The Really Dead Writers are Still Alive

I just realized something. Of the ten writers appearing in my Pretty-Boy Files, which is a timeline of 20th century subversive geniuses, only two are still alive, and one of those is essentially still unpublished.

I suppose that the timeline is a bit heavy on the late 50s-70s, so it’s not surprising that many of them are gone. But I don’t have a penchant for hippies or hipsters or drug-addled protestors. Well, let me qualify that. Actually, I guess I should just edit that line right out. But then again, I think my penchant for hipsters and drug-addled protestors (fuck the hippies, yes) isnt due to some fashion fetish but rather to the content of their messages. And, the fact is, writing in the last quarter century has been relatively void of anything truly subversive, as soon as you take out the gratuitous shock of the 80s novelists or the hippie pandering of the late 90s-early 21st century internet writers.

The most subversive content we’ve had of late is Bono swearing at an awards show, Janet Jackson pretending to accidentally show us her tit, and journalists talking frankly about Clinton’s cock stains.

There were three people that everyone looked for to comment on the death of Doc Thompson: Mailer, Steadman and Wolfe. All contemporaries of the man, to be sure. But at the same time, all now essentially irrelevent to the literary world. If the past is prologue, man, nobody’s even getting to chapter one these days. Our new writers are cute little fucks drolled out by the McSweeneys crew. Aside from their overwrought ironies, they have one thing in common – they all got rich before they turned 30. No one on my list of Pretty-Boys was rich by 30. Or, if they were, they blew it on blow, booze or gambling debts. (Mr. Burroughs, I’m speaking of you, sir. Good sir.)

Struggle feeds genius. There’s no such thing as a genius with a martini and a pedicure. Once a man starts getting his nails done or starts timing his shaves with photo shoots for book sleeves and newspaper interviews, he’s lost whatever genius he had, crapped it right out his unspeakable ass.

These new writers don’t know struggle. Getting a half million dollar advance on your first novel as a 23-year-old sucks out any real insights you might have been able to put to paper. But make no mistake, it’s not the fault of the publishing world that you’re a bad writer, just because they funded your downfall. It’s just that you’re part of a trend, and all trends die, because trends arent movements, any more than shitting away your intelligence and perspective is a movement. Because shitting is supposed to be for the bad stuff, not for the only stuff that makes you real. If that were the case, we’d all be dead in our diapers.

I have to get back to my writing, so this part is done. But I’m saving a slot there for you, if you can get off the crapper long enough to write something of worth instead of posing for Writers Lifestyle Weekly. And comb your fucking hair. Nobody cares.

- posted by seanmh @ 9:38 AM