Spanning 8 years, the Macbeth-esque rise and fall of boyband member Hero + the fandom that built him. To escape his tragic past, Hero becomes the world's boyfriend. #1 fan Lupe is convinced Hero's "divine messages" command her to rally an army against his haters. #pitdark#a#ph
this is your sign to read the house of mirth! it revolves around upper-class life in early 1900s new york, with anxieties around old vs. new money, social mobility, gender, personal responsibility, and outward appearances of culture
Since I know young writers here: you donāt have to perform yourself. You donāt have to be an it girl/boy online or at parties. You can have a life in letters by staying home and reading Rousseau like a freak at 2 AM alone in your duvet and just writing well. Itās the writing.
āItās a weird time. Iāve still got to get to work on time, pay my bills, manage chronic illness, all that stuff, while the world in general seems to be falling apart. It can be a challenge to juggle those two things while making sure one of them doesn't completely destroy my mental health. Itās just an odd thing to be like: āOh, all of these atrocities are being committed in Gaza with my tax dollars, but what am I going to eat for dinner?ā Or: āTrump just dismantled another check on his power. Weāre slowly sliding into fascism, he's winning at every turn, nobodyās stopping him-- but what concert should we go to this weekend?ā The strangest part about the whole thing is that weāve never been so connected. I could understand if this was eighty years ago; news travelled slowly. But now, in an instant, you get these facts, photos, videos. Verified by credible news, verified by aid organizations, verified by the United Nationsāand nobody cares. Well, a lot of people care. But the people who can actually fix things: who can make a call, set up a meeting, post to millions of followersāthey donāt care. Instead of standing up for the voiceless, theyād rather lay low, keep their head down, cling to their money or status. So yeah, itās hard to be a person who cares right now. Sometimes you just want to melt into your bed or couch and be with your feelings. But I wonāt say that I feel hopeless. Iād never say that, because thatās what they wantāthose people who only care about winning, who donāt care about collateral damage. They want people to feel powerless. And Iām not going to give them that luxury. There are still reasons to be hopeful. Zohran just won the primary. And thatās a sign of change, in New York City at least. Even the people who donāt agree with his politics have to admit: his campaign was built on community. It wasnāt funded by billionaires. It didnāt pander to their interests. This was a campaign of fifty thousand people who volunteered, and canvassed, and made calls. Last week a lot of people who had been feeling powerless realized that they still have some power in this country. And thatās a start. Letās just hope a lot more people are learning from that.ā
but to be honest⦠i enjoy the discourse. imo the best art is divisive and confrontational and often evolves into truly interesting culture rather than being like kind of ok, easily understood and sort of forgettable.
I think what readers feel is lost in American literature right now is that publishing was once a place for individuals, cranks, weirdos, fools, braggarts, liars, freaks and kooks. But no more. The industry now feels hyper professionalized, and it's as if we've lost access to the minds of the losers and oddballs and geniuses writing bizarre things in nooks and garrets across the country. Writers are now judged on whether they live in New York City. Whether they have an MFA. Whether they have a certain level of that special magic called "professionalism," otherwise known as self-denigrating and instinctual emotional obedience to Ivy educated editors and publishers. But publishing should be vast and welcoming to all sorts, as the personality or outlook of the writer will always mean much less than the work itself.
My biggest takeaway from the no kings rally is that there really should be a political party that could channel all this energy into something productive and progressive because it sure isnāt The Democrats
As my father said, āBUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.ā
again, i get that itās usually well-intentioned, but itād be great to stop saying āhardworking immigrantsā as it implies that immigrants should only be valued for labor, & specifically for citizens + the state, when immigrants should be treated well because we are, well, people
a world that has completely normalized the murdering of children just because they are in man-made āzones of conflictā is a world beyond moral comprehension and it is our current reality, it should disgust everyone to their core
Every time a man opens a book on tiktok, a swarm of women rush to his comments to congratulate him like heās the only literate man in the world.
Please ladies, this is so beyond embarrassing.
I'm wondering if y'all also get thrown off by postal mail, typewriters, phones, and wires. At one point they all existed, and all of it is dated. A book should work for ITS TIME SETTING, not you personally. This Main Character Syndrome needs to stop.
āThey were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.ā
The Great Gatsby, 4/10/1925
The anti-Anora reaction since it won Best Picture shouldnāt be surprising. Itās a conservative, anti-art reaction. It doesnāt matter if you donāt like a piece of art. Over the last 10 years, culturally, something majorly shifted to where we can no longer tolerate differing viewpoints or how they are portrayed or who gets to portray them. I saw this first hand teaching in the academy where the students themselves want to know exactly what an art object means, what it argues for, why, why someone even has a right to make itāitās basically all the questions the right was asking of art in the early 90s with the NEA Four. And if no art object or artist has the perfect equation: cancelled. Berated. āProblematic.ā There is no room for flexibility. Doubt. Holding two opposing ideas in oneās head at one time. No real engagement. Well, shocker, no art object or artist ever has the perfect equation. Itās almost like certain leftists have started using and thinking of art as propaganda. It must espouse an ideology (their ideology) at all times. Anything else makes them nervous. Again, this smacks of the conservative right in the 90s, but now disguises itself as āprogressive.ā Art is, obviously, not here to make you feel better about yourself or your world view or to bring you certitude and moral clarity. The artist is also not your role model or moral example. Itās actually completely fine for the artist to be the most flawed of anyone, which really, weāre all flawed. The most depressing thing, teaching, has been seeing how obsessed with policing culture, cultural production, and themselves, people have become. I refuse and reject it. I donāt care who I make nervous and I certainly donāt give a fuck about the arbitrary cultural rules and norms being invented almost daily to stifle artistic expression, which really, is the human experience ugly as it is.
Years ago I noticed a trend in literary fiction by well-off white women: the Passive Female Protagonist. Who lives in a foggy state, simply doing things, no clear choice or agency. I always found this annoying, but only recently connected it with our current political scene.
i donāt know what the answer is. i donāt know how to stop this. but what i do know is that if you consider yourself an ally to the trans community, we need you to stand up and let the world know each and every day now more than ever. we canāt fight this on our own.