AN ANALYSIS
ONE THING I’VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD
is why some writers praise difficult writing. “Let’s get inaccessible!”
What’s the rationale? The reason– if there is a reason? The logic? “Well, team, we have these much-lauded many-layered canonical books by our favorite snobby novelists, they’re very difficult— a slog really, like swimming through mud– but that’s the point! No one can get through them. Only us! Which makes us special. A breed apart. Class distinctions and all that.”
The literary mandarins congratulate themselves in an upper room of the moldy, falling apart literary tower. A high-up, far removed room which is actually a closet. A well-furnished closet, mind you, with imported French wine with subtle bouquets, delicate-tasting English pastries, and crackers with brie. Anything an out-of-touch snob set could need. No windows in the room– it’s airless and stuffy– but they don’t want windows anyway. No windows! They don’t care to know what’s happening . . . out there.
Mad leaders open-air prisons wars mobs refugee removals ruthless tech moguls pushing insane AI gadgets as populations potential audiences become angrily detached and illiterate. Increasing levels of gloom. Stray assassinations and nascent revolutions. Not their concern!
As long as the pastries arrive on time and they’re able to take a few sips of overpriced wine while they cling to the overlong overwrought volumes of overdone writing constructed via endless sentences and paragraphs so that no one other than they, them— the last literary aristocrats, cultural dinosaurs– can appreciate them.
–Karl Wenclas
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How does an “analysis” of “difficult writing” somehow never define “difficult writing?”
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Clues are in the post. . .
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I was promised an analysis, I got a lazy cliché. I hope the guy in your undergrad seminar reads this and feels a little less sure of himself!
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Never been in one.
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Why is your entire twitter account, and probably this thing, about hating two writers (Ryan Ruby, A.V. Marraccini)? Are you jealous or want their attention or something? Why do you post this thing like five times a day?
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??? They’re unmentioned in this post. On Twitter I referred to them– not by name– in ONE tweet, which referenced an essay by a literary critic who discussed the two writers extensively.
I tweet out links to this short rant because naturally I want people to read it. Which is the entire point of using Twitter.
You need to get over your paranoia. Thanks.
KW
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I was genuinely curious about who you meant in the lit world by this because I thought maybe I agreed, that things are stale especially at big publishers. But you only mentioned two living writers that I could find scrolling back on your twitter feed. Never anybody else by name. So who else is this about then? When Ruby hates something he tells you by name who it is, you gotta give him that. If you hate these elites, what are there names besides those two? Are you too scared to say? I am actually interested in knowing who this is about. Who are these difficult writers this is about, if not the only two mentioned by you? Name one maybe so I can see if I agree or not…
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It’s a given that things are screwed up at the Big Five publishers, and with AI, they’re about to get worse. We all know that. The question is who has real solutions to make the literary art relevant again. The point of my post is that our nation’s official literary critics– ALL OF THEM; no need to single anyone out– are hiding out c/o their presenting as “criticism” inscrutably unreadable writing which nobody outside your dwindling circle would ever care to read.
My solution? It’s hinted at as a comment to the GD essay which you, or at least the two targeted individuals– including Ruby– have failed to address.
Again, I named or mentioned no one on NPL’s Twitter feed. I merely made a remark on someone else’s tweet, who does mention them. (Have you addressed him? Why not?) I’m a bystander.
Re naming names: Curious that you won’t even give your own, oh brave one. As for myself, if you think I’m afraid to name names, you surely don’t know my history. Naming names regarding extensive cronyism and corruption in the New York-based literary scene is one reason why I and my co-editor exist on the literary margins to start with.
Have a great day!
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I’m a high school teacher (English) so I have to be anon online. As for G.D. Dess, the essay felt like something one of my students might write when they really hated someone, like he had beef and he wanted to fight and the review was just a way to do that not a real review– the magazine that published it has some really bad other writing too, so it’s not just him there I guess. I read some of the other essays too after. It just felt like people who couldn’t get published in real magazines like New Yorker or Bookforum. Dess made some factual errors that I know from reading the books, but I guess the authors probably don’t care about something like that enough to say anything. Maybe they’re writing a letter to the editor or whatever they do? Kramnick was in there too, who I really like. Recently, the Paris Review ran Tao Lin who I think is super stupid. I don’t really find Kramnick or Ruby or Marraccini– or even Tao Lin who is just dumb– hard to read though. “Inscrutable” is Finnegan’s Wake or something. They sound a lot like older critics like Bloom or Vendler or Sontag. I always tell my kids to be specific about who and why they don’t like and lay it all out, and at least G.D. Dess did that though. I can’t honestly tell who you mean in this, because I don’t live in New York and I don’t know who is in their literary scene or any scene, and you’re not specific about why you hate what you hate. That’s why I asked– I have no idea who hangs out in New York City and who they think are elite and why you consider that person or people inscrutable. Do you have examples of their writing that you can’t read easily even if you don’t want to name who wrote it?
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