Friday 9/20/24
Salman Rushdie has never been any good at writing but Salman Rushdie has had everything handed to him because of what he's been fashioned to represent by and to many of the fools and frauds in publishing. People who are all about classism. People who go by who wrote something, rather than what the writing actually is.
This is very simple how this works. Here's the Rushdie recipe, okay? Fatwa issued, which was the best thing to ever happen to him professionally. Dramatic. Put the gravy train in motion. So there's one part of the recipe. Here's another: The word "Satanic" in the title of a book. Most read no further. You'd think a book with that in the title might not be boring. You'd be wrong. This is someone who was never more than title-deep, nor who needed to be, because these people in this industry were never seriously reading him. A few surface things, and boom, all set. It's always about other things. It's never, "Hmmm, let's sit down with this work and see what we got here."
Then, do magical realism. You can run a long con with that. You never have to say anything. Over decades. Characters needn't have depth. You can know nothing about women and have them be symbolic objects. You can objectify the hell out of women and your enablers will be like, "It's so poetic" and "It's so mystical" and "What a metaphor for the blah blah blah." You can fake it for a long time, especially when the people of the industry aren't honestly vetting--or reading--your work. Be from the East, write for the West. To publishing people, that's the stuff right there. They eat that up. The idea of it. It's not the actual reading of it. Have a distinct name. Peter Williams wouldn't have worked as well for the recipe. Be a bad human being. Be as arrogant as someone can be. Be someone who could say, "No, soap, don't need you--tonight I will be using my own shit for my shower."
All of this is going to appeal to a billionaire heiress without a jot of brains, ethics, or integrity like Sigrid Rausing of Granta. She's going to love all of that. We know that we're right in the wheelhouse of an avaricious, easily threatened, manipulative, craven bully of an empty suit like David Remnick. Same as someone like New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, who doesn't look at writing as a potential force or power in people's lives or the world, as this amazing thing or thing that ought to be done well and it's the best of which that should be put forward, because all she's doing is deciding who is the right kind of person, who gets this particular standing because of their blood, their pedigree, who they know and their blood and pedigree. It's classism and petty, simple, broken people wanting to feel like they're god within this system they have created and--this is the really important part--maintain. Keep as is. That way, they get to stay as is. They can be evil. They can be idiots. They can be bigots. But what they don't have to be is held accountable. They don't need to be competent. They can hate without reason or impunity. They can discriminate. They can seek to silence someone they know is better than they are in every last way. They can do whatever they want. No matter how wrong. No matter if that thing is criminal.
Or they think they can.
Rushdie has won every award. He wins awards for the awards he's won that say he's the best person who's ever won that award. You can look it all up on your own if you want to. You just need to know for right now that what you're about to see--which is from a story called "The Old Man in the Piazza" from The New Yorker--is meant to be, according to these people whom it is impossible to take seriously save in their capacity as bad, bigoted people, is the best writing in the world. This is brilliant. This is genius. We good? We on the same page? Let's get to it:
Five years passed. In the end it was our language herself who rebelled against the “yes.” She got up from the corner of the piazza where she had been meditating silently for half a decade and let out a long, piercing shriek that drove into our ears like a stiletto. It travelled everywhere, as fast as lightning travels. It contained no words. However, no sooner had it been uttered than all our words were unleashed. Words simply burst out of people and would not be held back. People felt great globs of vocabulary rising up in their throats and pushing against their teeth. The more cautious among us pressed our lips tightly together to stop the words from getting out, but the word-torrents forced our lips apart and out they came, like children released from single-sex boarding schools at the end of a long, dour semester. The words tumbled pell-mell into the piazza like girls and boys in search of happy reunions. It was a sight to see.
They were rough words, these first utterances—“Crap!,” for example, or “Get lost!” or even the excessively emphatic “Go fuck yourself!”—and this crudeness was perhaps regrettable, but these workmanlike, hard-edged words were effective, that has to be said. They were like bludgeons or explosives, and as they hammered down around us they swiftly brought the reign of the “yes” to an unsavory conclusion. The “yes” and its fellow-travellers (the aforementioned “of course,” “certainly,” “for sure,” “absolutely,” “totally,” “no question about it,” and “agreed”) were hung up on meat hooks in the piazza, and that was an end to that.
That was when the age of argumentation began. “But!” “Rubbish!” “Tripe!” “Nonsense!”
“Bullshit!” “Liar!” “Idiot!” “Don’t you dare!” “That is such ignorant bigoted shit!” “Just go away! Nobody wants to listen to you!” Who would have guessed that these unlovely words would take center stage in that moment—these, and not our language’s beautiful and justly celebrated poetry, to which we previously referred? Odes and sonnets, lyric and epic poetry stood ignored, striking attitudes and gesticulating impotently.
Our language remained in her corner of the piazza, watching, but she had cast off her corset and her disfiguring clogs, and her long hair and skirt flowed loosely around her. The skirt went all the way down to the ground, so we could not see her shoes, although we sensed that she was tapping her feet to the beat of some private music.
The old man also felt the pressure of words struggling to emerge from within him. He tried to contain them, for he was not sure what they might be or do or make possible or engender or destroy, but out they came, like vomit, words he hardly recognized as his own pushing through his lips, angry, contemptuous, blaming. Fortunately, everyone else was experiencing his or her version of the same phenomenon, so nobody was paying attention, and he himself soon forgot what those first words had been and settled back into his wooden chair to observe the life of the piazza as it now was.
Once the “yes” time had ended, the quarrels started up and drowned out the songs of the larks and the soothing plash of the fountain, which cared nothing for changes in society, and kept itself busy, in its insouciant way, with its fountaining. The old man—the man made old by sadness—no longer asked women questions of the heart, questions to which he already knew the answers, which could now be stated plainly without beating about the bush or claiming appointments at the hair salon.
At first, for a little while, he missed the silence of the five “yes” years. There had been something heartening about being in a constant state of affirmation, eschewing negativity, accentuating the positive. There had been something—what was the word?—something modest about declining to be judgmental, no matter how great the temptation. And something infinitely relaxing about being excused from a life of objection, of critique, even of protest. It had required a certain remodelling of the brain, that was true. He had had to restrain his natural impulse toward dissent, toward sentences that began “But on the other hand . . .” or “But isn’t it true that . . .” or “How can you possibly . . .” Save your breath—that had been the instruction of the age. Keep your unattractive words to yourself. For a time he’d found a measure of comfort in accepting the “yes.” In saying the unutterable “no” to “no.”
How stupid are you to be taken in by this? You have to want to be taken in by this. What we have here is all that Salman Rushdie does in his fiction and has ever done. Where is the substance? Why should anyone care about this? Fast as lightning? Whoa! Did you just invent that, brother? Fast as lightning. Because I've never heard that one.
There's nothing to care about, be invested in, moved by. The stiletto metaphor--awkward. That's someone who doesn't know what they're doing as a writer. A beginner would write something like that. And that wouldn't be one stiletto, would it? One stiletto for all of the ears? At the same time? How's that work? That's meant to be this edgy S&M kind of thing, too, but it's just a clueless old man saying something trying to be hip, like when Stephen King writes that some "bimbo" was "covered in tramp stamps." You should be embarrassed if this is what you do, but hey, look, there it is in The New Yorker.
"...like children released from single-sex boarding schools at the end of a long, dour semester."
You pompous gremlin. Though I could see that exciting Jonathan Galassi.
Note the absence of depth. We have some half-assed symbolic exercise as a story. Oh, language is a character, you couldn't say the word "no," but now you can, and after the embargo was lifted people sitting in a piazza--which is a word that publishing people like because it sounds foreign to them which they regularly conflate with imagination--swore.
Deep, man. Brilliant. What genius.
If you wrote that, do you think anyone would call you brilliant? Why the fuck would they?
You talk about the emperor wearing no clothes, which is not an image I like to think of having just seen a photo of Rushdie touching his fifth wife to date, someone thirty years younger than he is. She's a writer. That'll help the career. This photo doesn't look creepy at all. I'm sure it's love. And you get to listen to this awful writer tell you how amazing he is, which is a big thing for Rushdie.
Every Rushdie story, every Rushdie book, is this kind of nothingness. AI can write this garbage. Juvenile symbolism made to masquerade as "deep" fiction for people like David Remnick, who can't tongue a man like this hard enough and would willingly have tongue-replacement surgery if he learned that his current tongue would soon prove not to be up to the tonguing job, and that peach that is the bigoted classist Sigrid Rausing, and the fraud/liar that is The New Yorker's fiction editor Deborah Treisman, because there is no way she thought this was anything special.
Why is it special? What makes it amazing? Tell me, liar. Walk me through it. "Art is subjective." That's not the answer. What's good here? What is remarkable? I'm all ears.
And none of you disgusting classists and simpletons and frauds and poor excuses for humans and flat-out simple, unintelligent people can do that. I'm talking to you and your sort, Sigrid, and you, Remnick, and you, Deborah, and all of you people who lie your faces off that this is anything good. Because you're all full of shit. You don't think that's amazing any more than I do.
"But but but but but but but it's..."
It isn't and you know it. And there isn't a single one of you who can step up to me and tell me otherwise because you'll look ridiculous and you know that, too.
Who could we say the above was written by that would cause you to say, "No, that can't be true!" A high school student? You don't think a high school student could write that? Sure there are high school students who could do that. There are also a lot of high school students who can do a lot better. A writer hobbyist?
If your friend Beth who had been an English major and was trying her hand at writing now that she was an empty-nester sent that to you as a Word file in email, would you say, "Beth! Wow! You are the best writer in the world! You should be winning Booker Prizes and be worth millions of dollars and be a darling of The New Yorker's fiction section! And Granta!"
Would you say that to Beth? Or would you think what she wrote was really boring, nothing special, but it was cool that she was trying new things now that the kids were out of the house? Exactly.
Lyric poetry was ignored! OMG! If that doesn't hit you hard, I don't know what does. Lyric poetry was ignored. Now that's fiction, that's art, that really goes for it. There's the essence of the human experience, right? We need that right now, don't we? That's a world-changer. And it will definitely be around later on. How could it not?
Lyric poetry was ignored.
Fuck.
Talk about high stakes in your art.
Let me ask you another question. Two questions. Do you consider yourself a writer? There are millions and millions and millions of people out there right now who, when asked that question, would say, "Yes! I'm a writer!!!!" Okay. If you do consider yourself a writer, are you looking at the above and thinking, "I could never write something that good"?
Also: Rushdie loves the word "however." There's a book about the early days of The New Yorker in which an editor correctly observes that the more times you can cut out the word "however," the closer you are to the kingdom of heaven. Simple people who aren't smart and who can't write treat "however" as this go-to move. You know, people who also love the sound of their own voices. Those are always people who are saying nothing, aren't they? They're big "however" people. Pretentious types use the word to clear their throats as if to say, "Can't you tell that I'm very smart?" and also because they need filler because they don't really have anything to say and it also buys them some time to try to think of something, though to no avail. You can use "however"--"however many times she asked," for example-- but you may never use it in the middle of a sentence with commas on each side. Don't do it. There's an instance out there where it appears with something that has my name at the top, but I didn't do it. An editor did it.
And if you think it gets better elsewhere, look at anything this guy does or look at the whole story that the link above takes you to. The excerpt almost helps him out, because you might think, "Well, this is just a part of it, I bet Fleming took the worst part and other parts are better." Sorry. Go see for yourself. It's the same beige wave of nothingness all the way through in everything. You are full of shit, guy. You got nothing when it comes to talent or anything to say or any stories to tell or anything that anyone needs to hear or that impacts this world at all. it doesn't matter whether you ever wrote a word or not. You never had anything. You got tongued and lied about and given things that your work never merited. And you're also clearly a misogynist. The way this man writes female characters--if we're even going to call them characters--says a lot and, ironically, does so more effectively than his fiction conveys anything else.
"But but but but but but but but but he's Salman Rushdie! We must say these things that no one believes!"
Or you could have a shred of integrity and actually care a tiny amount about writing, art, merit, decency, and actual, legitimate ability. No? Too much to ask, eh, Remnick? Sigrid? Deborah? No, I get it. You are what you are. And what that is, is pathetic.
Remember what we've said and how we said it: The publishing system exists so that the people of publishing can be the people of publishing.
That's almost everyone in the system. It's David Remnick. It's the agent who posts shit about cats non-stop on Threads and wants to cosplay being some important person via gatekeeper status as she signs up morons exactly like her with nothing to say who will never make a penny who also post constantly about cats. It's some ridiculous failure of a writer who is an editor at a literary journal trying to get me to pay them money to form reject my story as they hook up those just like them and their friends to be in a journal that no one sees with the same MFA-machined writing that has as little significance as anything on earth. But they get to say that to me. The person who they see above them. The person they see as legitimate. Everything they are not. You can say it to me. And I can put you up on here.
Nothing is done on behalf of good writing or for readers. This system could not have greater resentment for good writing and be less about putting good writing out into the world or having people create good writing. No one here can write. Ability is hated. Feared. Envied. In the very, very, very rare instances in which anyone has any ability. Because it's just this shit and it has been for a long time. It's crap and bad people who don't give a fuck about writing or readers. Or anything. Save their tiny selves and being able to live their tiny, empty, meaningless lives, with all of their lies, and their lies to self, left unchallenged and constantly encouraged by people as empty and ultimately as inconsequential as they are. In the grand scheme of life. Of substance. Of having any purpose to the good.
But in their world? Their world that exists just so they can be what they are and hold down what they have? All of this bad stuff serves them well for now. Because it's what their world is entirely about. Not a single thing more. Anything else must be kept out at all costs. Take away the bullshit and the baseness, and there's nothing else here, just as there's nothing else to these people.
We having a good time? Because it's about to get better. You know what happens now, don't you? Of course you do. And who doesn't love a good prose off?
This is from a little something of mine I'm working on called "Finder of Views." Ready?
Lauren’s bedroom was a guest room by then, but a guest room with leftovers. A couple of childhood stuffed animals were still on top of the bed, though they could pass for whimsical, comforting décor. A splash of youth’s bygone days for the benefit of some theoretical overnight visitor, as if they might interpret these items to mean that you really can go home again, even if that’s to a home that wants nothing more than to close its eyes and wish itself back into being what it was.
Some of her books were in the bookcase. Nancy Drew stories and Jane Austen novels. There was a notable quantity of guides to butterflies. Many would think one would suffice for learning purposes, but here it was closer to fifteen, the complete set of which was regularly dusted and made to look as if someone had read all of its volumes yesterday and set them back where they belonged with a level of care approaching honor. She had always loved those delicate creatures, which weren’t as brittle as they seemed, as she’d been fond of pointing out since she was eight-years-old.
“They can actually weather,” she’d say to Mason, who was struck by the choice in verb and how natural it sounded coming from her.
“Weather what?” he asked.
“Whatever they need,” she said, “within reason.”
To Mason she made it sound like a butterfly couldn’t find its way through a hurricane—which it would have known better not to go out into anyway—but a premature frost was on the table.
Then again, if a butterfly had shelter from the hurricane, perhaps it’d be able to secure its survival as a result—a little shelter goes a long way—but Mason didn’t follow-up on the matter, preferring to allow for the possibility that the butterfly might succeed somehow in riding out the winds and not desiring to learn for certain that it would perish, because his daughter would definitely know. And she could always tell him later. There was always later. Just as it was later when Mason realized that the combination of a good memory and a preoccupation with the possibility of a better moment was capable of costing a person that which they would now never get to have.
The idea of the butterfly, adept at weathering, became a metaphor for him with her, of forms and challenges of life beyond the realm of the lepidopteran. He’d try to find a way to work that idea into into their conversations when he knew she doubted her ability—or her chances—to come through her struggles intact as she got older, life became harder, and the premature, once-weatherable frost from earlier days changed into mountains of snow appearing to negate all paths for flight and making it harder and harder to find shelter.
“I’m not as brittle as you think, dad,” she’d say to him, looking thinner than she had the last time he saw her, with her sinking cheeks and her eyes that seemed as if they were the only part of her face that was alive. Darting eyes, like they were sped up and went at a pace the rest of her no longer knew, but might relearn in the future.
Those eyes didn’t fit with anything else. They were too healthy. Or else they weren’t succumbing at the same rate, exerting themselves because other organs were failing in pulling their rightful loads of life and the eyes have a way of saying, “Get behind me—I will lead us all on,” even when a look emerges from out of those same windows that knows better, or fears otherwise.
She had always loved and found peace in everything butterfly-related, mastering myriad facts pertaining to their names, habitats, life spans, migratory paths. She was going to be a butterfly scientist, she told him as a kid.
To which he thought, “You already are,” because what did degrees—mere pieces of paper—really mean in the grand scheme of anything anyway, when it was the soul that did the actual accrediting?
“Dad, did you know that only five kinds of butterflies live where we do?” she’d said to him the same year she learned to read—days, in fact, after she first officially performed her nightly pre-bedtime story reading session on her own, having informed her mother and father that she could take it from there, thank you very much.
Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t recall seeing more than one kind of butterfly. Everyone remembered the monarchs. The flag bearers for the animal across the vast range of its species. The birds had no such representative. Just monarchs for butterflies. At least where they lived.
“No, I didn’t know that at all. Are you sure?”
He knew she was, but he wanted to ask anyway because that would make her happy, which would make him happier, a realization that caused him to ask himself whether he was being selfish, but that didn’t strike him as a fair assessment at the time.
“Of course I’m sure,” she replied, part chiding, but wholly confident.
She scrunched her nose as if to say, “Thanks for asking,” because she enjoyed these talks as much as he did, just as she knew that he knew she was right.
That's not exactly close, is it?
I'm laughing. You have to laugh, don't you?
How's that tongue doing, David? Deborah? You frauds. You get away with it because no one truly cares. That's how it happens. People want the tote bag so they can walk around and say, "I subscribe to this magazine and that makes me smart," but no one is seriously looking at what any of this actually is. It's not for reading, for life, for any purpose, save to be there so you people of the system can be the people of your system.
And what a sick, twisted, incestuous, discriminatory, evil system it is.
How about we talk about David Sedaris's beliefs about disabled people next and how, according to him, they don't deserve the same rights as other humans? He's another one of your gods, right?
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