Well, are we God now with facebook, blogs, websites and profiles galore? It seems in the writerly world lately criticism leveled at some person or practice is answered in a matter of days if not hours. Recent examples: Tom Bissell responding on this site. Howard Junker, editor of Zyzzyva responding to Lauren Becker about subscription offers. And John Freeman, editor of Granta, responded to Lauren Becker again at VIP’s on VSF about Granta’s policies on flash fiction. Also the editors of Fourteen Hills responded to Ryan’s call about month ago at HTML Giant.
I assume this is a good thing. We want attention, we want more comments. Is it comforting knowing that with a few lines of constructive criticism, you can have the focus of your inquiry breathing back words, albeit through cyberspace?
Do you have something you want to get off your chest? Is there someone you want to clear the air with? Tell us….
i don’t know when you put this up. i hope it was minutes ago … which should i go for next? — paris review for publishing stuff written by their own editors? thank you for making me out to be a badass troublemaker … it’s fun!!
shameless plug: greg, heather fowler and i have a new journal — http://www.coriummagazine.com. please insult me at once and i’ll try to respond within minutes, if not seconds …
Hey Lauren,
Do you have a link for info about the Paris Review “publishing stuff written by their own editors”?
John- Philip Gourevitch published his own fiction in the Paris Review two or three issues ago. I read it. I’ve also read his fantastic non-fiction book on Rwanda.
I read the Rwanda book for an undergrad course. It was good.
Vintage Bette! Yes!
re: God
As a result of the Becker Event, Mr. Freeman considered writing an entry for the vsf blog or possibly having a Granta rep write something. He may still be considering, I didn’t press it.
good question – I think it’s satisfying (the immediacy of cyberspace conversations), but also worrying, in that the pace at which these discussions move might make it easier to misinterpret the words of others, and to be misinterpreted yourself.
Very true, but it seems like a good thing that these discussions are taking place, kinks and all.
yep…communication.
The communication is good. The speed is worrisome. But maybe that will force us one and all to be a bit more forgiving.
(Notice that I’m getting to this post a couple of days late, in my typical style.)
I find the internet like that, overall: everything’s so urgent! I need to write back right away! And then check my email again to see if that person wrote back! …I don’t understand where that comes from. There’s definitely a pleasure in receiving an email. I suppose that pleasure is addictive. And knowing that I can go to a site and it will have new content up, new posts, etc…. But it can be too much.
Meanwhile, I’d like to see some posts on the topic of publishing one’s work. And publishing the work of friends. Maybe those are topics that have been ground into the ground, however.
Jeremy M. Davies wrote a comment on a different post that I think is quite appropriate to this conversation:
http://bigother.com/2010/01/08/brevity-part-2-long-takes/#comment-2718