Button Tapper

Here’s a meme everyone can play along with.

THE RULES:

This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose. Ready? Go!

1. Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
3. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
4. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (as it’s taking FOREVER for me just to read it!)
5. The First Five by Henry Rollins
6. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
7. The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
8. Madame Bovary by Flaubert (probably because I read it WAY too young)
9. those effing vampire books by Anne Rice—The Vampire Lestat, Interview with a Vampire, Queen of the Damned, etc. (ah, impressionable youth)
10. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (anyone who’s read it as a young person understands why this will stick)
11. The Pearl by John Steinbeck (I think I had to read this three times in junior high, no wonder)
12. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
14. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (okay, it’s a short story; so sue me)
15. Sarah by J.T. LeRoy

A friend from my days at The Link recently posted a link to an article in The Guardian that caught my eye. The piece in question is by Jill Parkin and is entitled “Why I won’t sell body and soul.” In it, the author explains that although she has made most of her career as a freelance journalist selling confessional pieces to magazines and newspapers, she has recently been surprised by the kinds of requests she has gotten from editors, who often want her to bare her body as well as her soul.

My initial reaction was a bit of a “Yeah, and….?”, since tell-alls and confessional pieces have been around forever. They’re what keep gossip columns running and sell autobiographies. Everybody loves a juicy confession, right? But Parkin argues that this is a particular form of writing that only women engage in, which makes it a problem for anyone who calls herself a feminist or believes in the equality of the sexes. She also argues that men would never be asked to do the kinds of degrading things that women do, routinely, for a story: pitting themselves against other women in a weight-loss contest, trying out for the latest reality show (which demands photos of potential contestants in their underwear), or other self-hating, body-abusing feminine acts.

Although I think her points are valid, in terms of editors wanting more grotesque confessions and pseudo-gonzo journalism in which the writer is the entire story (rather than just a participant therein), I would disagree that this is a totally female issue. Doesn’t anyone remember Nerve’s column “I Did It For Science”? The whole concept was that a human guinea pig named Grant Stoddard would be assigned to do humiliating and degrading things, all in the name of “science,” and (as is the nature of the website) with a sexual angle. He was a male stripper (for one night), had sex with a Real Doll, and even had a friend fuck him with a replica of his own penis. He event wrote a book called Working Stiff, further detailing his experiences at Nerve. Most of the acts he was asked to perform were humiliating, and as he notes in his book, he rarely completed his tasks without the use of drugs and/or alcohol. Still, he consented to engaging in these acts, he agreed to the price Nerve paid for the pieces, and he was able to have a lot of sex with a lot of women very publicly. Does this make him a victim? Hardly.

Similarly, I feel that anyone who is writing confessionals of the sort Parkin describes is being humiliated of her own accord. As Parkin notes at the end of her piece, she can always say no, and she says that she has been turning these degrading ideas down more frequently. It seems that, in the end, it’s about the frequency of the requests, and the fact that editors are hungry for these types of pieces. It’s not the fact that people can and will and in fact volunteer themselves to be humiliated, it’s that there is a market for humiliation pieces that delight in the degradation of others. It is, very much, a reality TV syndrome.

The one line I disagree with the most, however, is this: “Male writers also raid their family lives and their own psyches for copy, but no one asks them to tear themselves apart in the process.” Don’t we? Think about the last book you read. Think about the author of that book. Was he an alcoholic? A drug addict? The type of person who pays for sex? Was he simply a terrible human being, out of whose muck and filth a beautiful book grew? It’s totally Nietzschean:

“[...] one does best to separate an artist from his work, not taking him as seriously as his work. He is, after all, only the precondition of his work, the womb, the soil, sometimes the dung and manure on which, out of which, it grows—and therefore in most cases something one must forget if one is to enjoy the work itself.” (On the Genealogy of Morals, 100-101)

Male and female writers alike are asked to tear themselves apart in the quest to produce art. And, frankly, I don’t think that writers who are well-adjusted produce much in the way of great art. (Though there are, of course, shining exceptions.) I don’t say that tearing yourself apart will necessarily create art, but that this rending of self certainly isn’t new, and certainly isn’t an unexpected by-product in the creation of art.

But what do you think, you writers and artists? Is the destruction and even humiliation of an individual the only way to create art? And does it matter that the “art” produced by this behaviour is so lowbrow? Should we feel sorry for these women (and men), who feel they have no choice but to prostitute themselves—body and soul—through the medium of journalism for a few dollars? Where do your sympathies lie?

Have I ever mentioned the maxim “If you can’t say anything nice, then shut the fuck up?” I think it requires reiteration today, in light of The Gazette’s particularly bitchy review of Jon Paul Fiorentino’s novel, Stripmalling, published earlier this week.

Now, to be fair: I haven’t read this book yet, though I do have plans to review it myself. As far as full disclosure goes, I know Jon Paul, though only slightly. We once read at the same Words and Music event, back when it was still happening at Casa del Popolo, and I found his poetry entertaining. He teaches at Concordia University, where I was once a student, but I’ve never taken any classes with him. I wrote a review or two for Matrix Magazine, where he’s the editor-in-chief, but our interactions have been limited. In short, I really have no reason to stand up for the guy, except for this: reviews should not be needlessly bitchy.

This is a guideline given to anyone who writes reviews for Quill & Quire, Canada’s magazine of book news and reviews, and I think that it applies equally well to reviewers more generally. Or, as Dave Eggers’ literary magazine The Believer puts it, “Thou shalt not slag anyone off.”

“But Laura!” you may be saying, “Aren’t some books just BAD? Shouldn’t we write snarky things about them and put their authors in their places?” Okay, yes: some books are just bad! Maybe Jon Paul’s book is truly terrible. But even if it is, why would you make it personal? Why write mean things, in public, about the author himself? As the Gazette reviewer writes in his first sentence, “Jon Paul Fiorentino’s ‘novel’ Stripmalling should be the final nail in the coffin of literature’s most pernicious aphorism, ‘write what you know’ (a phrase that actually occurs in the book).” Not so snarky? Allow me to emphasize the scare quotes. Yes, the ones around the word NOVEL, implying that Jon Paul’s book doesn’t actually qualify as such. This is the first sentence of the review, and frankly, it raises some eyebrows.

Just who is this Claude Lalumière, and why does he seem to have an ax he’d like to grind into Jon Paul’s back? For starters, his bio at the end of the review notes that he “is the author of the forthcoming collection of short stories Objects of Worship.” This, in and of itself, makes me wonder. I mean, isn’t it a little bit impolitic of a writer to be so venomous towards one of their own, especially when said writer has a book coming out that will obviously need to be reviewed? It just doesn’t make good business sense to write nasty things about someone in a review when you’ve got a book that will be undergoing a similar process in the near future. After all, what if Jon Paul Fiorentino ends up writing Lalumière’s review?

Granted, Jon Paul is a bit higher up the food chain than Claude Lalumière (as judged by the all-knowing, always-impartial Wikipedia, who doesn’t recognize Lalumière’s name at all but at least offers a stub on Fiorentino), and probably doesn’t waste time writing pithy book reviews, but I think the point remains. You don’t stab people in the back if you want them to think well of you, or—by extension—your books.

Here are the phrases in this review that I found particularly spiteful:

• “It should never be enough to simply regurgitate one’s lack of a significant life.” Sorry, but how does Lalumière know whether or not JPF has lived a “significant” life? He’s reading a work of fiction and conflating Fiorentino’s characters with his real life. Furthermore, what makes him the judge of what a significant life is?
• “That his narrative alter ego is explicitly aware of these weaknesses is not funny, as Fiorentino seems to think it is, but insulting and disrespectful, giving the impression that the author cares so little about either his writing or his audience that he can’t be bothered to at least try to create a work of some ambition.” Whoa, nelly! JPF has created a work of no ambition? Okay, Claude, just out of curiosity, what have YOU written? According to your blog, you’ve got some online fiction, zines, and a few stories that have been included in anthologies. Wow, that’s really ambitious! You haven’t even written a novel, much less a full volume of poetry, and your only publisher so far has been… you. Oh, and someplace called ChiZine Publications, who will be publishing your very first work. Which is an anthology of 12 stories that will be premiering at a science-fiction convention, as opposed to JPF’s novel, which will be premiering at the internationally famous Blue Metropolis literary festival. No offense to lovers of science-fiction or self-publishing authors, both of whom certainly have interesting things to say, but I don’t think Claude should be tossing around the word “ambition” here like he has that market cornered. Or, for that matter, as if every book ever written has to be ambitious, as opposed to fun, funny, entertaining, cute, ridiculous, whatever.
• “Stripmalling also suffers from the significant problem of not really telling a story; of amounting to a more or less random jumble of vignettes that ends up petering out awkwardly.” I’m sorry, but I was under the impression that fiction was whatever the author made of it. Since when do we all have to tell stories the same way? What exactly does Lalumière mean by “not really” telling a story? Obviously, if Fiorentino has published a novel-length work, he has told a story of some kind. Perhaps it’s not the kind of story Lalumière would like to read, but that is hardly a sin. There are plenty of things I don’t like to read, but it doesn’t mean that the writers writing them are at fault. Furthermore, vignettes are still elements of a story; they are scenes that focus on a particular moment or person. If they are “jumbled” or “awkward,” that is certainly a criticism, but then again, Fiorentino is pretty famous for writing about awkward characters. Perhaps Lalumière is confusing Jon Paul Fiorentino, the man (whom he has already personally attacked, and conflated with his character), with “Jonny,” his character? Again?

All in all, I found this review to be distasteful. While I don’t believe that one should praise books that are undeserving of praise, I also don’t think negative reviews ought to attack the writers themselves. The point of a review, after all, is to discuss a literary work. Good or bad, the work itself is the issue. Whether or not the writer is (or could be) a good writer is not the debate; it is whether or not the book in question effected you, and how, and why. This review seems to me to be the work of an envious wannabe, although I will admit that this comment is purely speculation on my part. If nothing else, it was done in poor faith. Shame on you, Claude Lalumière.

I don’t usually watch The Colbert Report (mostly because I’m an old lady and go to bed before 11), but after reading a tweet from my QWF teacher (and fellow Hour reporter) Craig Silverman, I watched a few clips from the recent show where Stephen Colbert interviews Newspaper Association of America President John Sturm.

In typical Colbert fashion, Sturm gets skewered when Colbert asks him various questions about the crisis in the newspaper industry, to the point where Colbert asks Sturm a knock-knock joke at the end of the interview that goes like this:

Colbert: Knock-knock!
Sturm: Who’s there?
Colbert: The death of the newspaper industry.

Needless to say, Sturm didn’t find this terribly funny. But you know what? Colbert’s report, humorous as it may have been with its suggestion to incorporate huge porn sections into online newspapers, has a serious point: what’s up with the online newspaper’s business model?! I have been wondering for years why anyone would “buy the milk when you can get the cow for free,” so to speak, but perhaps more importantly, I have to ask: If newspapers continue to give their content away for free, doesn’t this undermine their whole existence? Honestly, why should anyone go out and buy a daily paper—or even a subscription delivered to their front door—when you can have all of the exact same news delivered to your inbox or your feed reader, every day, automatically, without paying a cent?

“That’s a hard business model,” Colbert observes. And he’s exactly right. So what are newspapers doing to get their business models updated for the 21st century? How do they plan to make money as many close their doors completely and others can’t compete online with the millions of blogs, Twitter and other amateur reporters posting up-to-the-second information around the clock?

While Colbert’s suggestion to add porn to the news sites is obviously seen as contrary to journalistic ethics, I don’t see why it couldn’t be taken seriously. After all, if you’ll pay for porn, why not pay for porn and news together? If news sites require age verification like any porn site, this will keep minors from accessing it (in theory, anyway—which is really all anyone can hope for even on actual porn sites), and those readers not interested in a porn + news combo-pack can go for a less expensive “news only” option. I personally predict no one will sign up for the “news only” option, but best to offer it nevertheless.

I don’t particularly think that reputable news outlets like the New York Times will be amenable to the concept of offering news alongside porn content, and they’d certainly have to partner up with a porn site that is equally “venerable” in its own line of business to make it work, but it’s not a completely insane idea, either. After all, there’s plenty of sex journalism out there already, and many weekly/alternative papers already offer personal ads, escorting and massage ads, and a sex column in the back of the paper. Is it really that far a stretch to consider adding sexual content to sell online news? For that matter, is there anything unethical about offering people what they really want to see or read? Isn’t that, in the end, the whole point of publishing?

UPDATED 1:41 PM: If you’re looking for a few slightly more serious suggestions on how to save your paper, try Gypsy Bandito’s “How to Save a Local Newspaper” or, if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, you might want to check out Spot.Us, an open source project to pioneer “community funded reporting.”