believes the above to review.
Again, sorry if I misinterpreted this as someone’s sincerely held beliefs. If I’m way off base, I apologize and you will forgive me because I’m working outside of history and know I won’t be held to aesthetic account because like most hacks I don’t even know what that is.
If this is not dry sarcasm, well, thanks for your truth struggle session.
A response, "The Three Kinds of Hacks": https://antipodes.substack.com/p/the-three-kinds-of-hacksa-response
Lots of interesting thoughts in this one I want to chew on, but this one really leapt out at me:
" '21. The uncanniness of the hack comes in part from the mirror image they reflect back on every working artist.'
This is absolutely true. The hack is what an unskilled and unoriginal person thinks an artist or a writer must look like. Hacks (excluding the ascended kind) are far better at living writerly lives on Instagram than they are actually writing. *Their existence is terrifying to us, because we were all once unskilled and unoriginal, which means that our decisions about how to become skilled were made by an unskilled person. How do we know we got it right?
*Observing a hack, it feels as if something has gone wrong, but diagnosing a root cause is impossible. How did a literate person, one who behaved professionally, one who had so many advantages and so much support on every level, produce so many bad books? Ordinary bad writers are just bad writers. Hacks leave us convinced that we must also be bad writers."
Whats the tldr