Today, for no reason in particular, I’m thinking about writerly infighting. It’s alarming to know that your insulting groupchat messages could become public—especially in a culture of networking, where negative feelings about fellow writers are mostly expressed through texts, emails, and bar hangs. But if the contents of your groupchat can be subpoenaed and published at any time, maybe it’s better to cut out the middleman and air your gripes directly—like five naturalist writers in 1887, who took to the newspaper to publish a group-authored manifesto about how much they hated Emile Zola’s new book.
They roasted his experimental, document-based novels: “[Zola is] armed with faked documents picked up at third hand, full of Hugoesque bombast . . . and lapsing into perpetual repetition and stereotyped phrases.” They outed him as being preoccupied with his sales numbers: not only did his work seem sales-oriented, they said, but “those of us who have heard him talk are not unaware of it.” They said he was psychologically unstable: “Some attributed [his writing] to a disease of the lower organs of the writer, to the mania of a solitary monk.” They also claimed that his bad writing was due to a balance disorder from his kidney disease (?!).I'm going to use that (?!) and then the period.
The Five were clearly drama queens, but this literary feud feels ideal to me: everyone got to say their piece. I do believe in niceness, but in a way, I wish more writers acted like this—then, at least people wouldn’t worry about how they appear to others. Plus, it’s fun to read about. More brutal honesty! More self-important pans! Instead of being a Bad Art Friend, consider being a Good Art Enemy.
SM - she ain't 'black' - even if fiden said she wasK. Harris's father is a black man from Jamaica. Have you seen his complexion? LOL. That would make his daughter (Kamala) a black woman.
Originally Posted by oeb11