Wikipedia Mindreads. Kinda.

Of course I know that Wikipedia is a place for quickie trivia browsing or a place to start looking. But this open letter to Wikipedia by Philip Roth about Wikipedia's inaccuracy in its article for The Human Stain reminded me hard. I've seen flags in Wikipedia articles about books and movies. These flags are alerts that the flagged content comes from a primary source (such as the author of the book) and therefore, must be backed up by secondary sources or deleted.

As a writer, I'm appalled that Wikipedia rejected Roth's assertion about the inspiration for his novel even after Roth identified himself. Who is Wikipedia to determine that the writer of a book is not a credible source about the book, especially about what was on that writer's mind when writing the book?

But I don't know that my emotional reaction is in the best interests of Wikipedia users. Lots of times artists create works that incidentally reflect values or ideas that the artist had no intentions of creating. Too often, we apply presentism to a work, such as that silly essay that went around about Susan in the Narnia Chronicles a year or two ago. Lewis made a powerful statement about Susan and choice in the Narnia Chronicles, but if you look at the work through today's eyes, Lewis treated her shabbily. The essay chose not to view Susan in the context of Narnia nor in the context of the time and culture the Chronicles of Narnia were written.

But in Roth's case, he's talking about what was in his head when he created the Coleman Silk character. It might be fair to say that there was another person near Roth's circles who passed for white and had a dalliance with a cleaning woman -- perhaps Anatole Broyard was in the back of Roth's head when he wrote.

That's simply an interesting thing to note, though. It's quite different to reject Roth's stated inspiration, not even permit mention of it, and then to state that Anatole Broyard was the inspiration.

Wikipedia made good eventually. There's now a two-sentence acknowledgement of Roth's inspiration, Melvin Tumin. There is also a two-paragraph analysis of Anatole Broyard. There is no mention of the evidence that Roth supplied in his open letter in that brief mention of Melvin Tumin. It's quite a shame because when presenting his evidence, Roth also provided an analysis of the novel that made me see it differently: one innocent error sets the entire story into motion and itself provides context for the tragedy.

As a writer, I feel a vehement indignation on Roth's behalf. Readers get to analyze and critique a work as they wish. If they see a parallel with Anatole Broyard, then they need to say so and open that discussion. But writers get to say what was in their heads when they wrote. It seems stupid to me that Wikipedia and its ilk should fancy itself so much that its collection of nearly anonymous contributors are deemed more credible about what Roth was thinking than Roth himself.

Winning a Nobel and Fiction's Fate (Mailbox)

I thought I told you to get rid of the image finding intern.
What the actual fuck is this??!!?

Nobel Prizes and My Damned Promised Fiction FFS! 

Stephen asks:

Has anyone won a Pulitzer or Nobel Peace Prize for Literature? If you want to win either, how do you do it?

My reply:

Nobel is a prize that is given in various categories including "peace" and "literature." But the peace prize is separate. You don't win a Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. You win a Nobel Prize in Literature. That's like saying you got a Best Actor Oscar for Best Director.

The process is completely based on write in proposals, and they don't tell you who got how many nominations until 50 years later. To write in a proposal, you have to be a previous Nobel Laureate, a professor of literature and linguistics, a member of the Swedish Academy, or a president of your country's literary society. They send you a letter inviting you to write in a nomination. The nominations are then sent to the Swedish Academy, and 18 people sift through the nominations to pick a winner. So basically you have to LITERALLY own a monocle and a brandy snifter to even have input. Then I'm not sure what happens. Either those 18 people see which author makes them say "Yes. Quite." (in Swedish of course) the loudest. OR they pull a name randomly and hang out with the bikini team while they're supposed to be deliberating, and generally laugh at how seriously the world takes this whole thing, skimming off the top of the cash awards to support various debauchery.

Either way, the writer doesn't do anything. They get nominated without knowing it. The Swedish Academy will VERY discreetly send a winner a notification that they might want to come to Stockholm. But the writer has nothing to do with this process. Basically they just get told they won.

Stephen, I notice that this is your third or fourth question about Nobel prizes you've sent me on Writing About Writing's Facebook Page. I don't want to smear on too much undue snark for someone who hasn't actually sent me hate mail, but if you're this interested in a Nobel prize, and you have a computer to log onto Facebook, this stuff is pretty easy to find. Google: it's awesome!   nobelprize.org

Pulitzers are a bit different. They're mostly for journalism. They do give out one award each year for fiction, and you just apply for that by submitting the fiction you want them to consider. Very competitive, though, as you can imagine. pulitzer.org


Allison asks:

Hey you said you were going to write some fiction last week. I really like A Demon's Rubicon [Chris: I added the link], and I was all psyched. What happened?

My reply:

In my best Billy Crystal voice: Don't rush me Sonny. You rush a fiction piece, you get rotten fiction pieces. You got money? Hooooweeee, I never work for so cheap. Except one time. But that was a very Nobel* cause.

Wait forget that last part.

Yes, I'm still working on the exciting conclusion. I'm fighting the forces of maudlin conclusions and aggrandizing narration. Life rolled in on a poopy-diaper-smelling cloud and demanded attention. Plus Burning Man. August was crap. Sometimes you just have to hold on to the bare minimum of writing and know that it's going to get better.

Fiction is like peeling open my chest cavity and showing you all my soul–especially since it's self published, so I generally have fewer editors, so I'm going to work extra hard to get it right. Even if that means I miss a deadline....or three.

*See what I did there?

Reports from Burning Man (A Writer's Life)

We came back early from the playa this year. Fully six hours before the man burned, we were driving off of the playa onto hard pavement headed home.

Though many of this year's reason for early returns are not my stories to tell the short version is that The Brain missed her kiddo too much to stay away another couple nights.

I didn't want to leave, but I didn't mind leaving either. I've been there and burned that (like fourteen times), and I'm almost just as happy to get out of the place before the trip home takes 12-16 hours instead of seven because of the length of time it takes for 70,000 people to leave an event on a one lane road.

Still The Brain saw some things out there this year that I've written about before. At the risk of both the snide, "I told you so!" and the defensive, "You've lost the faith!" (neither of which usefully frames the complexity, nuance, and conflict of my feelings) Burning Man is no longer a place I associate with chiefly positive emotions.

The chic camps. The art installations and art cars that look more like they involve lots of money than lots of creativity. The very real stratification and "hidden" commodification. The creeper guys. The Brain called the camp across from us that foamed everyone down and then hosed them off, "very touristy," and I sort of had to agree.

The drum circles are all but gone. The sense of family with the local camps...virtually nonexistent. The radical politics at every turn....mostly a memory of yesteryear. Sexuality and drugs in the open...cracked down on over a decade ago. And everyone is stamping around feeling entitled to entertainment and/or adulation.

Perhaps the worst thing–and I'm taking the word of the women I talked to since as a dude I can't sense these things myself–was that Burning Man feels unsafe. Sexual assault has never been absent at Burning Man, but the statistics are getting alarming. A lot of women don't really feel comfortable walking down the street at night anymore or being alone with someone they don't know pretty well.

The Brain encountered a creepy guy giving kisses without consent to conventionally attractive women at the porta potties and was nervous to return. (He was gone when I went to have a [hopefully] friendly chat with him about silence not being consent.) A friend returned from an event table-flippingly enraged about how there had been a conversation among the buzzed and drunk men there blaming women for getting themselves into situations and giving false signals, and talking about how "most sexual assault is a misunderstanding that gets blown out of proportion." We were across from a camp where they were letting people jump the queue with "performative art."  Much of that meant telling jokes. So, so, so many were rape jokes or racist. I watched The Brain's face as she listened to a joke about Mexicans. It was like something inside her couldn't believe it was happening there of all places. A little bit of light died in her eyes right then. And I almost went across to pick a fight when I heard a gang rape joke that was so horrible, I can't repeat it (and the person who told it given a slight groan instead of scathing repudiation). This year I heard one woman say "watch my drink" to her companion when she went to dance.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not shaming the people who get their mac on. I wouldn't mind playing "Lick the Not-Dusty Spot" with many of the people out there–hardbodies that inspire the kind of thirst that even your camel pack and a Capri Sun are never going to quench are abundant. But informed, enthusiastic consent is absolutely vital and not kneeing someone substantially stronger than you in the nuts because they're kissing you without asking shouldn't be taken as a yes.

I've been watching this evolution from something culturally subversive to "massive desert party" for years and have been ambivalent about going for.....six or seven years. The huge influx of newcomers each year means that an established culture isn't "passed on" before it can be overwritten–this was compounded when they started selling out and had to go to a lottery system. And of course the shifting demographics of wealth and low  are impossible to ignore. The Brain really noticed a lot of it this year. We might skip a year or three before we next make it out.

However....it would be too simplistic to just complain about rich libertarians "moop"ing up the place, and how back in the good ol' days it was better, and "get these virgin whipersnappers off my lawn!" and then drop the mic. There is a bit of grieving going on that this might be our last year for at least a while.

And by a bit, I don't mean a bit.

I'm okay with this.

I'm not okay with this.

It's like loving someone deeply, but staying with them isn't healthy because the good moments are drifting further and further apart. (And why is my brain coming up with a contender for worst metaphor contests: "like the way microwavable popcorn pops only every few seconds once it's burning.") As long as I was being dragged along for The Brain's sake, I never really had to confront the enormity and complexity of my feelings that it was time to walk away, or at least take a break. I could go and shrug and say I liked it enough when I was there, which was all true. I packed up and shlepped up there for her, and then had a good time.

However, a part of it why I go can't just be dismissed as "for her." It will always be for me. I will always be standing near the perimeter (at some bit of art that wasn't snazzy or big and got relegated to the outer ring, but was GOOD and considered and meant something and fucking MATTERED and changed me in my soul and shit) and remembering who I really was in that deep relief, almost-quiet of a distant EDM beat and the sound of endless wind over timeless flats.

As long as I could say "Eh, I go because she likes it," I never really had to face how I felt. That *I* like it. And even though it's changed, there are still those refrains of sweetness that bring me ecstatic glee as I get my first nose full of playa dust. I never really had to mourn.

But now I do.

Well this is devastatingly appropriate.

One really, really cool thing did happen this year:

I was way out in deep playa, just a few minutes before a white out would reduce visibility and make me have to stand there for over an hour, just waiting to be able to see enough landmarks to know where "back" was.

A woman came over, looked at me like she recognized me from long ago (that sort of lower head look upish look.) "Are you....Chris Bree- chun," she asked. (Everyone gets my name wrong. I don't even bother to correct most people. It's actually pronounced bruh [rhumes with "duh'] KEEN [rhymes with "scene")

I thought maybe it was an old friend that I wasn't recognizing. (People usually look a little different out there than they usually do.) She was maybe in her mid fifties and decked out in a slinky dress made of shimmery, almost reflective scales.

"Yeah," I said, still trying to place where I knew her from.

"I love your blog!" she said. "I can't believe I recognized you, but the folder and the shirt tipped me off."

I guess my description of myself in my Burning Man article (overweight and short, Hawaiian shirts, always carrying a black notebook I write in, socks and shoes because of dry skin–all a little unusual out there) along with pics of my face was enough for someone to recognize me.

We had a huge hug, and she gushed a little, but unfortunately she was letting her group going the other way get way out ahead of her, so we had to keep it brief.

But it was AMAZEBALLS!!! Thank you Sarah!

August's Best

Though August was just about as much opposite of the power-slam month as I originally hoped for "Blogust," I did get a couple of articles posted that made some ripples in the water. Here are the best of August's offerings. (The popularity of our August poll notwithstanding.) Each will push on to the heights of fame and glory (third rate internet fame and glory, that is) in The Best of W.A.W.

The Hugo Nominees Were Robbed

The Hugos were an awful experience for a lot of writers, but were the slated authors truly "robbed" of their well-deserved awards?

15 Things A Very Cute Toddler Taught Me About Writing (Part 2)

The ongoing wisdom that raising The Contrarian has given me about being an artist and a writer.

Fortune Cookie Wisdom X

Because quoting myself is a little bit gauche.


We had to abandon "Blogust" mid month (See! I fail ALL THE TIME!), and as the second half with its Disneyland trips and Burning Man prep kicked in there was some pretty serious "what the fucking fuck was I fucking thinking?" going on. The good news was, even though I was off my game, you all were not, and with matching donations, we were able to raise $1123 for Oakland Reads. Of course, I will post any follow up here if they send thank you messages or anything.

We will try again in October. It's not as cool of a word play (Blogtober) but it will have to do.

We're trying a WHOLE NEW schedule here. The Contrarian now knows enough to not use psychic contrarian powers on strangers. So he's getting a superhero babysitting service to tag in from the time Uberdude and The Brain go on patrol until about noon. Then I tag in and take over the afternoon schedule. Hopefully that is a perfect balance of solid contiguous writing regimen without me having to take naps and/or wake up at weird hours. I usually prefer to write in the dead of morning, but my life is not exactly as elastic as I'd like it to be right now.

Most of the things I said I was writing for Blogust are still on the stove, and most of what's left should show up in September.

Off to Burning Man

For those of you who haven't been following closely, or who don't keep up with me on either my Facebook page or Writing About Writing's Facebook page, I am off to Burning Man on my annual trip to get dusty and wonder what the hell I'm doing. In fact, I scheduled this post, so I'm actually already there (unless there was some kind of problem).

We will be back with regular entries probably starting Wednesday next week. Thursday for sure.

I'm never sure exactly when I'm going to get back. Seventy five thousand people leaving an event on a one lane dirt road tends to turn into a clusterfuck pretty quickly, and there have been times where it took people six hours to get just from the event to the road. Since that sounds almost exactly what hell would be like to me, we always listen to the radio and try to leave when the exodus is light. That means sometimes we drive out of there on Sunday and lament missing the temple burn, and sometimes it's Tuesday afternoon.

Usually it's in the middle somewhere. And that means generally we're home some time on Monday spend Tuesday sleeping and are ready to rock by Wednesday.

Monday is, of course, a bank holiday, and none of the staff here will work. (Something about at least giving them days off if I'm going to pay them in fast food coupons or some shit.)  I've got a couple of our usual end-of-the-month articles that need posting, but it may be Wednesday or Thursday before I'm ready to kick off our regular schedule and hit September with the full force ferocity of a writer who's tired of being distracted from his writing.

Blogust's Final Tally

Hi folks,

As you know I melted down mid month with trying to keep up with the robust goals of "Blogust." (It happens to the best of us.) However, the Blogust fund raiser never stopped, and not one, but two anonymous donors jumped in with various matching offers. (Technically I was going to do 50% and there was a donor who said they'd match as long as 50% went back to the blog, but basically after the math shook out, it was this:) In the end every donation we got to Writing About Writing was be DOUBLED as a contribution to Oakland Reads.

And folks were extraordinarily generous. I'm not going to out anyone who doesn't want to be outed, but I got a donation bigger than most of my teaching paychecks (and those go by month), and lots of people kicked in.

So here's the final tally:

Donations from "Blogust."= $535*

Matching to Oakland Reads 535 (Mysterious donor #1) +535 (Mysterious Donor #2)= $1070
Plus the 10% I always donate $53

Total= $1123

*It's not worth trying to figure out what I make in a normal month, but I promise it's not this much.

When I get back from Burning Man, there will be many thank you e-mails (both to the Blogust donors, and the embarrassingly huge backlog).

Terry Pratchett and "Real" Literature

We interrupt our regularly scheduled post to bring me getting pissed off at elitist anal sphincter lit snobs! 

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer each Friday.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. And sometimes–not often, but sometimes–I write the hate mail.]


Cathy asks:

Given that you're now (Contrarian allowing) reading some Pratchett - wondered if you had any opinions on this piece?

Pratchett is not a literary genius.

Text below - it does seem to be very much "it can't be literature, it's speculative!".

(Yeah, 'cos Vetinari's approach to immigration into Ankh-Morpork isn't at all a comment on actual politics, and the war with Klatch has nothing to do with the war with Iraq...)

My reply:

My Facebook exploded with this fecal matter–every third or fourth post for a few hours–including several PM's wondering what my take on it might be, so even though I'm in the last 24 hours or so of trying to get out to Burning Man, I'm going to cobble together some barely coherent thoughts about this enema suck of a sentiment.

I can't say much about Pratchett in this case, but boy do I have a thing or three to say about Jonathan Jones. And it's not like the critically obtuse criticism of speculative fiction is anything new for its fans to have to deal with.

Every once in a while someone in academia or the lit sommelier world gets their knickers totally fucking twisted that they don't get more input into what people ought to read. They just can't stand that the plebs dare to find mainstream authors culturally resonating. So obvi they have to go and drop a high and mighty deuce on some popular author just to make sure we all don't forget that they're the real word on what's good according to....well....them. It's not enough to celebrate what they love. They have to wag their fingers at the unwashed masses for daring to enjoy anything else.

The problem is these lit snobs are just....fucking....comically bad at trying to predict what will be canonized or considered literary in the next generation–precisely because their heads are jammed firmly up their ivory towers (if you know what I mean). Double their irrelevance and inability to predict what prose will echo through the ages when they say anything (ever) that dismisses a writer who comes up from the working class (and more recently from other marginalized groups like writers of color) instead of wafting across on a cloud of florid-prosed, high-art-aesthetic privilege.

They hated Walt Whitman.

They hated J.D. Salinger.

They hated Mark Twain.

They hated John Steinbeck.

They hated William Golding.

They hated Charles Dickens.

They hated Fitzgerald.

They absolutely hated Gertrude Stein.

They hated Herman Melville. (Okay, actually, it's hard to blame them for that one.)

And until he had inured himself into Queen Elizabeth's court, they hated Shakespeare.

Oh many of them got past their initial works, and were respected in their lifetimes, but we're not even cracking writers like Jules Verne, Mary Shelly, H.G. Wells, Tolkien, LeGuin, PK Dick, Vonnegut, Delaney, Lessing, Lem, and more. All of them found mainstream literary culture didn't like them–certainly not when they started writing to mainstream appeal, though some of them even long after their deaths. And if you really want to watch lit snobs miss the mark, start including writers of color like Butler, Hughes, McCay, Everett (until the mid 90's when he started winning awards) and DuBois.

Of course, the next generation's lit snobs will clutch these very same authors to their breasts and say how self evident their worth is. They will delight in their simple grounded prose and the way they observe the world with a more "real" eye. It was just those crusty old lit snobs of yesteryear that were the problem, not the entire underlying ideology of elitist bilge upon which much of the literary world rests. Surely this time we've got it straight and those authors all the kids are reading today really aren't even worth looking at.

And it has nothing to do with the fact that they grew up reading the stuff and were willing to give it a second look.....or, you know, even a first. RIGHT JONATHAN???

People find pretty much anything to be insufferable snobs about, but the literary community are among the worst because they are so fucking out of touch with what ends up being culturally relevant. At least the Emily Post table manners folks really actually do know what a fish fork is. Lit snobs, on the other hand, keep acting like Charlie Brown trying to kick the ball. "Don't worry Charlie Brown, this time you can ignore entire swaths of the art you claim to be an authority on with an upturned nose and it won't cost you your street cred for being able to find your literary asses with both hands." What???? Lucy pulled the ball again?

Who would have thought?

Basically there's a really good, relevant, working, topical reason that no one outside the literary community gives much of a fuck what those in the literary community have to say. Sure sometimes they take a run at the bestsellers and those authors feel a sting, but their horses are so high, they really can't understand cultural relevance anymore. And it shows! Their (in)ability to predict the lower class writers who will be the voices of the social struggles of their generation are high among the reasons that they have elitismed themselves into utter irrelevancy.

Air gets a bit thin up in that tower, I guess.

I have to pack tomorrow. We're leaving on Wednesday and I could literally die if I don't make sure every damn thing on that checklist is in the car. But something about these lit snobs has me up after midnight, clacking away furiously. These guys are everything that's wrong with the high art world and its snotty disconnect with actual cultural relevancy and their "right kind of literature" nonsense that epicphailz pretty much every time their mouths open.

At this point I've read about 200 pages of Pratchett, so I can't defend his prose or his stylings or anything really. But what I can do is point out what a monumental unwashed, sweaty sphincter wrote this steaming pile of pimple squeezings.

So here we go (letter not quoted in its entirety–because seriously it's just more of the fucking same):

"It does not matter to me if Terry Pratchett’s final novel is a worthy epitaph or not, or if he wanted it to be pulped by a steamroller. I have never read a single one of his books and I never plan to. Life’s too short."

Full stop. You're done. Go home. Drink a coke, and fuck off with your absolutely irrelevant opinion. If life is too short to read Pratchett it is surely too short to bloviate about Pratchett without having read him.

My cat, Princess Mononoke, has advancing kidney disease and has recently developed incontinence. There's a pretty decent chance when I go into my room, I'm going to find an oily black turd near, but not in, the litter box.

As of your second sentence, I value that turd more than your opinion.

Literally nothing you say after this point contains even an iota of anything I could respect as a writer, an artist, or even as a reader who happens to quite enjoy the literary genre despite all its whitewashed bullshit. I can respect the difference between commercial and literary prose (even if I think it's usually mostly classist crap). I have read thousands of "literary" novels including Marquez and Grass who you later cite as unlamented because I guess they didn't get enough likes on FB to make you happy. [Both magical realists in case that speculative fiction stick up your ass weren't ironic enough.] I can appreciate the difference between them and what might be considered more commercial work and why mainstream appeal is sometimes muted for the artists of the highest artistic integrity.

And yet I STILL cannot respect anything that comes after that second sentence. You just identified yourself as a completely insipid twit. The worst kind of critic imaginable (though sadly common among the lit snobs): one who attacks a work that you haven't even engaged. You've got this snotty, condescending paragraph about harder literature being "worth it," but you can't even be arsed to cruise through 250 pages to have the first fucking clue what you're talking about.

Can you imagine any other artist doing this? In any discipline at all? "I haven't ever seen a Scorsese film, but I'm sure they're crap." "I haven't ever listened to Vivaldi, but I'm going to write a whole piece about how he's sub par." "I've never really looked at a Picasso. Glanced at it once. It looked kind of like he needed to learn to draw."

The reason those examples sound absurd is because it's preposterous to have an opinion on art that you haven't actually experienced. In any other discipline it becomes instantly recognizable as ludicrous. Only in literature is there some sort of latitude for critics to have opinions of works they've never actually read.

Who in the actual fuck aggrandizes their own opinions to the point that they believe they can honestly talk about a work with any authority without having actually engaged it? Lit snobs. That's who.

"I don’t mean to pick on this particular author, except that the huge fuss attending and following his death this year is part of a very disturbing cultural phenomenon."

Of course you do. That is exactly, precisely what you mean to do. You took a run at an über-popular author when he was prominent in the news because of his death and even more prominent because his the book he was working on when he died is due out today. You did this for the topicality of it, but without doing your due diligence as a respectable critic. Maybe you did it to cash in on the traffic. You will probably make more money from what you wrote trashing an author you've never even read than in the rest of your writing career. Certainly if you approach everything you do with as zero ass (we can't even call it half ass, can we?) research as you did Pratchett.

But even if you didn't do it for the money or the lulz, you absolutely used the timing to shoehorn in a soapbox mounting of your smug egotism about how awful people are for having feels about authors dying.  Sure, maybe you're not actually exploiting a beloved author's death and you really, honestly, truly just want to take his fans who deign to mourn popular authors' deaths down a peg or two. But then....actually, no, that's about the best thing that can be said at this point.

"Their books, like all great books, can change your life, your beliefs, your perceptions."

Funny, I've heard the same thing said about Pratchett.

Everyone reads trash sometimes.

Not everyone, right John? Not you. You don't lower yourself to anything that common. You're better than those potboilers, right?

"Because life really is too short to waste on ordinary potboilers. I am not saying this as a complacent book snob who claims to have read everything."

Jesus you just got through saying everyone reads trash. Which is it? Or is this entire article as poorly conceived as an attack on an artist you are UTTERLY unfamiliar with?

We would probably settle for having read the books in question, you pretentious asshole. You know, the ones on which you are now claiming to be a literary authority? The only thing you have said with this is that you ARE a complacent book snob. You are complacent not to challenge yourself to read a book before you take an exploitive smear of author (who's too dead to fire back) who has resonated with millions. You aren't even willing to face the possibility that you might be wrong. To me that shows how complacent and snobby you are.

Also callow and ignorant...if you're keeping score.

"Actual literature may be harder to get to grips with than a Discworld novel, but it is more worth the effort. By dissolving the difference between serious and light reading, our culture is justifying mental laziness and robbing readers of the true delights of ambitious fiction."

Laziness like say, not reading an author before discussing their flaws with the world? Laziness like presuming an unengaged work of art has no ambition? Laziness like letting other (also priggish) people dictate to you what is cultured and what you ought to enjoy? Perhaps you mean lazy like the intellectual laziness demonstrated by arbitrating aesthetic ideas like "actual literature" and "true delights" instead of discovering those things for oneself? Did you mean more like the logical laziness that is evident in the fallacy of false dichotomy in the suggestion that a reader could not somehow enjoy both kinds of books? Or was this just about the laziness of humans with the temerity to spend their money and time on art and entertainment that they enjoy.

I think it's important we nail down what caliber of laziness we're talking about here.

"This summer I finally finished Mansfield Park. How had I managed not to read it up to now? It’s shameful. But at least now it’s part of my life. The structure of Jane Austen’s morally sombre plot, the restrained irony of her style, the sudden opening up of the book as it moves from Mansfield Park to Portsmouth and takes in the complex real social world of regency England – all that’s in me now. Great books become part of your experience. They enrich the very fabric of reality. I don’t just mean 19th-century classics, either. I also read Post Office by Charles Bukowski this summer. My God, what a writer. Bukowski is a voice from hell with the talent of an angel. I must read every word by him."

Hey here's a fun game. For fifty points, can you guess two other writers who were soundly rejected by the literary establishments of their day? Did you guess Austen and Bukowski? (25 points each.) Good thing the plebs were willing to lift them up to the point where the lit snobs simply had to take a longer look. Or, GOSH, you'd never have that morally sombre plot or restrained irony. (Seriously did you get that shit off of Sparknotes because I can talk about Mansfield Park without sounding like I'm reading literary criticism off the back of a cereal box.) It's almost like cultural relevance involves....being relevant in a culture......or something.

Oh Bee Tee Dubs, I know another author who is really good at irony and social satire....

"But Terry Pratchett? Get real. It’s time we stopped this pretence that mediocrity is equal to genius."

But you wouldn't even know, would you? You're like the asshole fuckwit in my lit classes who kept raising his hand during the discussions but hadn't read the book. He thought the teacher didn't realize he was just saying a bunch of bullshit until the day she shot him down: "Sorry Dan, I only want the opinions of people who've actually done the reading today. Your thoughts aren't actually germane." Oops. I guess doing the reading you want to talk about as if you know fuck all about it actually IS important.

You would think people would have learned after the whole Lynn Shepherd debacle that admitting you haven't read an author you're about to roast makes you look like you are a particularly smelly drip of willfully ignorant butt-crack sweat. Oh let me guess, you didn't read that either?

You know, my great-grandkids might be sitting in a Pratchett class fifty years from now discussing the close reading of one of the great turn-of-the-century satirists. (Notice I don't claim to know if he's a genius since I am still only about half way through my first book. See how that works?) This is because time and again it's those pesky plebs who decide what is culturally relevant, not the ivory tower. Not everything is about prose and linguistic flourishes. Sometimes it's about who speaks to a generation against the elitist establishments of power who dismiss them without even really knowing what it is they dismiss.

But if my grandkids are in such a class, I'm pretty sure they will have to suffer some kind of viral article (or futuristic wavecast or something) by a bloviating pee hole of a tiny man who sneers at the great working class authors of the day without ever even reading them because that's what a bunch of upper class white dudes told him he ought to do. "You all should be reading Pratchett," he'll say. "My god, what a writer!" And he'll think that makes him a better person because he didn't even have the imagination required to question such classist emu-diarrhea bloviation. To say nothing of the incredible wealth of imagination–whole worlds of it–created by the person he refused to read.

If you're enjoying this blog, and would like to see more articles like this one, the writer is a guy with a rent and insurance to pay who would love to spend more time writing. Please consider contributing to My Patreon. As little as $12 a year (only one single less-than-a-cup-of-coffee dollar a month) will get you in on backchannel conversations, patron-only polls, and my special ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.