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shadowkat1. Saw this on Book Twitter - An Irrelevance of Talent - Bigots Don't Really Care About Literature by Patrick Nathan - which is on EW of all places.
A couple of interesting excerpts..
In the publishing industry as it exists today, large sums of money are directed away from the workers who acquire, edit, design, support, and market literature, and into the hands of an already-wealthy elite whose books exist only as marketing tools in political campaigns to further deprive others of their rights, personhood, or livelihood, whether directly (as in the case of DeSantis) or indirectly (as in the case of, say, Barack and Michelle Obama, who received $65 million in 2017 for a two book deal). This Reaganomics of publishing ensures that books with some of the lowest literary standards receive the vast share of attention and resources, while books that seek to raise the standards—and the culture along with it—are neglected, ignored, and undervalued. Most publishing employees, earning far less than a living wage and having to supplement their income with, as Vershbow and Harshberger point out, “freelance work, work in bookstores, work in retail,” do not last long in their careers. They don’t last because they can’t last; and literature itself—the culture itself—stagnates because of it. All the talented writers in the world can’t create a lasting, dynamic literature if there’s no one to push their work to a higher standard, guide them, pay them, or get their work into the hands of readers who might appreciate it. This is why so much of the industry’s marketing efforts have shifted away from individual books: the author, interacting with fans, mining their trauma, and photographed for interviews, is now the primary product of book publishing. Books require a certain skillset to understand and discuss; authors become, in their stead, a minor and vacant celebrity.
And..
Literature is in peril, in part, because literary critics no longer have the space or the compensation they once had to publicly raise literature’s standards; and they no longer have the space or compensation because the magazines they wrote for either don’t exist or employ editors who are overworked and underpaid; and these magazines are gone, or their editors overworked and underpaid, because the people who used to pay for these magazines are also underpaid and overworked, and cannot afford, financially or mentally, to buy them and read them; and this class of readers is underpaid and overworked because, of course, forty years of fascist policy in the United States has annihilated workers’ rights, funneled compensation to the wealthy elite, destroyed access to affordable healthcare (which keeps people in low-paying and abusive work environments), and not only allowed but encouraged living conditions—particularly housing—to soar to such incomprehensible costs that it’s almost impossible to live alone as an adult, much less have anything leftover to devote any time, energy, or resources to pursuits that don’t involve, relate to, or benefit one’s ability to keep working. Literature is in peril because work, in America, has become totalitarian.
I kind of agree and disagree with him at the same time? And the blog post led me to this one...
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Author warns about 'epidemic of self-censorship'
"Would Rushdie's novel be published today? Probably not," Adichie said. "Would it even be written? Possibly not."
She said literature was increasingly viewed "through ideological rather than artistic lenses".
She continued: "Nothing demonstrates this better than the recent phenomenon of 'sensitivity readers' in the world of publishing, people whose job it is to cleanse unpublished manuscripts of potentially offensive words.
"This, in my mind, negates the very idea of literature."
If any of the books that had "formed and inspired and consoled" her had been censored, "I would perhaps today be lost", she said.
The 45-year-old also expressed concern that some people don't speak up for fear of vicious criticism or becoming the latest target of cancel culture.
I agree to a degree with the above statement. Political correctness can go too far. Books pull us into another's point of view, and that's important.
However, apparently some of this is the result of her views about transgender and her public feud with a former student who is non-binary.
Chimamanda Ngozi directs fiery essay at former student and cancel culture
The interviewer had asked Adichie about feminism as it relates to trans women. "My feeling," she said, "is that trans women are trans women. I think if you've lived in the world as a man, with the privileges the world accords to men, and then change gender, it's difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are."
In the land of 280 characters-or-less hot takes, some Twitter users were quick to equate Adichie with J.K. Rowling, who has been widely criticized for being anti-trans — and not without precedent. Last November, Adichie told The Guardian that Rowling's comments on gender identity were part of "a perfectly reasonable piece," from a writer whom Adichie called "a woman who is progressive, who clearly stands for and believes in diversity." (In that interview, Adichie reiterated a familiar point: she called social media takedowns "cruel and sad ... and fundamentally uninteresting," intimating that nuanced conversation is impossible online.)
This brings up an interesting conversation I had today with Chidi...on an unrelated topic.
Chidi: Some people just can't get outside of their own heads long enough to see someone else's perspective or needs, which may be different than their own.
Me: True. A lot of people just think about what they'd do in the situation,and are unaware others wouldn't act the same way or why.
Selfishness gets in the way of kindness, I think.
And we live in a hostile world - we need to be kinder to each other and other living things around us.
Another interesting conversation with Cubicle Aisle Mate.
CAM: Has the world gotten ruder and meaner? It seems as if people find it easier to mean and cruel now than to be kind or nice? You'd think it would be the other way around? It expends less energy to be kind, and it makes you feel better.
2. Also found on Twitter...
Should we block the sun? Scientists say the time has come to study it
"WASHINGTON — The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the United States government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology.
That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be.
“Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing,” said Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and head of the committee that produced the report, referring to the need to emit less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Still, he said, technology to reflect sunlight “deserves substantial funding, and it should be researched as rapidly and effectively as possible.”
The report acknowledged the risks that have made geoengineering one of the most contentious issues in climate policy. Those risks include upsetting regional weather patterns in potentially devastating ways, for example by changing the behavior of the monsoon in South Asia; relaxing public pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and even creating an “unacceptable risk of catastrophically rapid warming” if governments started reflecting sunlight for a period of time, and then later stopped."
Or we could just reduce all our environmental pollutants. Invest in a high speed electrical rail service. Reduce domestic plane and car traffic. Reduce use of plastics. Curtail fossil fuels - insist everyone use green energy. Plant more trees and gardens, build less skyscrapers. Build more sustainable buildings. Change farming procedures. Create more protected wildlife areas.
Sigh, I feel the sudden need to send them all a copy of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary - where diminishing sunlight threatens to destroy all life on the planet.
***
3. On a personal note? I'm actually feeling better today. Best I've felt in a while. Stress levels are way down. And my blood sugar is about balanced.
Also had more energy today, and no real stomach conniptions. Well, this morning - was a little touch and go. The Metroformin doesn't always agree with me - especially when I have oatmeal or carbs, but I needed the oatmeal this morning for energy - the eggs aren't quite enough.
But it is cold all of a sudden. My new coat comes tomorrow from Lands End - according to the tracking notification. By 9pm. I need it. The wool tea coat that I used today, was almost too tight, and it wasn't warm enough - although it did the job, more or less.
A couple of interesting excerpts..
In the publishing industry as it exists today, large sums of money are directed away from the workers who acquire, edit, design, support, and market literature, and into the hands of an already-wealthy elite whose books exist only as marketing tools in political campaigns to further deprive others of their rights, personhood, or livelihood, whether directly (as in the case of DeSantis) or indirectly (as in the case of, say, Barack and Michelle Obama, who received $65 million in 2017 for a two book deal). This Reaganomics of publishing ensures that books with some of the lowest literary standards receive the vast share of attention and resources, while books that seek to raise the standards—and the culture along with it—are neglected, ignored, and undervalued. Most publishing employees, earning far less than a living wage and having to supplement their income with, as Vershbow and Harshberger point out, “freelance work, work in bookstores, work in retail,” do not last long in their careers. They don’t last because they can’t last; and literature itself—the culture itself—stagnates because of it. All the talented writers in the world can’t create a lasting, dynamic literature if there’s no one to push their work to a higher standard, guide them, pay them, or get their work into the hands of readers who might appreciate it. This is why so much of the industry’s marketing efforts have shifted away from individual books: the author, interacting with fans, mining their trauma, and photographed for interviews, is now the primary product of book publishing. Books require a certain skillset to understand and discuss; authors become, in their stead, a minor and vacant celebrity.
And..
Literature is in peril, in part, because literary critics no longer have the space or the compensation they once had to publicly raise literature’s standards; and they no longer have the space or compensation because the magazines they wrote for either don’t exist or employ editors who are overworked and underpaid; and these magazines are gone, or their editors overworked and underpaid, because the people who used to pay for these magazines are also underpaid and overworked, and cannot afford, financially or mentally, to buy them and read them; and this class of readers is underpaid and overworked because, of course, forty years of fascist policy in the United States has annihilated workers’ rights, funneled compensation to the wealthy elite, destroyed access to affordable healthcare (which keeps people in low-paying and abusive work environments), and not only allowed but encouraged living conditions—particularly housing—to soar to such incomprehensible costs that it’s almost impossible to live alone as an adult, much less have anything leftover to devote any time, energy, or resources to pursuits that don’t involve, relate to, or benefit one’s ability to keep working. Literature is in peril because work, in America, has become totalitarian.
I kind of agree and disagree with him at the same time? And the blog post led me to this one...
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Author warns about 'epidemic of self-censorship'
"Would Rushdie's novel be published today? Probably not," Adichie said. "Would it even be written? Possibly not."
She said literature was increasingly viewed "through ideological rather than artistic lenses".
She continued: "Nothing demonstrates this better than the recent phenomenon of 'sensitivity readers' in the world of publishing, people whose job it is to cleanse unpublished manuscripts of potentially offensive words.
"This, in my mind, negates the very idea of literature."
If any of the books that had "formed and inspired and consoled" her had been censored, "I would perhaps today be lost", she said.
The 45-year-old also expressed concern that some people don't speak up for fear of vicious criticism or becoming the latest target of cancel culture.
I agree to a degree with the above statement. Political correctness can go too far. Books pull us into another's point of view, and that's important.
However, apparently some of this is the result of her views about transgender and her public feud with a former student who is non-binary.
Chimamanda Ngozi directs fiery essay at former student and cancel culture
The interviewer had asked Adichie about feminism as it relates to trans women. "My feeling," she said, "is that trans women are trans women. I think if you've lived in the world as a man, with the privileges the world accords to men, and then change gender, it's difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are."
In the land of 280 characters-or-less hot takes, some Twitter users were quick to equate Adichie with J.K. Rowling, who has been widely criticized for being anti-trans — and not without precedent. Last November, Adichie told The Guardian that Rowling's comments on gender identity were part of "a perfectly reasonable piece," from a writer whom Adichie called "a woman who is progressive, who clearly stands for and believes in diversity." (In that interview, Adichie reiterated a familiar point: she called social media takedowns "cruel and sad ... and fundamentally uninteresting," intimating that nuanced conversation is impossible online.)
This brings up an interesting conversation I had today with Chidi...on an unrelated topic.
Chidi: Some people just can't get outside of their own heads long enough to see someone else's perspective or needs, which may be different than their own.
Me: True. A lot of people just think about what they'd do in the situation,and are unaware others wouldn't act the same way or why.
Selfishness gets in the way of kindness, I think.
And we live in a hostile world - we need to be kinder to each other and other living things around us.
Another interesting conversation with Cubicle Aisle Mate.
CAM: Has the world gotten ruder and meaner? It seems as if people find it easier to mean and cruel now than to be kind or nice? You'd think it would be the other way around? It expends less energy to be kind, and it makes you feel better.
2. Also found on Twitter...
Should we block the sun? Scientists say the time has come to study it
"WASHINGTON — The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific body urged the United States government to spend at least $100 million to research the technology.
That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space through techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be.
“Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing,” said Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University and head of the committee that produced the report, referring to the need to emit less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Still, he said, technology to reflect sunlight “deserves substantial funding, and it should be researched as rapidly and effectively as possible.”
The report acknowledged the risks that have made geoengineering one of the most contentious issues in climate policy. Those risks include upsetting regional weather patterns in potentially devastating ways, for example by changing the behavior of the monsoon in South Asia; relaxing public pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and even creating an “unacceptable risk of catastrophically rapid warming” if governments started reflecting sunlight for a period of time, and then later stopped."
Or we could just reduce all our environmental pollutants. Invest in a high speed electrical rail service. Reduce domestic plane and car traffic. Reduce use of plastics. Curtail fossil fuels - insist everyone use green energy. Plant more trees and gardens, build less skyscrapers. Build more sustainable buildings. Change farming procedures. Create more protected wildlife areas.
Sigh, I feel the sudden need to send them all a copy of Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary - where diminishing sunlight threatens to destroy all life on the planet.
***
3. On a personal note? I'm actually feeling better today. Best I've felt in a while. Stress levels are way down. And my blood sugar is about balanced.
Also had more energy today, and no real stomach conniptions. Well, this morning - was a little touch and go. The Metroformin doesn't always agree with me - especially when I have oatmeal or carbs, but I needed the oatmeal this morning for energy - the eggs aren't quite enough.
But it is cold all of a sudden. My new coat comes tomorrow from Lands End - according to the tracking notification. By 9pm. I need it. The wool tea coat that I used today, was almost too tight, and it wasn't warm enough - although it did the job, more or less.