I find myself reading essay after essay trying to explain what the fuck is going on and none of them convince me that the author has any idea. It’s like a runaway algorithm where each essay gets more unhinged than the last. It started with speculation about trends and is now just doom casting. From fascism to AI apocalypse every “think piece” is a race to declare that the end is near. When I was a kid, those types were the butt of the joke. They were like the stereotypical flasher in a trench coat, but instead of exposing their genitals they held signs that proclaimed the imminent collapse.
Thought about this as welll and you kind of adress it in the same manner . A vibe shift is a feeling. a vague, itchy mood at best. So how can it be collective? It can’t, unless enough people mistake their personal unease for a cultural turning point. What we call a vibe shift is usually (imho) just a shared confusion, dressed up in trend pieces and boring thinkfluencer tweets. Real cultural shifts don’t vibe; they collide. They rise from the tension between opposing stories, not from a change in lighting or a new favorite font.
Bra-fucking-vo! Let's see more pugilistic resistance to stupid "neo-Romantic" and "vibe shift cringe totes" argle bargle and get back to some old fashioned papal expulsions (I refer of course to Andre Breton -- the "Pope of Surrealism" and his penchant for exiling from Surrealism (!! How do you say this with a straight face?! FROM Surrealism!) people he argued with about more or less anything). Scenes are always retrospective unless you do your aesthetico-ideological culling from the beginning like Breton (and by the way, new Mark Pollizzotti translation of Nadja in less than a month from NYRB, speaking of living in the past -- "whatta ya mean ya can't repeat the past, of course you can!" B. Dylan) so stop trying to make one happen unless youre gonna full on Kaczynski! Meantime, write and read and write about reading and fuck the hell off with this "vibe" bullshit!
Separate note, I really don't think Roth was the great social commenter you make him out to be, I think he was insular, far too inward-looking, far too self-obsessed, and far too filtered by critical acclaim to be more than intermittently good -- he wrote some very good books, but most were not great examinations of the American social scene, they were deep dives into the interests and viewpoint of one P. Roth, which sometimes were quite interesting and sometimes not. For my money the only novels he wrote that actually feature characters rather than essentially Roth stand-ins (again, nothing wrong with either) were the 90s ones, American Pastoral, to a degree the execrable Human Stain, and also to a degree So I married a Communist. Most of his earlier work, good and bad, was not astute social examination but careful dissection of P. Roth. DeLillo, though, DELILLO is the giant of 20th C literature in Amrikkka who doesn't get enough love these days, because everyone is so excited to vibe shift about how Roth was brave, and freeze peach, and unshackled from the publishing industry's woke prerogatives and limitations. Roth is the modern version of 90s high school literate kids loving bukowski (and he's certainly a step up in literary quality, but still. . .). if your chief reason for reading somebody is to shock yourself or your friends and family with how transgressive the material is, you're reading for the wrong reasons and you approach art with the wrong goals and you should go to the corner and mutter about vibe shifts to your fellow tedious boors.
These days I prefer DeLillo to Roth, and by a decent margin, but I’m not sure DD’s novels (despite maintaining a far broader focus) actually register mainstream social changes in the same way? Roth may have been always writing about himself, but you can still read the culture’s shifting preoccupations inside those books in ways that don’t show as overtly in DD. Maybe the modish marriage at the center of Players (say) is true to its particular era, but I dunno if the world of Americana and the one of Underworld or The Names are as far apart as the world Roth depicted in Goodbye Columbus is from that of The Human Stain (which I haven’t read in a loooooong time; I don’t recall it being one of my favorites, but it didn’t seem “execrable,” quite). I love Roth—most especially Sabbath’s Theater and The Counterlife—and I’ve read quite a bit, but he’s not a writer who pulls at me these days. If the kids are preferring him to DD these days that’s a pity, although I’m glad he’s being read. I’d rescue him and Bellow from the 20th Century’s burning building before I would Mailer or Updike, though I’ve a perverse sentimental weakness for ol’ Norm.
Players is a weak one for sure. I just read it a month ago as part of a project to finally read all of Delillo. Would rather have read White Noise or Libra for a third time. I think you are confusing the THEMES of Americana and Underworld for their world, the latter of which is definitely quite different from the former both in terms of novelistic skill and the outside reality driving the creation. I can grant your point that Roth has some tectonic-type social examination but I don't think it's fully conscious, astute, or particularly insightful.
I may have some sort of special antipathy but The Human Stain actually made me ANGRY when I read it at the time, at how clumsy and ham-fisted it was. It was like Rush Limbaugh talking about political correctness-level of old stupid boomer shit. It pulled the goggles off about how "brave" and deep Roth was. Some of his books are very good, but not that one.
Ah, yes. The "we don't know anything after all" message is alive and well. Of course, there's some truth in this line. But it's a half-truth. It's a safe booth to lean back in and claim bemusement. And who doesn't like bemusement? I certainly do. But it seems not quite finger-on-the-pulse commentary, akin to the tenured professor mindset.
Perhaps we stop calling it a "vibe shift." Perhaps instead we call it a change in policy. Like withholding billions from Harvard, eliminating all DEI federal funding, closing the border, pushing for no taxes on tips and overtime, charging your ambassadors with ending wars.
I'm not an advocate for this or any administration. I'm an independent and care only about outcomes. But the "we don't know anything after all" is well past it's sell-by date. And I think you secretly know it.
This just makes more emphatic what we all secretly know. You need to do what you want to do, and say what you want to say, without regard to the vibe. If the vibe is with you, nice. If not, well hard cheese, old man. Either way, just carry on.
I like the topic of your draft, but damn your writing is constipated and is the equivalent of a verbal obstacle course. I read it out loud and I think I sprained my tongue.
He looks like Dennis Wilson in the period immediately preceding his death, … is of course very understandable, if not very precise. In one funny novel about the 1970s someone was described as: …he looked like someone who’s brother was a member of Supertramp.
Gen z most cynical, thanx for da joke, merely da fact that plenty factions feel da need to hijack da vibe indicates that underlying there ‘s something happening beyond “thinking”, worlds overlap in dying & birthing, letting go of forcebly identifying with da skeletons inda western cupboard might help ya skip da burial too …
I rarely agree with anything on Substack but I’m making an exception for this. Gen X ftw
Gen X needs more solidarity! Nice to see the cadre forming.
💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
I find myself reading essay after essay trying to explain what the fuck is going on and none of them convince me that the author has any idea. It’s like a runaway algorithm where each essay gets more unhinged than the last. It started with speculation about trends and is now just doom casting. From fascism to AI apocalypse every “think piece” is a race to declare that the end is near. When I was a kid, those types were the butt of the joke. They were like the stereotypical flasher in a trench coat, but instead of exposing their genitals they held signs that proclaimed the imminent collapse.
Haha great comment just subscribed to your newsletter.
Thought about this as welll and you kind of adress it in the same manner . A vibe shift is a feeling. a vague, itchy mood at best. So how can it be collective? It can’t, unless enough people mistake their personal unease for a cultural turning point. What we call a vibe shift is usually (imho) just a shared confusion, dressed up in trend pieces and boring thinkfluencer tweets. Real cultural shifts don’t vibe; they collide. They rise from the tension between opposing stories, not from a change in lighting or a new favorite font.
Yep…
This a great post but it reminds me to re read Roth. The great American Novel is in fact a great American novel !
I’ve never read that one. That period (Out Gang, GAN, The Breast) is my Roth gap.
same, i think it’s the correct gap to have
Bra-fucking-vo! Let's see more pugilistic resistance to stupid "neo-Romantic" and "vibe shift cringe totes" argle bargle and get back to some old fashioned papal expulsions (I refer of course to Andre Breton -- the "Pope of Surrealism" and his penchant for exiling from Surrealism (!! How do you say this with a straight face?! FROM Surrealism!) people he argued with about more or less anything). Scenes are always retrospective unless you do your aesthetico-ideological culling from the beginning like Breton (and by the way, new Mark Pollizzotti translation of Nadja in less than a month from NYRB, speaking of living in the past -- "whatta ya mean ya can't repeat the past, of course you can!" B. Dylan) so stop trying to make one happen unless youre gonna full on Kaczynski! Meantime, write and read and write about reading and fuck the hell off with this "vibe" bullshit!
Separate note, I really don't think Roth was the great social commenter you make him out to be, I think he was insular, far too inward-looking, far too self-obsessed, and far too filtered by critical acclaim to be more than intermittently good -- he wrote some very good books, but most were not great examinations of the American social scene, they were deep dives into the interests and viewpoint of one P. Roth, which sometimes were quite interesting and sometimes not. For my money the only novels he wrote that actually feature characters rather than essentially Roth stand-ins (again, nothing wrong with either) were the 90s ones, American Pastoral, to a degree the execrable Human Stain, and also to a degree So I married a Communist. Most of his earlier work, good and bad, was not astute social examination but careful dissection of P. Roth. DeLillo, though, DELILLO is the giant of 20th C literature in Amrikkka who doesn't get enough love these days, because everyone is so excited to vibe shift about how Roth was brave, and freeze peach, and unshackled from the publishing industry's woke prerogatives and limitations. Roth is the modern version of 90s high school literate kids loving bukowski (and he's certainly a step up in literary quality, but still. . .). if your chief reason for reading somebody is to shock yourself or your friends and family with how transgressive the material is, you're reading for the wrong reasons and you approach art with the wrong goals and you should go to the corner and mutter about vibe shifts to your fellow tedious boors.
These days I prefer DeLillo to Roth, and by a decent margin, but I’m not sure DD’s novels (despite maintaining a far broader focus) actually register mainstream social changes in the same way? Roth may have been always writing about himself, but you can still read the culture’s shifting preoccupations inside those books in ways that don’t show as overtly in DD. Maybe the modish marriage at the center of Players (say) is true to its particular era, but I dunno if the world of Americana and the one of Underworld or The Names are as far apart as the world Roth depicted in Goodbye Columbus is from that of The Human Stain (which I haven’t read in a loooooong time; I don’t recall it being one of my favorites, but it didn’t seem “execrable,” quite). I love Roth—most especially Sabbath’s Theater and The Counterlife—and I’ve read quite a bit, but he’s not a writer who pulls at me these days. If the kids are preferring him to DD these days that’s a pity, although I’m glad he’s being read. I’d rescue him and Bellow from the 20th Century’s burning building before I would Mailer or Updike, though I’ve a perverse sentimental weakness for ol’ Norm.
Players is a weak one for sure. I just read it a month ago as part of a project to finally read all of Delillo. Would rather have read White Noise or Libra for a third time. I think you are confusing the THEMES of Americana and Underworld for their world, the latter of which is definitely quite different from the former both in terms of novelistic skill and the outside reality driving the creation. I can grant your point that Roth has some tectonic-type social examination but I don't think it's fully conscious, astute, or particularly insightful.
I may have some sort of special antipathy but The Human Stain actually made me ANGRY when I read it at the time, at how clumsy and ham-fisted it was. It was like Rush Limbaugh talking about political correctness-level of old stupid boomer shit. It pulled the goggles off about how "brave" and deep Roth was. Some of his books are very good, but not that one.
heisenberg effect innit
Ah, yes. The "we don't know anything after all" message is alive and well. Of course, there's some truth in this line. But it's a half-truth. It's a safe booth to lean back in and claim bemusement. And who doesn't like bemusement? I certainly do. But it seems not quite finger-on-the-pulse commentary, akin to the tenured professor mindset.
Perhaps we stop calling it a "vibe shift." Perhaps instead we call it a change in policy. Like withholding billions from Harvard, eliminating all DEI federal funding, closing the border, pushing for no taxes on tips and overtime, charging your ambassadors with ending wars.
I'm not an advocate for this or any administration. I'm an independent and care only about outcomes. But the "we don't know anything after all" is well past it's sell-by date. And I think you secretly know it.
This just makes more emphatic what we all secretly know. You need to do what you want to do, and say what you want to say, without regard to the vibe. If the vibe is with you, nice. If not, well hard cheese, old man. Either way, just carry on.
What performative, self-indulgent, shallow nonsense this piece is.
Okay, I'm a tool, that's not controversial, and also there has definitely been a vibeshift. I guess that makes this article right in a way?
If you're even thinking about vibes, you give off bad ones.
I like the topic of your draft, but damn your writing is constipated and is the equivalent of a verbal obstacle course. I read it out loud and I think I sprained my tongue.
He looks like Dennis Wilson in the period immediately preceding his death, … is of course very understandable, if not very precise. In one funny novel about the 1970s someone was described as: …he looked like someone who’s brother was a member of Supertramp.
Gen X was the pocket, living through three industrial revolutions, now it’s time to lead me thinks..
https://open.substack.com/pub/christophernicholaschapman/p/its-not-fascism-its-worse-its-a-game?r=2bnro3&utm_medium=ios
Gen z most cynical, thanx for da joke, merely da fact that plenty factions feel da need to hijack da vibe indicates that underlying there ‘s something happening beyond “thinking”, worlds overlap in dying & birthing, letting go of forcebly identifying with da skeletons inda western cupboard might help ya skip da burial too …
“The Indigenous American Beserk”
Roth was one of the rare beasts who was able to relate a history of the present.
Ferguson and his ilk are barnacles on the boat who think they are wearing a captain’s hat.