CanLit on fire: who can win this game?

I had an immediate reaction to this meme (or whatever it is): truer words were never spoken! Of course, if you truly embrace this perspective you're seen as crass. But what is a writer to do? I've said many times that we don't expect a trained concert pianist to play in an empty hall. But that's the equivalent of what professional writers are expected to do.  That is, those who aren't at the top of what is starting to look like a literary slag heap.

I'm a little sick of being disappointed, and I do try to comfort myself with the three novels I did get published (NOT self-published, by the way - I had to wangle contracts from three different publishers). I also have three or four manuscripts stashed in my computer, and ran one in parts (Bus People - if you wanna see it, the link is here) on this blog. I think ten people looked at it. I just think if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and in this case it wasn't. 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2016/10/bus-people-quick-links-to-parts-1-12.html

But was there some sort of weird karma going on? If not karma, then guardian- angel-ship, which I absolutely did not believe in. But maybe something was protecting me from "success", after all: the kind of success that lifts the privileged class out of the slag heap of anonymity and onto the shoulders of the gods (while selling lots and lots of copies).

It seems the game changed before I could catch up. I was only interested in writing well, which I believed would result in having a healthy readership. I don't think that's an unreasonable goal. But it didn't happen, and now I know it won't.

But my melancholic acceptance of failure was disturbed by the current CanLit "dumpster fire" which is threatening to consume the whole industry (and yes, believe me when I say it IS an industry, though that's not such a bad thing - we all need to pay the rent). Though someone came down hard on me for posting the wrong piece on this (though there is no such thing as a RIGHT piece on this!), I will share a link (below) which gives you some idea of what's been going on in the schoolyard. If nothing else, it will give you an idea of the sheer complexity of the situation, how twisted and tangled it has become. Worst of all, it has made some writers afraid to say anything, knowing they risk having their most innocent comments mangled and distorted by the monstrous sharks of social media.

What vexes me is that NO ONE has yet said anything at all about how Twitter has poisoned the well: without even having to face your adversary, and having spent an entire nanosecond composing your thoughts, you can fire off the most hateful volleys, only to be met by a Greek chorus of approval from somewhere before your enemy fires back. Without context, and I mean ANY context at all, even relatively innocent statements can appear to be soaked in poison like a lethal dart.

I will be accused of being a crusted barnacle for saying this, but in the past, if a writer read something in a magazine that made her furious, and she wanted to write a letter to the editor in protest, she would have to take the following steps: find a piece of paper and a pen, compose it, fold it up, address it, find a stamp, walk to the nearest post box and drop it in. At any point, she might think better of it, or at least rewrite it. Then, after a long wait, perhaps weeks or months, it might be published (likely severely edited). But once a tweet is tweeted, there is no taking it back. 

Poison darts are poised everywhere, and can't even be deleted because someone will take a screenshot and use it as a weapon. Those who wish to have a future as a published author are on thin ice, and it doesn't help that the stodgy, arthritic, unmoveable CanLit establishment is sawing a hole in it.

Speaking out is risky. NOT speaking out is crippling, and plays into the hands of elitist powermongers interested only in disenfranchising marginalized groups who MIGHT bring fresh perspectives to the table, if only they were allowed to. But the reins of power, not to mention the purse strings, are in the hands of the Big Few - bestselling writers, hotshot agents, major publishers. So perhaps some unknown angel prevented me from getting what I thought I wanted.

Or not? Are the grapes sour? Who gives a shit, at this point!


CanLit-dumpster-fire-disaster



If you'd rather not wade through this long piece, here's a short excerpt which demonstrates how rancorous and confusing this has become:

Then, a new twist: B.C. author Angie Abdou wrote on Facebook that she in fact had notified Kay about Wunker's post as "part of a conversation about troubles raging in the [CanLit] community and how those issues are making their way into the classroom." But by the time Abdou went back to look for the post to send it to Kay, Wunker had unfriended her. So Abdou asked Bok to screen-cap it. In her confession, Abdou apologized for unintended consequences against Bok and Wunker; she called Wunker "a committed teacher and writer." She then left Facebook and Twitter. (On Thursday, Abdou provided The Globe with a statement. "I made a mistake, and I'm extremely sorry. I did not intend to betray anyone's confidence or to harm the reputations of anyone involved.")


Are you with me still? . . . No? Well, don't feel bad. Neither am I. The twists and turns of it are giving me vertigo. Come OFF it, people! Try to come up with some sort of armed truce, before the whole thing collapses and entire books are lost due to discouragement and pain. Creativity will be extinguished along with the flames. If people are not allowed to express themselves, if works of real literature (NOT TWEETS!) die on the vine, everyone loses. Everyone. Do you hear?

A Margaret Atwood Christmas

Atwood is a great subject for my PicMix art because every one of her images on Google is a posed, professional author photo. That means lots of blank space in behind - either that, or walls of books, and both of them gif up really nicely. As it turned out, there was a minimum of silliness in these (a little disappointing, really, but these aren't meant to be mockery). At the same time, the greatest weakness of these photos is that they are posed, professional author photos, meaning they are virtually interchangeable.

You have to try on all sorts of background effects for these things. One of them had her entire library in flames, and her in it. I didn't use it. This has some sort of vibrating Santa in the background, but that part doesn't show. The feverish, shifting stars are a nice touch. The animation is so bad in these that it's a kind of poetry.

Atwood as Santa was just too tempting to resist. 

In this one she looks uncannily like Barbra Streisand. I think the background of exploding roses is, if anything, restrained, so I had to use puppies and kittens to balance it.

This will cause seasickness if viewed for longer than ten seconds.

Jinglebell rock.

None so blind: the Galloway affair

May as well enter the fray, as most other writers have in this country.  But how to deal with the maelstrom of "issues" that have jumped out of the closet? Why is this strange jack-in-the-box suddenly exploding out of the container, if everything is going so well (as the more privileged writers insist)? Why are you so upset all of a sudden, why are "all you survivor people out there" in such a snit? God's in his heaven, all's right with CanLit: isn't it? Hey, MY paycheque is OK, how about yours? Gone to any signings lately? And let's not get into all the other issues. Better yet: let's.  It's my video and I'll kvetch if I want to. But after all these years, I believe I have a right.

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Canadian Idol: a portrait of Margaret Atwood

No, really! And it's only because I found this cool picture of her. I didn't really need to do much to it. I have no artistic talent whatsoever, but I have never let that stop me. (If I could only do things I was good at, I'd be six feet under by now.) The animation is the usual semi-shitty PicMix, but it's still better than the wretched Blingee which would always lose your finished piece.

I want to be done with the CanLit kerfuffle, but when I saw this picture I had to do something with it. You can put whatever interpretation you want on it. Project on it all you want. What I settled on was quite simple: Vancouver rain; cat's eye. The rest, she did herself.

No one swings more weight than this gal in the literary world - the tight, stifling, incestuous Canadian literary world. She is one of the few who "broke out" (? Funny expression - when I reviewed books, every new title would be called the writer's "breakout novel"). I never broke out, which means - what? That I am still imprisoned? "Out" seems to mean bursting out of captivity, or revealing one's true sexual orientation.

Oh, but it's just words! I've been hearing that a lot lately. Break out. Thrown into. Incarcerated, with its echo of something cancerous. Witch hunt, McCarthy trials, etc. Perhaps, just perhaps there are echoes of that, but I have not yet heard of anyone being burned at the stake.

It's provocative language, and we all use it. Thing is, this is a whole bunch of pissed-off writers with the capability of ripping into each other in a nanosecond (and not in some private paper letter, but IN PUBLIC, sometimes in front of a huge audience. Whatever else it is, it is most definitely a performance.) I wonder if humankind can be trusted with such a capacity.

All right, so I did two portraits. I wasn't even going to do ONE. It's pure serendipity which animations will work, and I like how the gaudy Gothic rose flashes on and off and sort of wraps around her, while the rose on fire on the other side is fanned by a bat. What does it say: don't mess with me? It was never my intention to stick my tongue out. I just wanted to see where this would take me.

DON'T check your views!

After re-reading some of my recent posts, I am sorry for, or at least a little embarrassed about, writing the same piece three or four times. I am referring, of course, to the recent CanLit debacle, starring Steven Galloway in the Randle P. McMurphy role.  I had thought of deleting one or two, but each one emphasizes a certain aspect. .  . so. . . ah. . . I was surprised to see it, anyway. Each time I wrote, it seemed like the first time. This may be a sign of advancing age and a brain that sometimes seems as arthritic as my ghastly old knuckles. 

Once I've written and posted things, I try to forget about them. I know that is not the best attitude, but it is my personal antidote to the feverish "OMG-I'm-not-getting-enough-views/likes/hits/kisses/love" that seems to be a requirement of bloggitude and the internet-verse in general. Lately I have been trying assiduously NOT (t-t-t-t-t-tttt) to check my blog views, simply because a few weeks ago they shot up by several hundred per post for no reason I could ascertain. Certainly I wasn't writing any better. Most of the views were for the kind of silly video I like to post, both to lighten things up and because I really do think they're cool. But some were for actual pieces of writing that I did. I was not used to this and almost panicked. Wait a minute! Is somebody trying to read my stuff?

I've never had what could be called a "readership", though at one point I was as anxious as anyone else who writes and tries to publish.  I'm of the opinion now that I should write whatever the hell suits, pleases and is personally therapeutic for ME and just put it out there. One person may read it, or none. My new YouTube enterprise is even more shocking: the only reason I get one view is that there is no "zero" setting, but was it ever any different? ("Those whose names were never called/When choosing sides for basketball" - Janis Ian, "At Seventeen").

At any rate, I don't want to write about CanLit any more, don't want to see people tearing into each other in public from the anonymous safety of their phone. Used to be, if you hated someone or were furious with them, you found a piece of paper, stuck it in your typewriter (or found a pen), spilled out your enraged thoughts in the letter, then folded it, addressed it, found a stamp (if you could find one - hell, I could never find a PEN!), then went outside (outside! THAT place), and started walking (!) to the mail box.

While it was true you couldn't take it back once it went thunk into the mailbox, that stroll might give you time to think better of it. Writers and people in general were usually advised to leave such a letter overnight, sleep on it. 

Whoever the hell sleeps on ANYTHING any more? And we all weigh 300 pounds and are more neurotic about power and popularity than ever.

Reduce the stigma? How about the stupidity?

Like most writers in these parts, I’ve already written about the current Big Issue in CanLit, and don’t want to recap it. This is a side issue – maybe – but it’s an important one that, to my knowledge, no one else has touched on.

It's unpalatable to me to read about someone being “arrested”, “incarcerated”, subjected to a “Gestapo-style arrest”, and “thrown in a mental hospital” (all phrases I’ve read on Facebook), when to my knowledge this person was taken to a psychiatric facility for his own protection. It happened because according to two of his colleagues (now being horribly demonized by some), he was in danger of committing suicide. My understanding is that a person in this position is not “incarcerated” but under 24-hour observation only and can sign themselves out at that point.

I wasn’t there, of course, but the people making these provocative and alarming statements were not there either. Yet they report on it as if they were, in some cases even “naming names” about people who WERE there and blaming/shaming them for the incident, as if they caused it or at least allowed it to happen. 

The narrative has degradation/humiliation as its main theme. Being called "crazy" is still the worst, most career-destroying epithet of all - especially when, of course, you actually aren't but have been tarred-and-feathered with the same awful brush. I get the sense of people pointing at some dungeon of the soul and claiming that he certainly did not belong with THOSE people, who were being medicated to the gills and given ECT without their consent.

This is not 1962. He is not Jack Nicholson being shocked and lobotomized. And this is a stupid, stupid way to try to create sympathy for someone who, in my opinion, does not deserve it.

The implication of “incarceration” is alarming, because it implies punishment via imprisonment in the “madhouse” (a la Solzhenitsyn, a martyring rhetoric). It also displays the shame, horror and stigma STILL associated with psychiatric illness or even the suggestion of it, and portrays a scenario of a sane man being “committed” and dragged away in irons, kicking and screaming about his rights.

Did that happen? I don’t know. Though it does not seem likely, it’s being reported that way. At very least, it is being suggested by provocative terminology that smacks of "well, she told me" - "then HE told ME -" whispering around the campfire circle, the story amplified and distorted with each telling. As with campfire stories, ancient terrors usually pushed to the back of the mind begin to emerge, and the story takes on a life of its own.

Who better to invent stories (especially about the horrors of the madhouse, a favorite topic in fiction) than a whole bunch of pissed-off writers? What better medium than the Twitterverse, that strange otherworld of verbal hit-and-run? Stories and counterstories, letters and counterletters swarm around, and there is a virtually audible sense of heartbreak. 

Atwood's deliberate use of the phrase "witch hunt" (please forgive the Salem ads, they were left over from my last post) is a direct stab at the credibility of the complainants. Surely these claims were groundless, or at least blown far out of proportion: really, "not that bad", only what any attractive young woman should expect to experience with a charismatic, hip prof (and maybe even an advantage, come to think of it - why aren't these women more grateful?).

It's almost universal for abusers in positions of power to reverse the dynamics when under attack, suddenly flip-flopping into victim mode to gain professional and public sympathy: in which case, the dragged-off-in-chains scenario would only help. (If he were actually mentally ill, of course, it would be a whole 'nother story: he wouldn't know what he was talking about). It's obvious that the "victim" has tons of powerful supporters, a virtual Who's Who of CanLit - though some are apparently beginning to think better of it. Meanwhile, people post and tweet "at" each other. I have even seen Facebook posts in all-caps, displaying far more fulminating fury than that notorious “other side” who can’t seem to shut up about powerlessness. 

It's a kind of civil war among people usually exalted for their intelligence, insight and sensitivity.

Can’t we do better than that? This is 2016. I don’t know what happened there, YOU don’t know what happened there, but let’s dispense with this awful “thrown in the loony bin” rhetoric. The fact that people still think that way makes me wonder if there is any hope for the much-vaunted movement to “reach out for help” and “reduce the stigma”. 

Let’s reduce (eliminate!) the stupidity first.

POST-BLOG. Obviously I still need to write about this. It's the only way I can get my mind around the meltdown that is happening in my field (though, of course, I am forever on the fringes, and now quite relieved to be that way). So please forgive me if I seem repetitive. Illusions are biting the dust all over the place, elitism is rearing its ugly head, friendships are breaking apart, and new writers are wondering how they will ever have a future in this precarious field, or (given the bizarre, sick dynamics of it) if they even want to. And what are the alternatives? 

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