If you guys think it has been hard for millennial fiction writers, imagine being a straight white male poet from Dayton Ohio with a muddled Appalachian accent, from a working poor southern family, and a first gen college student to boot. I MFA'd from 2015-2018. Hardly anyone wanted to publish me, (and they still don't, much, but it's been better post covid). During that time, I had a GA job with a small press and I worked my ass off, honestly, doing more than my fellow GAs, particularly in terms of the manual labor of lifting boxes of books, because I felt guilty about having the job when marginalized folks in the program didn't. But after getting an MA in Lit, then my MFA during which for 3 years I'd worked in a university housed small press, it led to no jobs in publishing whatsoever, and just one interview, forget getting my own manuscripts published. I don't begrudge anyone for their luck or opportunities, but I just had one too many things riding against me. It was tough to take on a personal level. But then I realized it wasn't usually personal, either; people cynically go with what is of social utility, and my identity boxes just didn't fit with what was of use. Too straight white male for the publishing world, too working class for the academics and coastal elites. I thought I just sucked for a long while, then I realized that no, I didn't, but to stand out beyond my identity markers I'd have to write not twice, but three times as well as most writers. And though I'm not dumb, a genius I ain't. Sorry for the rant, I'm just glad folks are finally talking about it because I'm one of the suckers that kept writing, even though I'm moved to prose mostly now due to the bizarre and opaque nature of the PoBiz.
Perceptive and brave. Would read a book by him whatever he wrote about. I am a senior white lady with a partner and 4 grandchildren. Retired opera singer.
I agreed with this much more than I thought I would (I don't have a Compact subscription) because Savage makes many of the qualifications that I think the argument calls for. Nobody's owed a career in literature and if you really feel touched by the muse you'll find a way to write. But the fact that the New Yorker hasn't published a *single* piece of fiction by a white man born after 1984 is still astounding. This isn't some great injustice to white men. White men born after 1984 continue to be very well-represented in prestigious yet unremunerative fields that New Yorker readers respect. But surely it is a symptom of the expectation that fiction should the author's experience, identity, trauma etc. in an extremely direct way? One mediated at most by "technique"?
All the contemporary women writers that I like struggle to avoid the cliches of this kind of writing, which makes it hard to say anything interesting. (Although every era has a prevailing style.)
2. None of this is surprising; it’s entirely consistent with the current trajectory of the West—and by design. It is the inevitable outcome of surrendering your civilization to broads, faggots, and jews.
3. Not fully accusing Savage of this—but let’s not pretend being on a New York Times or Vanity Fair list equates to genuine artistic merit. That’s a retarded assumption. There are undoubtedly White men (the apex of human creativity) out there producing work of real artistic significance—it’s just not visible, for reasons already mentioned (see point 2).
I taught on a Creative Writing degree programme in the UK for nearly 20 years, until 2022. At the midway point, a young man told me, in the privacy of a tutorial, that he felt he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to write. I said something like, ‘You are who you are, and we all have the right to speak; just have some humility about the things you don’t know,’ but I suspect that message wasn’t being amplified elsewhere. I still remember this conversation.
I don't want to be rude here, but a) that Compact piece suggests that all the white male writers quoted have been physically coerced into writing their seemingly inadequately white and male literary novels, as opposed to wanting to write those things
b) men writing 'Instead they write genre, they write suffocatingly tight auto-fiction, they write fantastic and utterly terrible period pieces' is NOT a new thing but then the writer seems to have a very narrow 'aperture' to survey literary history
c) it seems only white men get to adumbrate what white men should be writing about - if a woman told other women what to write about in such specific terms, it would look utterly ridiculous.
d) there's a disingenuousness about what 'questionable politics' is....i mean, explicitly racist tomes (as I imagine this writer is after based on his vagueness about 'not being allowed to say things') weren't even being published by the mainstream press one hundred years ago.
e) NO ONE NEEDS ANYONE ELSE TO WRITE THINGS. Write your own fucking thing, get it printed, stop craving the mainstream. Because...for all the writer's edginess, that's what he's after - mainstream approval, isn't it...
A lot of tears are shed on this issue but when a white male writer with some critical approval for his talent posts a link to his novel in the comments, everyone shrugs at his desperation. I’ve been self-publishing since 2019 because I heard the “white men, don’t bother” trope from NYC agents directly. Kirkus Reviews called my debut mass shooting thriller, “a profound, harrowing examination of violence in the 21st century” but it did nothing to advance that book’s audience. But have a look if you truly wish to search out the good and better-than-good work. Otherwise it’s just another think-piece performance of the zeitgeist. It’s free for the next couple of days: NO WINTER LASTS FOREVER
If you guys think it has been hard for millennial fiction writers, imagine being a straight white male poet from Dayton Ohio with a muddled Appalachian accent, from a working poor southern family, and a first gen college student to boot. I MFA'd from 2015-2018. Hardly anyone wanted to publish me, (and they still don't, much, but it's been better post covid). During that time, I had a GA job with a small press and I worked my ass off, honestly, doing more than my fellow GAs, particularly in terms of the manual labor of lifting boxes of books, because I felt guilty about having the job when marginalized folks in the program didn't. But after getting an MA in Lit, then my MFA during which for 3 years I'd worked in a university housed small press, it led to no jobs in publishing whatsoever, and just one interview, forget getting my own manuscripts published. I don't begrudge anyone for their luck or opportunities, but I just had one too many things riding against me. It was tough to take on a personal level. But then I realized it wasn't usually personal, either; people cynically go with what is of social utility, and my identity boxes just didn't fit with what was of use. Too straight white male for the publishing world, too working class for the academics and coastal elites. I thought I just sucked for a long while, then I realized that no, I didn't, but to stand out beyond my identity markers I'd have to write not twice, but three times as well as most writers. And though I'm not dumb, a genius I ain't. Sorry for the rant, I'm just glad folks are finally talking about it because I'm one of the suckers that kept writing, even though I'm moved to prose mostly now due to the bizarre and opaque nature of the PoBiz.
You’re not a sucker, dude. Keep writing. Keep pushin’ it.
Perceptive and brave. Would read a book by him whatever he wrote about. I am a senior white lady with a partner and 4 grandchildren. Retired opera singer.
good
I agreed with this much more than I thought I would (I don't have a Compact subscription) because Savage makes many of the qualifications that I think the argument calls for. Nobody's owed a career in literature and if you really feel touched by the muse you'll find a way to write. But the fact that the New Yorker hasn't published a *single* piece of fiction by a white man born after 1984 is still astounding. This isn't some great injustice to white men. White men born after 1984 continue to be very well-represented in prestigious yet unremunerative fields that New Yorker readers respect. But surely it is a symptom of the expectation that fiction should the author's experience, identity, trauma etc. in an extremely direct way? One mediated at most by "technique"?
All the contemporary women writers that I like struggle to avoid the cliches of this kind of writing, which makes it hard to say anything interesting. (Although every era has a prevailing style.)
1. Daily reminder: jews aren’t White.
2. None of this is surprising; it’s entirely consistent with the current trajectory of the West—and by design. It is the inevitable outcome of surrendering your civilization to broads, faggots, and jews.
3. Not fully accusing Savage of this—but let’s not pretend being on a New York Times or Vanity Fair list equates to genuine artistic merit. That’s a retarded assumption. There are undoubtedly White men (the apex of human creativity) out there producing work of real artistic significance—it’s just not visible, for reasons already mentioned (see point 2).
I taught on a Creative Writing degree programme in the UK for nearly 20 years, until 2022. At the midway point, a young man told me, in the privacy of a tutorial, that he felt he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to write. I said something like, ‘You are who you are, and we all have the right to speak; just have some humility about the things you don’t know,’ but I suspect that message wasn’t being amplified elsewhere. I still remember this conversation.
I would hesitate to visit or rather avoid the New York Times top ten, because I hadn't fathomed Dueteronomy or Measure for Measure.
I mean literature as artful of meaning.
The best books are still the KJ Bible and Shakespeare.
Read them and weep
I don't want to be rude here, but a) that Compact piece suggests that all the white male writers quoted have been physically coerced into writing their seemingly inadequately white and male literary novels, as opposed to wanting to write those things
b) men writing 'Instead they write genre, they write suffocatingly tight auto-fiction, they write fantastic and utterly terrible period pieces' is NOT a new thing but then the writer seems to have a very narrow 'aperture' to survey literary history
c) it seems only white men get to adumbrate what white men should be writing about - if a woman told other women what to write about in such specific terms, it would look utterly ridiculous.
d) there's a disingenuousness about what 'questionable politics' is....i mean, explicitly racist tomes (as I imagine this writer is after based on his vagueness about 'not being allowed to say things') weren't even being published by the mainstream press one hundred years ago.
e) NO ONE NEEDS ANYONE ELSE TO WRITE THINGS. Write your own fucking thing, get it printed, stop craving the mainstream. Because...for all the writer's edginess, that's what he's after - mainstream approval, isn't it...
boring, Frank!!! do better!
Well, say something NEW!
<----
A lot of tears are shed on this issue but when a white male writer with some critical approval for his talent posts a link to his novel in the comments, everyone shrugs at his desperation. I’ve been self-publishing since 2019 because I heard the “white men, don’t bother” trope from NYC agents directly. Kirkus Reviews called my debut mass shooting thriller, “a profound, harrowing examination of violence in the 21st century” but it did nothing to advance that book’s audience. But have a look if you truly wish to search out the good and better-than-good work. Otherwise it’s just another think-piece performance of the zeitgeist. It’s free for the next couple of days: NO WINTER LASTS FOREVER
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0821VBVJH?ref_=dbs_m_mng_wim_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks