A friend of mine is in town this month who’s been through some tough times and, unlike me, throws herself into life when there are problems, which is great because she pulls me along with them. Among other things, she got me to go to the first literary reading since my own book came out: The Franklin Park Series, starring Mogan Talty, Megan Mayhew Berman, Isaac Fritzgerald, and Hernan Diaz.
The reading was in a bar, which is still strange to me. Not drinking disrupts routines in so many ways; I’m just always aware that I can’t keep up with the others around me. Sometimes that’s good – I was able to get a seat up front by not queuing at the bar, and during the break I didn’t have to choose between going back for drinks and going to the loo.
But that feeling of arriving after jostling for alcohol, the first sip, the relaxation, the signal to the brain: here I am, I’m fine now – it doesn’t just happen. So you just sit there and ask yourself: Am I feeling bad now? I feel stiff, uncomfortable, and grumpy because I want a drink and can’t get one, but one day this will pass and I’ll have fun again. Or am I unhappy because, until now, whenever I thought I enjoyed “readings” and “going out” and “talking about it” and “being alive,” all I actually liked was drinking?
Frankly, writers who are good at public speaking strike me as suspicious
Sure, now that’s melodramatic. Of course, I’ve never liked readings. My attention span is short and I’m not good at absorbing information by ear; besides, it’s funny how we expect authors to be able to perform their works in public. You can’t! And why should they? It’s a completely irrelevant skill. Frankly, writers who are good at public speaking strike me as suspicious. I was pretty good at it myself (I don’t think I ever ran off the stage throwing up) but I accomplished this feat by going into a weird smiling trance where I just said whatever I thought people would wanted me to say it. I then went back to my hotel room and drank until the embarrassment passed – which in retrospect was extremely suspicious behavior.
I have almost no memory of my book tours. There’s a film rupture that lasted a year, and not even because I was drinking; rather, I was in a perpetual state of panic and self-loathing that I guess my brain helpfully thought, Nah, that doesn’t seem like something she wants to tape. But what do I know, maybe other writers feel differently. The ones I saw that night seemed like they were having fun.
The fact that I’ve sat on the other side of readings also means that I have a strong reluctance to criticize even a little bit of the texts I’ve read (honestly, I’m such a heavy-hitter, it’s amazing that this newspaper hasn’t offered me a raise yet). I just know from experience how vulnerable it is to write something and talk about it publicly, which is why I’d feel like an asshole if I said anything but wholeheartedly agree.
Kristen Roupenian is a writer. In her SZ column “Trans Atlantic Express” she reports every four weeks on New York’s cultural life.
(Photo: private)
Of course, one could say that dealing with criticism is part of a writer’s job. And someone who googles his name, finds a review of his book in a foreign language, puts it into Google Translate, and then reads something critical of his work and finds his feelings hurt, he gets what he deserves . Of course people who write for a living have better things to do, you might think. I also lived in this beautiful illusion before I became a writer myself, which is why I used to enjoy reading and being able to criticize people on the Internet. But now I know the truth: everyone reads everything about themselves all the time. If you’ve ever written something mean about an author on the internet and they haven’t read it, it’s only because loads of other people have written mean things about them too, and he just hasn’t had time to read your meanness yet. But he’s coming, don’t worry.
You’re probably thinking I’m digressing unnecessarily and wishing I’d at least say one specific thing about that stupid reading I was at. But it was actually a super relevant metafictional ploy (sure, right?) because one of the writers reading there was Issac Fitzgerald, the former editor of Buzzfeed Books who, during his tenure, caused a bit of an internet uproar when he announced, Buzzfeed will only publish positive reviews. Although that was nearly a decade ago, I remember the outcry vividly; I was a simple reader at the time, and I passionately advocated: smack it, you coward.
Today I was also on the other side when it came to negative reviews. Among them was one that I felt was the most caustic, condescending, covertly misogynistic, hideous annihilation of all time. A review that, in my impartial assessment, should have landed its author a trip to the literary prison of no return, but somehow didn’t bounce back on him at all because things are going horribly.
Let writers just sit at home and be reclusive oddballs
I wonder how my life would have been if I had identified myself as opposed to negative criticism before I received it, rather than now, when my most basic objections inevitably come across as insecurity and resentment. But just in case anyone is interested, here’s my thinking: Yes, slating should be allowed, but only in print media with a circulation of less than 10,000 and only in languages the author doesn’t speak. Everything anyone says about someone on the internet should always be positive.
Also, writers should no longer be asked to read in front of an audience. Instead, publishers should hire actors to perform their writing, and authors should not be allowed to attend these events so that audiences can genuinely respond without feeling bad if they’re visibly bored.
And while we’re at it, there shouldn’t be anything like a “literary business,” physical or online. Instead, we should set up a redistribution program that only allows one writer per milieu. And writers should just sit at home and be reclusive eccentrics who nobody expects to go out and whose opinions basically don’t matter, just like God wanted them to.
Translated from the English by Marie Schmidt.
For more episodes of the Trans Atlantic Express column, see sz.de/transatlantikexpress.