Yeah, when people say "every perspective is valid" they are often implying that there's no point in fighting. But I think, if every perspective is valid, everyone should have confidence in their perspective, and we should fight it out and see what perspectives win!
The sad thing about these radical subjectivists is how little they value their own feelings and judgments.
I think a perspective wins when it becomes dominant & widely shared. A certain school of thought becomes dominant for a period of time, before being supplanted by different schools of thought. I don't think the fight ever stops, so victory is always temporary.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable definition. However, what irks me about the competitive framing is that it engenders (what I assume is) a misunderstanding that fighting for your aesthetic taste entails the belief that everyone should share your aesthetic taste; that in "winning" you're within your rights to impose your taste on others and eliminate contraries to it.
While I don't believe anyone's arguing for that, I think it's a very understandable interpretation given the terms being used.
I guess it's more about persuasion than imposition, but I really don't see anything wrong with conflict as long as it's kept within certain acceptable bounds. The people who are against conflict try to persuade in their own way, they're just sneaky and indirect about it. Better to be up front imo.
I think it's important to differentiate between conflict and competition here. Conflict is fine! But as I said framing things as competitive carries very different implications that I think detract from the point being made.
Because I am pettier than you and your team, I feel compelled to point out a couple other errors made in Mr. Marketing Director's piece:
"It was moralizing to see a community of young, inspired artists take shape before our eyes..." - this is not what the word moralizing means. Encouraging might be the word?
"We are lucky, in Montreal, to benefit from this energetic landscape, from the ability to ascribe to a certain journal or ideal and not another..." - perhaps the word he was looking for is subscribe? Though I'm not entirely sure.
Worrisome stuff to see from a fiction editor. Can't knock him for practicing what he preaches though. Quantity over quality!
He's using moralizing as the opposite of demoralizing. While this is wrong the imagination of it (and how logical it seems) leaves me more than a bit gruntled.
I personally think there's something very funny in his use of "moralizing," particularly in that, being obviously unaware of what the word conventionally means, Jeremy has unintentionally described his own actual tone as a moralizer. Still, I forget who it was who said "a poet is interested in a word's connotative power rather than its present denotation." That being said, someone who works as an editor (especially for non-fiction of all things) for a modestly-sized magazine should probably be at least a bit more familiar with the "denotative" part.
This is interesting and very timely. I see the same tension bubbling up online around whatever “literary scene” exists in NYC around The Metropolitan Review and that Ross Barkan guy. I personally find the very concept of a literary scene sort of horrifying and unbelievable. One thing I like about Substack is that there’s this tension on here between the life-affirming and “community”-oriented writers and the cranky alienated punks. Thank geawwwd for the cranky alienated punks. Discordia is so obviously on the right side of quality lit here. It’s just sad that “hurt feelings” is still all most people want to talk about with respect to literature. Long story short: art and criticism definitely *should* hurt your feelings. Good read this one.
I really like the overall point of this article. Yes, there is such a thing as quality, even if people disagree what the criteria are. Not having criteria is not the same thing.
On the other hand, I spent my life writing so that people will love my work after I die, and as I get older I've decided that's the stupidest thing ever to use as a guidepost. While it's true that many writers we revere today long after their death were unknown and unloved in their own time, they were still writing for the world around them and just failing at it (or the world was failing them). Mahler may have said "My time will come," but that was just a consolation prize for dying misunderstood...he wanted his time to be NOW.
I get it: if you want your work to survive you, quality is the way. But whether or not anyone reads us when we're dead is frankly none of our business. Why is this hard?
Because sometimes schlock appears to move the world profoundly.
Why is that hard? Because sometimes aspects of schlock HAVE quality after all. It's a very complicated thing, this idea of quality...it's messy...and what's considered a classic today, the highest quality, will be forgotten in 500 years.
I would seriously discourage anyone from dwelling on that "audience of future generations," and instead seek to engage with today's readers however you can. By engage, I don't mean hurling feces at them. I mean, make a meaningful connection, seek to change the story, because that's what the world needs NOW. By doing this, you can cut through what you see as the "brilliance" in your writing and focus on making a connection with people, even if you're doing it in terms that the literati might sneer at.
Simple misunderstanding here: I'm not talking about finding acclaim after death, just the idea that anyone — even just one or two people — might take an interest in your work years from now. If someone is looking back through the archives of Montreal literature, they're going to be less interested in the writers whose primary artistic drive was to advocate for more professional positions for writers than in the “devout” communities of fervent believers. That your work is more likely to resonate with future readers than that of a bland careerist.
Yeah, when people say "every perspective is valid" they are often implying that there's no point in fighting. But I think, if every perspective is valid, everyone should have confidence in their perspective, and we should fight it out and see what perspectives win!
The sad thing about these radical subjectivists is how little they value their own feelings and judgments.
At what point does a perspective "win?"
I think a perspective wins when it becomes dominant & widely shared. A certain school of thought becomes dominant for a period of time, before being supplanted by different schools of thought. I don't think the fight ever stops, so victory is always temporary.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable definition. However, what irks me about the competitive framing is that it engenders (what I assume is) a misunderstanding that fighting for your aesthetic taste entails the belief that everyone should share your aesthetic taste; that in "winning" you're within your rights to impose your taste on others and eliminate contraries to it.
While I don't believe anyone's arguing for that, I think it's a very understandable interpretation given the terms being used.
I guess it's more about persuasion than imposition, but I really don't see anything wrong with conflict as long as it's kept within certain acceptable bounds. The people who are against conflict try to persuade in their own way, they're just sneaky and indirect about it. Better to be up front imo.
I think it's important to differentiate between conflict and competition here. Conflict is fine! But as I said framing things as competitive carries very different implications that I think detract from the point being made.
Because I am pettier than you and your team, I feel compelled to point out a couple other errors made in Mr. Marketing Director's piece:
"It was moralizing to see a community of young, inspired artists take shape before our eyes..." - this is not what the word moralizing means. Encouraging might be the word?
"We are lucky, in Montreal, to benefit from this energetic landscape, from the ability to ascribe to a certain journal or ideal and not another..." - perhaps the word he was looking for is subscribe? Though I'm not entirely sure.
Worrisome stuff to see from a fiction editor. Can't knock him for practicing what he preaches though. Quantity over quality!
He's using moralizing as the opposite of demoralizing. While this is wrong the imagination of it (and how logical it seems) leaves me more than a bit gruntled.
I personally think there's something very funny in his use of "moralizing," particularly in that, being obviously unaware of what the word conventionally means, Jeremy has unintentionally described his own actual tone as a moralizer. Still, I forget who it was who said "a poet is interested in a word's connotative power rather than its present denotation." That being said, someone who works as an editor (especially for non-fiction of all things) for a modestly-sized magazine should probably be at least a bit more familiar with the "denotative" part.
Tea.
I love you guys and I am honoured to be friends with you both. Maximalism will return.
This is interesting and very timely. I see the same tension bubbling up online around whatever “literary scene” exists in NYC around The Metropolitan Review and that Ross Barkan guy. I personally find the very concept of a literary scene sort of horrifying and unbelievable. One thing I like about Substack is that there’s this tension on here between the life-affirming and “community”-oriented writers and the cranky alienated punks. Thank geawwwd for the cranky alienated punks. Discordia is so obviously on the right side of quality lit here. It’s just sad that “hurt feelings” is still all most people want to talk about with respect to literature. Long story short: art and criticism definitely *should* hurt your feelings. Good read this one.
Oh man; why did I leave Montréal? Who can I gossip about this with?!?
Jersey always catching strays smh
I really like the overall point of this article. Yes, there is such a thing as quality, even if people disagree what the criteria are. Not having criteria is not the same thing.
On the other hand, I spent my life writing so that people will love my work after I die, and as I get older I've decided that's the stupidest thing ever to use as a guidepost. While it's true that many writers we revere today long after their death were unknown and unloved in their own time, they were still writing for the world around them and just failing at it (or the world was failing them). Mahler may have said "My time will come," but that was just a consolation prize for dying misunderstood...he wanted his time to be NOW.
I get it: if you want your work to survive you, quality is the way. But whether or not anyone reads us when we're dead is frankly none of our business. Why is this hard?
Because sometimes schlock appears to move the world profoundly.
Why is that hard? Because sometimes aspects of schlock HAVE quality after all. It's a very complicated thing, this idea of quality...it's messy...and what's considered a classic today, the highest quality, will be forgotten in 500 years.
I would seriously discourage anyone from dwelling on that "audience of future generations," and instead seek to engage with today's readers however you can. By engage, I don't mean hurling feces at them. I mean, make a meaningful connection, seek to change the story, because that's what the world needs NOW. By doing this, you can cut through what you see as the "brilliance" in your writing and focus on making a connection with people, even if you're doing it in terms that the literati might sneer at.
Simple misunderstanding here: I'm not talking about finding acclaim after death, just the idea that anyone — even just one or two people — might take an interest in your work years from now. If someone is looking back through the archives of Montreal literature, they're going to be less interested in the writers whose primary artistic drive was to advocate for more professional positions for writers than in the “devout” communities of fervent believers. That your work is more likely to resonate with future readers than that of a bland careerist.