Here's a stupid comment that is nonetheless true: I love writing that makes me feel like a person encountering another person through language, which is what your writing does. It's a friendly kind of recognition. Anyway, apropos of your beginning, I have an August poem that tries to capture a bit about how August sometimes produces a feeling of panic (ha?) even in people who like fall (especially for people for whom August is also the start of back to work teaching) Here it is on the poetry society website. (eyeroll, eyeroll, I know) (Christ, what an asshole.) https://poetrysociety.org/poems/the-end-of-august
I'm VERY interested in this question you clocked that Rooney is raising: "How can we read or write novels (or care about love affairs) in the face of human misery." And I have to say, I really enjoy Rooney's novels, but this feels like a literary fiction concern unnecessarily siloed off from other genres (also, why don't the genres speak to each other?!!??!!). You have an entire genre that is rooted in the assumption that love stories are worthy of 300 pages and that genre is the biggest, most lucrative genre to date: romance!!! (sorry, I'm a bit obsessed with closing the gap between litfic and romance which feels like a new-ish gap (?) and also like a dishonest separation, and also sexist). I ALSO don't think Rooney views herself as a romance writer, but she sort of is. Her A plots are almost always the romance (her subplots about work and family do not be subplotting LOL), and in all of her novels thus far, the love interests have more or less gotten together at the end. She doesn't seem entirely aware that this is the genre/tradition she's writing in, or she doesn't seem to want to be directly associated with it. But if she were aware, she'd see that romance writers (the vast, vast majority of them women) have already faced and fought decades of shame over their desire to write love stories!! And have kind of made it out on top. It is no coincidence (to me), that romance writers essentially pay publishing's bills and Sally Rooney is a big as she is. It feels connected. Literary contemporary romance as a genre is nowhere as robust as say literary speculative fiction, yet there's an appetite for it. I think this absence of true romance (as in romance as A plot and endings that aren't about heartbreak) in contemporary litfic loops back to this problem of how to ethically give energy to the question of "whether the characters end up together," which for some reason (sexism) we've decided is unserious. (Also just because you've wrenched in issues of environmental collapse, racism, war etc doesn't automatically mean you've confronted those issues!! I think this is also a mistake in the race towards Real Life Problems in LitFic). We can say we don't care, or shouldn't care, about whether the characters get together in the end, but the sales numbers of romance novels tell a different story, one that we should listen to
> When I felt so crushed by the thought, “Elif Batuman’s new book starts with a 10,000-word email to her agent,” I was internalizing someone who finds my existence annoying
Sure, the form could be "author's personal communication with agent", but what if the content were solely references to other communications with the agent, interspersed with fellowship applications, student feedback, and thoughts about other people in the subway. Life, unabashed.
Thank you so much for this - it was very interesting and inspiring. I just wrote a piece about how more writers are trying to acknowledge in their writing the demands that writing places on their lives - and consequently how form is under a particular kind of pressure at the moment, I think: https://charlottebeale.substack.com/p/breaking-form-making-form
You made me think of a song by Crowded House - [Always take the] Weather With You*
> The sense that everything is worse, more exploitation, more poverty etc
In further support of your view Hans Rosling: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.
From memory Rosling shows that based on data available in 2018 on 9 of 10 [or was it 14 of 15] dimensions [poverty, girls education, % of countries that are democracies, malnutrition etc ] things have been getting better for 200 years, often dramatically so ... the exception was climate change; Since publication I think - could be wrong - the % of countries that are democracies has gone backwards for the first time ...
Your face (as I know it from photo shoots) is marvelously relaxed! And joyful.
It sounds from this that you’re finding a path out of your primary dilemmas as a writer. Or at least an Airbnb island where you can (semi) relax long enough to get some words on a page you’re happy with. It’s clear from your Substack that you still know how to do that, whatever the conflicts.
And btw it’s been my experience that the thing that will tighten you up the most is someone (particularly yourself) ordering you to relax!
Here's a stupid comment that is nonetheless true: I love writing that makes me feel like a person encountering another person through language, which is what your writing does. It's a friendly kind of recognition. Anyway, apropos of your beginning, I have an August poem that tries to capture a bit about how August sometimes produces a feeling of panic (ha?) even in people who like fall (especially for people for whom August is also the start of back to work teaching) Here it is on the poetry society website. (eyeroll, eyeroll, I know) (Christ, what an asshole.) https://poetrysociety.org/poems/the-end-of-august
I'm VERY interested in this question you clocked that Rooney is raising: "How can we read or write novels (or care about love affairs) in the face of human misery." And I have to say, I really enjoy Rooney's novels, but this feels like a literary fiction concern unnecessarily siloed off from other genres (also, why don't the genres speak to each other?!!??!!). You have an entire genre that is rooted in the assumption that love stories are worthy of 300 pages and that genre is the biggest, most lucrative genre to date: romance!!! (sorry, I'm a bit obsessed with closing the gap between litfic and romance which feels like a new-ish gap (?) and also like a dishonest separation, and also sexist). I ALSO don't think Rooney views herself as a romance writer, but she sort of is. Her A plots are almost always the romance (her subplots about work and family do not be subplotting LOL), and in all of her novels thus far, the love interests have more or less gotten together at the end. She doesn't seem entirely aware that this is the genre/tradition she's writing in, or she doesn't seem to want to be directly associated with it. But if she were aware, she'd see that romance writers (the vast, vast majority of them women) have already faced and fought decades of shame over their desire to write love stories!! And have kind of made it out on top. It is no coincidence (to me), that romance writers essentially pay publishing's bills and Sally Rooney is a big as she is. It feels connected. Literary contemporary romance as a genre is nowhere as robust as say literary speculative fiction, yet there's an appetite for it. I think this absence of true romance (as in romance as A plot and endings that aren't about heartbreak) in contemporary litfic loops back to this problem of how to ethically give energy to the question of "whether the characters end up together," which for some reason (sexism) we've decided is unserious. (Also just because you've wrenched in issues of environmental collapse, racism, war etc doesn't automatically mean you've confronted those issues!! I think this is also a mistake in the race towards Real Life Problems in LitFic). We can say we don't care, or shouldn't care, about whether the characters get together in the end, but the sales numbers of romance novels tell a different story, one that we should listen to
I would read a Batuman/Rooney email exchange published in any form
After The Idiot came out, you thought about switching careers. FWIW, I'm glad that you didn't.
> When I felt so crushed by the thought, “Elif Batuman’s new book starts with a 10,000-word email to her agent,” I was internalizing someone who finds my existence annoying
Sure, the form could be "author's personal communication with agent", but what if the content were solely references to other communications with the agent, interspersed with fellowship applications, student feedback, and thoughts about other people in the subway. Life, unabashed.
I love your writing!
Thank you so much for this - it was very interesting and inspiring. I just wrote a piece about how more writers are trying to acknowledge in their writing the demands that writing places on their lives - and consequently how form is under a particular kind of pressure at the moment, I think: https://charlottebeale.substack.com/p/breaking-form-making-form
Oh! How serendipitous to discover this newsletter right at the moment when you announce that you will be at an event in my city. Thrilled.
“Unfortunately, the house turned out to be haunted. I can put up with a lot in the way of inconvenience, but I draw the line at ghosts.” Yes, please!
"10:04" is GREAT
This piece is a very enjoyable journey
> Autumn; Turkey
You made me think of a song by Crowded House - [Always take the] Weather With You*
> The sense that everything is worse, more exploitation, more poverty etc
In further support of your view Hans Rosling: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.
From memory Rosling shows that based on data available in 2018 on 9 of 10 [or was it 14 of 15] dimensions [poverty, girls education, % of countries that are democracies, malnutrition etc ] things have been getting better for 200 years, often dramatically so ... the exception was climate change; Since publication I think - could be wrong - the % of countries that are democracies has gone backwards for the first time ...
Your face (as I know it from photo shoots) is marvelously relaxed! And joyful.
It sounds from this that you’re finding a path out of your primary dilemmas as a writer. Or at least an Airbnb island where you can (semi) relax long enough to get some words on a page you’re happy with. It’s clear from your Substack that you still know how to do that, whatever the conflicts.
And btw it’s been my experience that the thing that will tighten you up the most is someone (particularly yourself) ordering you to relax!