Shoot the hipster

Ok, so... This is my first attempt to get to grips with a project I'm working on about indie publishing (in Melbourne, mostly). I might cover some other stuff about the project in a future post but right now I'm trying to work out just exactly *what* to say that hasn't already been said before. So, anyway, my brain works like a little bower bird collecting bits and pieces from anywhere and everywhere, so forgive me for beginning where I'm about to: with a murder.

For the longest time I've been meaning to read Richard Price's Lush Life. I've just started. I get to page 77 and make what seems like a significant discovery about our 'vic' [this is detective fiction. go with it] - he's "gonna start up some online literary magazine, raise money for a documentary, we're all gonna collaborate on a screenplay; la-la, la-la, the usual bullshit." Price paints a portrait of the guy who caught the bullet and he chooses this particular piece of info to tell us what kinda guy he is. And know what kinda guy he is? An insufferable upstart - a online literary mag type-of-guy. An insufferable hipster. Shoot him. Quick.
It struck me that this guy, Ike, is pretty much cast in the Eggers mold. And shouldn't come as any suprise to learn that the guy suspected of shooting poor old Ike is a washed up dude in his forties. Jaded. Over it. Disappointed. Jealous. This seemed to me to be a pretty neat metaphorical summation of the way indie publishing is currently examined. Indies are seen as full of energy but somehow naive. Yet to have their hopes dashed. Or else, a fascinating curiosity. An underground 'scene' that seem to matter mostly to themselves. That like the sound of their own voices. That like playing at things - diletante style. A lit mag here, a screen play there, "the usual bullshit." Of course, this is not to say that sometimes the coverage of indie press doesn't celebrate this energy and enthusiasm. But it seems like we need a little something *more*. And, let's just assume for a minute that these indie types are insufferably hip and display an unwarrented self assurance... well, so what? Doing stuff is hardly a crime, nor is it some cute little hobby. More than a century a go most writers did their work on the side. They were lawyers, doctors, what-you-will. They came home and wrote stories because they felt like it was something they wanted to do. Some were politically motivated. Others just felt they had it in them. Now, publishing/books/literature are all part of a "lifestyle" (writers, publishers, editors are all professionals; readers are still hobbyists, but most particularly are *consumers*) and so talking about people who want to work publishing stuff on the side also inevitably involves talking about a 'scene.' So, how to get beyond discussions of a scene in the indie culture without ignoring the obvious culture that does spring up around these kinds of projects?

An Embarassment of Riches...

It's a smorgasbord this morning... All of it fine blogging material and ripe for some serious consideration.
First a curio:
HarperCollins Buys Series From James Frey - NYTimes.com
Frey seems to have weathered the hoax storm quite well, and might be on his way to being the next Lemony Snicket. Though, this book of his which he is reported to have 'conceptualised' (but not actually written, it seems) is about a bunch of alien teenagers who come to earth to escape something-or-other which just sounds like someone got together over Starbucks and said "Right, how do we make ourselves a fat wad of cash on movie rights". Which, of course, is precisely what happened. A sociological study of Manhattan publishing industry-types, NOW, that really would be a study worth doing...

Next up, inspired by the Frey story I linked my way over to the full NYT rundown on Herman Rosenblatt (who came after Frey but before Seltzer). Read the whole deal here. Basically, Rosenblatt wrote a short romance story that was really too good to be true, he won a competition and took his wife out to a swell restaurant. Nice. Somewhere along the line in 1996 Oprah read about the story and the Rosenblatts when on the air to celebrate the trueness of their love. Which is funny, right? "True love" - fake story. Anyway, Rosenblatt never bothered to mention that his story was, erm, a *story* and so the whole Holocaust-survivor-love-story shtick turned out to be a real column-hogger (who'da thunkit?). Now we discover Rosenblatt fabricated his memoir. Awesome. Perhaps most awesome is the comment by Kurt Anderson noted at the end of this article which I think will be the basis for the next article I write... "Mr. Anderson compated Mr. Rosenblatt to Bernard L. Madoff, the money manager who is accused of frauding investors of $50 billion." Fraud and the fall-out of our GFC? Literary frauds, the crisis of confidence...

And finally a little coda on the case of the Bitter Novelist Who Tweets story. It's this story that makes me think we're crying out for some kind of investigation into digital media and its influence on good ol' gentlemanly publishing... Snark, Eggers, the hoaxing authors, the frantic publishers without fact checkers, the Amazon critics who turn out to be authors... It all just goes to show what a sneaky (snarky) bitchy world the writer lives in. It's like gawker but with beards....

Snark + Twitter = Trouble

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/06/30/critic_fight/index.html

A great story from Mark Elizabeth Williams about an author who took her frustrations at a bad review out on her Twitter account. Needless to say it didn't play well.
A couple of stellar highs include:
"If you want to tell xxx off, her phone number is xxx" (nice!)

and the classic apology:
"I never meant to offend anyone, and I'm truly sorry if I did" (yeah right - this is like the apology you give in class when you get caught passing notes and know you've got no power to do anything but look contrite...)

Anyways, it reminded me of the Eggers snark brouhaha a while ago, where Eggers took it upon himself to respond to his critics in a 10,000 wd email. As the author rightly notes, "that a lot of tweets!"

Been a while. No doubt.

Have been working on something for publication about hoaxes and authorship, specifically JT LeRoy.

In the process have been reading all about one of the other recent hoaxes involving Peggy Seltzer (what a great name for a hoaxster, huh?). Nancy Rommelmann did an excellent interview with Laura Albert a while back and has blogged about the New York publishing industry's gullibility when it comes to memoirs which seem to be a stitched together bag of cliches (which Seltzer's surely was). Anyone who's only been as close to gangland life as an episode or two of The Wire would certainly be a little suspicious about the claims in Love and Consequences. Starting to think there's really quite a large project in here about 'Otherness' and the need for people adopt these personas of victimhood in order to get attention (for themselves, for good causes like drug rehab, protection of children or women, poverty, etc). Telling (made up) stories as first hand truth. Anthony Godby Johnson is another (much older) example. The talkshows salivate at the stories of kids being fucked and beaten and then coming through the ordeal to write a book about it. WTF? Like a book is the highest pinnacle of being "over it" or "moving on". This is weird right? What does a book symbolise about recovery? About normalness - recuperation into the sphere of "Us" not "Other." Is it something to do with literacy, privledge, authority - I'm thinking Frederick Douglass style empancipation via writing (not just telling) own story.

Ok - low battery (literal, not metaphorical).

Boys, boys, boys

Just discovered here about a new book regarding men in America: Guyland.
Interesting stuff - mostly useful for any ideas about New White Males - entitlement, anger, lassitude. Definitely good material for research on my American White Dudes...
Which reminds me, I must get my hands on the new Gessen...
Enough elipsis - time for work.

From My People to Your People

I saw this one day on Amazon and just couldn't resist so I threw it in the virtual shopping cart along with a bunch of other stuff (of which, more another day).

I'm curious about the nerd. Have been for a while now. I'm interested in the nerd as symbol for all kinds of outsiders. So is Benjamin Nugent. The man responsible for this book:
American Nerd: A History of My People


Aside from some interesting observations about D&D and Creative Anachronists and Polygamists (the examination of nerdishness is refreshingly broad and open to application) Nugent gets down to the details of how the term 'nerd' is being deployed in culture today. And the answer is: every one is doin' it. (Well, with the exception of anyone still young enough to be sensitive to the title). Here's one little sample of what I'm talking about. Check this excerpt from Ben's book. Read it and enjoy the photos of Williamsburg hipsters who have invested in the worlds most heinous eyewear in order to connote how truly 'un-hip' they are. I seriously love this whole "ugly is the new pretty" look - if by love you understand that I mean I both love it and find it slightly sick-making (like donuts or fairy floss or red fizzy drinks). [And on that whole 'ugly is pretty' schtick, I suppose we could look to Ugly Betty, too as an example of the new fashionability of the nerd. Certainly the glasses and the cardigans fit the nerdy bill.]

And another thing: fascinating that hyperwhite is the new black. Like it's all white irony, or something. "White" in inverted commas. It's all starting to go a bit David Foster Wallace at this point - though the notion that irony, nerdism, and whiteness all sit together somehow seems... right somehow. At least in this post-hipster era. And hey, if Weird Al is on the bandwagon appropriating Chamillionaire the white/nerdy/ironic thesis would seem to write itself...
[And hey what of the Revenge of the Nerds premise that the Nerds must join forces with the other outcasts, black/gay men in order to successfully be recognised by the jock-ruling forces of campus life?]

Somethings don't need analysis, however, and this is pure pleasure of ubernerd proportions. Check out Bill Murray and Gilda Radner on SNL as Todd and Lisa.

Flat white (middle class) habits

I realised something over my morning coffee today. Sometime in the not too distant past coffee became the new wine. It’s probably not going to come as a suprise when I tell you that the coffee in question was decidedly average and I was sitting there trying to work out just exactly what the barista (I’m being charitable) had done wrong. Was the coffee overcooked? Was it the milk? Did it have something to do with the kind of beans? All these questions, are, you see prime examples of just how coffee is these days, just like wine, something to bitch about.

This probably explains the cuts backs at Starbucks . There’s nothing to be gained by drinking Starbucks coffee these days because it just doesn’t cut it in terms of cultural cache. In Australia at least its just *too* easy to make fun of the bad coffee at Starbucks: the big cups, the bad uniforms, the decor (oh! the decor!)

I’m not really saying anything new here. You know it, and I know it and we all bitch about Starbucks. And others, much to my chargrin have said it all already and with lucrative book deals behind them. So, hats off to those guys. It still doesn’t explain however just when and how coffee got to be so indelibly associated with aspirational lifestyle culture. I’ve been to Italy, people don’t swan around wanking on about an adorable little spot just by the Lido where Antonio the barista knows just how you like your morning macchiato (NB: Tourists do this). One of the refreshing things about Italian coffee is that it gets slung out to you across a bar by people who are largely indifferent to your preferences and you get one of two choices – espresso or cappuccino. The coffee is unfailingly good no matter whether you’re in Rome at a cafe or in a bar on the side of the railway platform watching Italian lottery on the TV. Even the auto-machines on the trains make excellent coffee. And not once does anyone have to comment on the incredibleness of this consistency. No one says a word about Antonio’s sheer brilliance or about his masterful handling of the machines. You order, you drink, you leave. You don’t make a song and dance about it. It’s not because Italians are exceedingly restrained – or don’t give a care about coffee. Both of these things are patently untrue.

I’m just going to put forward an educated proposition here and say that for Italians coffee is just life, rather than lifestyle. And it’s not like the Italians have one up on the rest of us here. About a decade and a half ago, America shared a very similar attitude (though their coffee was a little less palatable to the rest of us). Anyone who’s seen Twin Peaks can attest to Lynch’s love affair with drip filter coffee. Garfield used to drank great mugs of the stuff, and he was a cat! A cup of joe is as American as well, as apple pie (for which a coffee is a great accompaniment). So when did coffee change and become something you could drink to increase your cred?

Well, I’ve got a book here on my desk which might hold some answers (Hip: The History by John Leland). But as a rough thesis I’m going to suggest that Starbucks did a lot to establish the idea of coffee as something cool and worth paying more than 50 cents for. I’m also going to say that the Olsen twins have been a serious force. Those two are photographed more often with oversize Starbucks cups than Britney is with underwear–which is saying something.