take the f, man

I finally saw one of the coyotes that howls outside my window almost every night. He looked straight ahead, rushing across the street like the celebrity he is.

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Ahmed Ansari, who on Twitter has been a voice of reason on Palestine and silence in the design community, is hosting a series of free weekly seminars over Zoom, Concerning Violence: Understanding Settler-Colonialism & Violence in the Modern Nation-State. I attended the first session last week, focusing on the work of Frantz Fanon, and found the lecture clarifying.

This is a lovely profile of Terry Bisson (whose work feels incredibly relevant right now). The speculative news stories he writes, featured in the profile, are collected in his forthcoming book, Tomorrowing.

And here’s the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast with an episode on PKD’s Valis.

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I've shared this quote before, which I love, even though it's one of those feathery text scraps that's made its way around the internet dislodged from its original context. And maybe that's fitting for these lines that resonate so strongly with other artists. It's attributed to John Cage via Philip Guston:

"When you start working everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave."

I was reminded of these lines again while reading a buzzy work of literary fiction—a book that seemed to me like it was written for the n+1 party in the author’s head. It’s okay if you start with an imagined party, but you also need the energy to imagine a door to kick them all out, eventually. The scene and culture this kind of writing grafts upon is what I mostly try to avoid; but, every once in a while a book I expect to be *like that* genuinely surprises me which is why, as a reader, I keep looking.

And I’ve been thinking about it again in response to what bugged me about that big essay by Jason Farago in the New York Times, "Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill.” As he begins,"for 160 years, we spoke about culture as something active, something with velocity, something in continuous forward motion. What happens to a culture when it loses that velocity, or even slows to a halt?" The limitations to his analysis have been addressed elsewhere (As Lyta Gold pointed out, "Ctrl+F in the article for ‘capitalism’ and ‘corporate’ or even ‘neoliberalism’—0 results!") Watered down Mark Fisher arguments in the NYT aren’t the worst thing they could publish, but, as a critic, it's kind of his job to hunt for the exceptions (in addition to the broad "direction" of culture, as he asserts).

I don't believe that originality is dead across music, literature, art, and film. I do believe—and know from experience inside legacy institutions—that work that demonstrates originality isn’t getting funded because it doesn’t plot neatly on a profit and loss statement.

One problem with the essay is it conflates “X meets Y”-style projects and their massive marketing budgets and publicity campaigns with all the art being made here on earth right now. Celebrating work that’s new and groundbreaking is what we expect critics to do: that they will not sit idly and wait for the buzz (generated by $$$) to sway their judgement. A better question, I think, is why would anyone want to be the hundreth critic to say that [insert name of derivative acclaimed work here] is a “stunning achievement”? We all know how little criticism pays—what do you get out of it, to be part of the critical consensus on something that does not involve “forward motion”?

It’s frustrating because the curators, editors, and producers who prioritize their discovery of new talent—and are good at it, who read the zines no one knows about and are the first to hear about the galleries opening in neighborhoods where few venture—are usually working with a shoestring budget, if that. (I’m tempted right now to veer off course with this newsletter and write about originality and tastemaking, and cite examples like when an independent curator puts together a group show with obscure artists and then, a few years later, a major museum group show includes all the artists from that exhibition. The first curator isn’t involved in the museum show but her taste, her labor paved the way. It happens all the time. What do we call this?)

It takes something of us, as audiences, to be open to work that challenges the status quo—to chose the unexpected over the comforting, pandering, and familiar. This is at odds with criticism as moralizing: that there is a perfectly correct way to respond to a work. If you aim to become the best student in the classroom that is all of culture, there is only one way to read a book: there is a correct opinion to be had, and you must first start with the “right” kind of book. You make the choice as the audience to offer up an A+ book report or reveal the sway of your own pathetic heart. (The heart always gets an F, scribbled in big red sharpie! Take it! Accept it with honor!)

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WRONG WAY, my debut novel, is out in three weeks.

Please consider preordering WRONG WAY from Massive Bookshop, which is donating 40% off the list price to the Material Aid and Advocacy Program (MAAP) in Cambridge.

Other stores where you can order the book include: Pilsen Community Books, Brookline Booksmith, Green Apple, Third Place, Skylight, Books are Magic, Porter Square Books, Foyles, Blackwells, Shakespeare & Co, Writer’s Block, Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus, ABC, Stories Bookshop, and more.

My book launch is on Nov 15th, where I’m in conversation with Héctor Tobar at Skylight Books on November 15th. Please come!

Or come to my events scheduled at Fall River MoCA on 11/25, Harvard Bookstore on 11/27, and Riffraff in Providence on 11/28.

And I am hopefully going to be able to announce my NYC event soon (it’s probably going to be either December 4th or December 5th).

Thanks for reading