On a whim the other day I flipped through some Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, and other old school writers. I watched some of their interviews, and it got me wondering: what happened to writers these days—or creators in general? The writers of old had mystique: a cult of personality elevating them and their work to ‘larger than life’ status. Why doesn’t that exist anymore? In contemplation, I went down a rabbit hole, investigating the answer’s ramifications for the modern world, and our way of life.
In one word: 'Domestication.' ... 'The Author' has been Domesticated & fattened up for The Slaughter. He does not exist anymore because he can no longer be 'out there' in the wild, roaming as he pleases & doing what he wishes to... the Technocrats & Managers have Domesticated him!
For sure, there is The Pyramid and there is Outsideness. You can play by the rules, and try to gain status, move up another level, or you can seek Outsideness.
Billionaire tech guru Angelo Zarathustra has surrendered to the will of capitalism and become the richest man alive. Now he wants the world to officially accept Capital as the one, true God and capitalism as the word...
Good to see the late Tom Wolfe mentioned before the end. “Radical Chic” would not be published today.
I was fortunate to have been a student of Allan Bloom long ago, miss him terribly. Straussians, once such an exciting Nietzschean endeavor, are just dull corrupt neocons now.
I'm amazed that DF is citing Burroughs et al as great novelists. They may be great self-publicists and self-destroyers, yes, but are not great novelists. The capacity to write books that are still meaningful to people in a different century is not a function of being wildly sensational or nihilistic - in fact, those traits are every bit as empty, toxic and self-defeating for novelists as the obedience to wokedom that DF rightly criticises.
I'm a White Identity Nationalist and if a piece of fiction does not affirm my identity, I'm not going to read it. I don't mind being a philistine because the alternative is to be a liberal or a snob.
Grist had a climate fiction, clifi, contest for hopeful, optimistic, intersectional, blah,blah, blah and the winning entry... wait for it. Saved our climate ravaged planet with... wait for it. Ultra inclusive advanced alien pronouns. John Michael Greer responded with a contest monkey wrenching the rules and some good fiction came out of it and got published at New maps: https://new-maps.com/news/2022/03/upcoming-project-gristle/
The other is by Bill Quick, writing about the writing industry. It's scathing and funny and backs everything that you are saying here with 105 new writers. Of them 12 are men, 6 of which are gay, one and only one is a straight white male not pushing a DEI novel. You'll have to read the article to see how he managed to break into the industry, and it's not a good sign:
I'd say the issue in America is the publishing houses. They are concentrated under few owners and carry out political functions. Most authors promoted over the last 20 years write myopic idpol crap.
At root, it's reflective of a political shift to the hard right. When the authors you mentioned wrote there was a real communist movement, a real anti war movement, a powerful working class that provided a genuine brake on imperial policies.
None of that exists in the US today. It's one political flavor and if you don't like it, you are denied a voice in the "culture industry". Ultimately, if we want good art, or education, healthcare, etc, a genuine political opposition of for and by the working masses must be built.
However, the strangle hold of the corporate publisher isn't as tight in some regions, like France, with a rich cultural history and traditions that are hard to just erase. Michel Houllebeqc really captured the extreme alienation of the 90s to pandemic era and is kind of mysterious and strange like the classic artists of old.
"... David Foster Wallace, who tragically ended his own life ..." without even knowing him, but "projecting" from the first paragraph one cannot but conclude that this outcome is anything but tragic - it is INEVITABLE, in most cases. Simply imagining what is being presented to the mind again and again creating suffocation of guilt only interrupted by further intoxication ... THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO HELL should be obvious to everyone, who is anything but oblivious to LIFE - GOD ALMIGHTY -, ... But than again, considering it was obvious to everyone, it would be contradictory to REALITY as represented in today's world - last episode of d lemon - as THE MAJORITY is blinded by its own PRIDE, ARROGANCE, HYPOCRISY AND HUBRIS - a belly button watching toddler tormented by its own VICES.
A very insightful and enjoyable read. Thank you. There used to be actual public intellectuals-- intellectuals who weren't ashamed to communicate with the broader public. I grew up seeing Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, William Buckley, Truman Capote, Malcolm Muggeridge, Anthony Burgess and Gore Vidal on national talk shows. Not to mention Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Wells. They were on regularly, not just once in a while. JFK's speeches and news conferences were feasts of sly humor and historical and literary references. Malcolm X appeared on the Sunday political shows (there are still YouTube videos out there of him dismantling his questioners). MLK was genuinely eloquent and profound. Noam Chomsky appeared on Buckley's show (and, incidentally, annihilated him on US foreign policy). I remember watching a lengthy interview with Huey Newton. This hodgepodge of diverse (that is, genuinely diverse) views was accepted as part of the nation's discourse. Film and music was likewise a smorgasbord of crazy delights. I remember reading Hunter Thompson's first book "Hell's Angels" in high school when it first came out, and then reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when it was first published in Rolling Stone while in college (with Ralph Stedman's wonderfully insane illustrations!) I feel lucky to have experienced this period, and feel sad for my grandkids living in such a wasteland. As for what happened, you hit on most of the reasons. But above all, I believe the commodification of culture--the rule of money and profit over all things--is the primary culprit. I am convinced that even "woke" ideology is the product of the oligarchs' strategy of divide and rule. It would not be so prominent in media and academia without their support. It keeps us fighting about "values" while they remain free to rob and steal. There is one other thing I will mention. People didn't used to be afraid to express themselves. In fact, they were not, in general, afraid of much at all. Today it seems to me that we live in a society that is literally saturated in fear. But that is a discussion for another time. Thanks for the opportunity for me to ramble about times gone by. Times that only a few today will understand or relate to.
" That’s a long winded manner of saying: attention spans, over-dilution of choices, coupled with this internet-mediated demystification of authorial personas has left the audience disinterested, disengaged, and more apt to seek novelty in the form of trend-hopping or variety for its own sake." ... THE CULT OF MATERIALISM - every participant based on its own share of lies/delusions/deceptions - has/have created the perfect ZOMBIE to be fed while feeding off itself. Like a drug addict believing to be his own source of drug production. Sedation based on THE LIE OF MATERIALISM has to eventually fail as it is feeding off its NONGENERATIVE self - "AI" being the perfect example as it has nothing to do with INTELLIGENCE but rather with Regurgitative Reconstructive Algorithm posing as "intelligence" like a the "deceitful" magician, the only difference being that by watching a magician doing his tricks neither the observer nor the magician truly believe what they are perceiving, whereas Gates, Bezos, Musk, Altmann & Co. seem to believe their BS trick equates to being GOD ALMIGHTY, actually the same way they believe that "viruses" are real in the way they are trying to get rid of them by poisoning LIFE ITSELF with their DELUSION/LIE (you want to know more go to dpl003.substack.com) - only THE ETERNAL SELF-REGENERATIVE GOD ALMIGHTY CAN ACCOMPLISH LIFE OUT OF HIMSELF!
I am a character. My government tried to kill me for my work as a journalist. I hold political asylum in the USA, have been a millionaire and homeless in NYC. I've lived in 15 countries and have Tax IDs in 8— I'm not using them for any literary or other purposes, nudge nudge, wink wink, just to be clear to the spies reading SImplicius.
I've visited 83 countries, including both Ukraine and Russia. I've sailed around the world three times, criss-crossing America, Europe, and South America several times, Atacama Desert included. I lived with, say, the ladies of the night in Buenos Aires, cartel murderers in Tijuana and a supermodel in Mombasa.
A literary agent, situated on the lewd axis of Harvard - Boston - New York, someone close to me, took my "Jung's Demon" psychological thriller. She cried, saying, 'You're a mad-genius.' She prides herself on her editorial prowess, yet she couldn't remove a single word from the book. 'I don't know how,' she admitted. However, no one would ever publish it, she claimed.
Fast forward to my dystopian novel, "Tycho Brahe Secret."'Brilliant,' she said. But there's no chance, she claimed, because I'm a white male.
Fast forward again, and now I'm a samizdat author. 'As America Crumbles...' is my political book titled 'A Grim Chronicle Exploring the Evil Source of America’s Catastrophic Decline.' https://amzn.to/49XHujt, the rest is there. I skipped her but Amazon does not let me advertise it because, I kid you not, of their policy against 'Content that revolves around highly debated social topics.'
I am a character but I am nowhere to be seen. In Hollywood, where I also lived, I was more of a jester, a guy with gazillion stories, but my "Black Mondays" script, that went to CAA, ended up "lost" after I was told, no one would make a movie with someone like you. Zero chance. White. Male. Serious topic.
Not that I give a shite, just wanted to reinforce what Simplicius has written.
Interesting analysis, thanks, to which I, as an avid reader, would like to add this question: why should there be any 'great authors' when teaching to read (and write) has become ever more obsolete? If there are fewer and fewer people reading actual books then 'great authors' become extinct.
This whole 'literature business' has become a lefty, metropolitan game of 'insiders'. Meanwhile, the actual literature, despised by the 'litteraty' is taking place online. Not only is there a huge uptick in self-edited e-books, there's an even larger new genre, LitRPG which subsumes all the 'cultivation' novels which has been sailing under the radar of the 'new elites'. And like substack there's Royal Road for all those self-publishing writers.
And then there's the lates: AI. Yes, there are novels chucked out by AI 'writer stables' - execrable quality, but there they are nevertheless.
All that is readily and easily consumed on tablets or smartphones. And not one DEI infested 'publishing house' in sight ...
A diffuse organisation exists whose aim is "equality of outcome over equality of opportunity" and modus operandi is "infiltrate, take control, apply draconian measures to achieve our morally justified goals" . It is a cancer that needs to be gouged out of society, in the same way that Elon Musk did at Twitter.
In one word: 'Domestication.' ... 'The Author' has been Domesticated & fattened up for The Slaughter. He does not exist anymore because he can no longer be 'out there' in the wild, roaming as he pleases & doing what he wishes to... the Technocrats & Managers have Domesticated him!
For sure, there is The Pyramid and there is Outsideness. You can play by the rules, and try to gain status, move up another level, or you can seek Outsideness.
And there are novels from the outside. Such as...
a.co/d/4rPxB93
Billionaire tech guru Angelo Zarathustra has surrendered to the will of capitalism and become the richest man alive. Now he wants the world to officially accept Capital as the one, true God and capitalism as the word...
Good to see the late Tom Wolfe mentioned before the end. “Radical Chic” would not be published today.
I was fortunate to have been a student of Allan Bloom long ago, miss him terribly. Straussians, once such an exciting Nietzschean endeavor, are just dull corrupt neocons now.
Sure, fixtion is a way to convey truth, but please keep it to short statements like haiku length, ha ha, just kidding
I'm amazed that DF is citing Burroughs et al as great novelists. They may be great self-publicists and self-destroyers, yes, but are not great novelists. The capacity to write books that are still meaningful to people in a different century is not a function of being wildly sensational or nihilistic - in fact, those traits are every bit as empty, toxic and self-defeating for novelists as the obedience to wokedom that DF rightly criticises.
I'm a White Identity Nationalist and if a piece of fiction does not affirm my identity, I'm not going to read it. I don't mind being a philistine because the alternative is to be a liberal or a snob.
Two fun supporting links.
Grist had a climate fiction, clifi, contest for hopeful, optimistic, intersectional, blah,blah, blah and the winning entry... wait for it. Saved our climate ravaged planet with... wait for it. Ultra inclusive advanced alien pronouns. John Michael Greer responded with a contest monkey wrenching the rules and some good fiction came out of it and got published at New maps: https://new-maps.com/news/2022/03/upcoming-project-gristle/
The other is by Bill Quick, writing about the writing industry. It's scathing and funny and backs everything that you are saying here with 105 new writers. Of them 12 are men, 6 of which are gay, one and only one is a straight white male not pushing a DEI novel. You'll have to read the article to see how he managed to break into the industry, and it's not a good sign:
When Literary Diversity Vanishes Up Its Own Arse
Statistical Evidence of Cultural Doom
Bill Quick
https://billquick.substack.com/p/when-literary-diversity-vanishes
I'd say the issue in America is the publishing houses. They are concentrated under few owners and carry out political functions. Most authors promoted over the last 20 years write myopic idpol crap.
At root, it's reflective of a political shift to the hard right. When the authors you mentioned wrote there was a real communist movement, a real anti war movement, a powerful working class that provided a genuine brake on imperial policies.
None of that exists in the US today. It's one political flavor and if you don't like it, you are denied a voice in the "culture industry". Ultimately, if we want good art, or education, healthcare, etc, a genuine political opposition of for and by the working masses must be built.
However, the strangle hold of the corporate publisher isn't as tight in some regions, like France, with a rich cultural history and traditions that are hard to just erase. Michel Houllebeqc really captured the extreme alienation of the 90s to pandemic era and is kind of mysterious and strange like the classic artists of old.
I love your writing, Simplicius - bring it on!!
"... David Foster Wallace, who tragically ended his own life ..." without even knowing him, but "projecting" from the first paragraph one cannot but conclude that this outcome is anything but tragic - it is INEVITABLE, in most cases. Simply imagining what is being presented to the mind again and again creating suffocation of guilt only interrupted by further intoxication ... THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO HELL should be obvious to everyone, who is anything but oblivious to LIFE - GOD ALMIGHTY -, ... But than again, considering it was obvious to everyone, it would be contradictory to REALITY as represented in today's world - last episode of d lemon - as THE MAJORITY is blinded by its own PRIDE, ARROGANCE, HYPOCRISY AND HUBRIS - a belly button watching toddler tormented by its own VICES.
A very insightful and enjoyable read. Thank you. There used to be actual public intellectuals-- intellectuals who weren't ashamed to communicate with the broader public. I grew up seeing Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, William Buckley, Truman Capote, Malcolm Muggeridge, Anthony Burgess and Gore Vidal on national talk shows. Not to mention Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Wells. They were on regularly, not just once in a while. JFK's speeches and news conferences were feasts of sly humor and historical and literary references. Malcolm X appeared on the Sunday political shows (there are still YouTube videos out there of him dismantling his questioners). MLK was genuinely eloquent and profound. Noam Chomsky appeared on Buckley's show (and, incidentally, annihilated him on US foreign policy). I remember watching a lengthy interview with Huey Newton. This hodgepodge of diverse (that is, genuinely diverse) views was accepted as part of the nation's discourse. Film and music was likewise a smorgasbord of crazy delights. I remember reading Hunter Thompson's first book "Hell's Angels" in high school when it first came out, and then reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when it was first published in Rolling Stone while in college (with Ralph Stedman's wonderfully insane illustrations!) I feel lucky to have experienced this period, and feel sad for my grandkids living in such a wasteland. As for what happened, you hit on most of the reasons. But above all, I believe the commodification of culture--the rule of money and profit over all things--is the primary culprit. I am convinced that even "woke" ideology is the product of the oligarchs' strategy of divide and rule. It would not be so prominent in media and academia without their support. It keeps us fighting about "values" while they remain free to rob and steal. There is one other thing I will mention. People didn't used to be afraid to express themselves. In fact, they were not, in general, afraid of much at all. Today it seems to me that we live in a society that is literally saturated in fear. But that is a discussion for another time. Thanks for the opportunity for me to ramble about times gone by. Times that only a few today will understand or relate to.
" That’s a long winded manner of saying: attention spans, over-dilution of choices, coupled with this internet-mediated demystification of authorial personas has left the audience disinterested, disengaged, and more apt to seek novelty in the form of trend-hopping or variety for its own sake." ... THE CULT OF MATERIALISM - every participant based on its own share of lies/delusions/deceptions - has/have created the perfect ZOMBIE to be fed while feeding off itself. Like a drug addict believing to be his own source of drug production. Sedation based on THE LIE OF MATERIALISM has to eventually fail as it is feeding off its NONGENERATIVE self - "AI" being the perfect example as it has nothing to do with INTELLIGENCE but rather with Regurgitative Reconstructive Algorithm posing as "intelligence" like a the "deceitful" magician, the only difference being that by watching a magician doing his tricks neither the observer nor the magician truly believe what they are perceiving, whereas Gates, Bezos, Musk, Altmann & Co. seem to believe their BS trick equates to being GOD ALMIGHTY, actually the same way they believe that "viruses" are real in the way they are trying to get rid of them by poisoning LIFE ITSELF with their DELUSION/LIE (you want to know more go to dpl003.substack.com) - only THE ETERNAL SELF-REGENERATIVE GOD ALMIGHTY CAN ACCOMPLISH LIFE OUT OF HIMSELF!
I am a character. My government tried to kill me for my work as a journalist. I hold political asylum in the USA, have been a millionaire and homeless in NYC. I've lived in 15 countries and have Tax IDs in 8— I'm not using them for any literary or other purposes, nudge nudge, wink wink, just to be clear to the spies reading SImplicius.
I've visited 83 countries, including both Ukraine and Russia. I've sailed around the world three times, criss-crossing America, Europe, and South America several times, Atacama Desert included. I lived with, say, the ladies of the night in Buenos Aires, cartel murderers in Tijuana and a supermodel in Mombasa.
A literary agent, situated on the lewd axis of Harvard - Boston - New York, someone close to me, took my "Jung's Demon" psychological thriller. She cried, saying, 'You're a mad-genius.' She prides herself on her editorial prowess, yet she couldn't remove a single word from the book. 'I don't know how,' she admitted. However, no one would ever publish it, she claimed.
Fast forward to my dystopian novel, "Tycho Brahe Secret."'Brilliant,' she said. But there's no chance, she claimed, because I'm a white male.
Fast forward again, and now I'm a samizdat author. 'As America Crumbles...' is my political book titled 'A Grim Chronicle Exploring the Evil Source of America’s Catastrophic Decline.' https://amzn.to/49XHujt, the rest is there. I skipped her but Amazon does not let me advertise it because, I kid you not, of their policy against 'Content that revolves around highly debated social topics.'
I am a character but I am nowhere to be seen. In Hollywood, where I also lived, I was more of a jester, a guy with gazillion stories, but my "Black Mondays" script, that went to CAA, ended up "lost" after I was told, no one would make a movie with someone like you. Zero chance. White. Male. Serious topic.
Not that I give a shite, just wanted to reinforce what Simplicius has written.
Interesting analysis, thanks, to which I, as an avid reader, would like to add this question: why should there be any 'great authors' when teaching to read (and write) has become ever more obsolete? If there are fewer and fewer people reading actual books then 'great authors' become extinct.
This whole 'literature business' has become a lefty, metropolitan game of 'insiders'. Meanwhile, the actual literature, despised by the 'litteraty' is taking place online. Not only is there a huge uptick in self-edited e-books, there's an even larger new genre, LitRPG which subsumes all the 'cultivation' novels which has been sailing under the radar of the 'new elites'. And like substack there's Royal Road for all those self-publishing writers.
And then there's the lates: AI. Yes, there are novels chucked out by AI 'writer stables' - execrable quality, but there they are nevertheless.
All that is readily and easily consumed on tablets or smartphones. And not one DEI infested 'publishing house' in sight ...
A diffuse organisation exists whose aim is "equality of outcome over equality of opportunity" and modus operandi is "infiltrate, take control, apply draconian measures to achieve our morally justified goals" . It is a cancer that needs to be gouged out of society, in the same way that Elon Musk did at Twitter.