thank you Chloé! I do wonder sometimes what is useful “thinking about thinking” versus navel gazing—but I definitely want to write more about this in the future, and hopefully in ways that are interesting to others too!
This was a really fun peek under the hood of the essay. I’m always recommending Samuel Delany’s book ABOUT WRITING—he doesn’t quite do “case studies” (although he does give an incredibly exhaustive and instructive critique of a bad workshop story) but he does get VERY specific about the actual process of writing, in a way this reminds me of.
thank you Phil! also, this is a new writing book rec for me and I’m so excited—it looks like the SF Public Library doesn’t have an ebook copy, but maybe I can request that the library buy one?
The essay ROCKS, my dude! Also the Moshfegh quote in relation to it is gold! The whole subgenre of “why-does-everything-have-to-be-direct-and-what-do-we-even-mean-by-direct?” is evergreen for me, and this post is now part of its canon. Many thanks for this insightful writing!🥹 (btw a fave writer of mine in the aforementioned subgenre and whom I NEVER pass up an opportunity to recommend is Timothy Morton. They’ve got this line I can never get out of my head about how there’s “always a gap between something’s appearance and its essence,” and therefore directness is impossible)😮
I’m very intrigued by the Morton quote you shared! is it from Hyperobjects? I have to confess I have an instinctual FEAR whenever Morton comes up because I still have no clue what object-oriented ontology means in philosophy, even though I keep on opening the Wikipedia article to try and figure out…
I think it’s from “Realist Magic” (2013)— but it’s also an idea I think they’ve mentioned in more than one book before too?😅 So we’re BOTH right!
But yes, I TOTALLY get you on how daunting all the Morton stuff is, though! From what I understand of it, at least, I think Object-Oriented-Ontology/speculative-realism — if ya had to simplify it out of its annoyingly dense grad-school lingo— is kinda just a way to blend old pre-humanist metaphysics about “inter-connectedness” with modern science? Kinda like what Robin Wall Kimmerer did with “Braiding Sweetgrass,” except with psychology and astrophysics?
Lol that may have actually made it MORE confusing, huh?🤣 What a mess. Whoopsie language is a cage, etc., etc.
I love love love that you included the website that shows your process! It's so refreshing to see transparency and vulnerability around the process :-). Absolutely love your work!
thank you Travis! the website was honestly quite fun to make—and a very revealing experience (I knew I’d made a lot of changes to the intro, but I didn’t realize HOW much until I put the 3 versions side by side!)
thank you for reading & clicking into the website & viewing!!
I too always crave this niche genre! I’m so with you on desire for craft-level deconstruction. The food is delicious but I want to see the ingredients list and the recipe. It’s all about PROCESS 🤌 thanks for sharing this, been loving your substack lately
omg yes, whenever I go to a restaurant and eat something amazing, I want to reverse-engineer it and figure out what I like about it! And cooking isn’t even the craft I’m serious about; for the ones I take very seriously (design and writing), that craving for process work is even stronger.
Thank you for reading and for your very kind words!! 💌
I discovered your substack through your piece about the work / research / thinking that went into your Sheila Heti review (incredible), and when I saw this review out with CRB (also blew me away), I hoped there might be a newsletter on its way!! Couldn't agree more with your line about how endlessly fascinating it is to see the detailed behind-the-scenes of different people's work and processes and what they're passionate about, through interviews, marginalia / ephemera, archives, drafts, etc, and now your new (?) category of “process essay," which is endlessly fascinating to me! Would truly never stop reading if something like this were available behind every article, novel, piece of criticism I found interesting
Really interesting essay in the CRB. I’m compelled to leave a comment because I also wrote an essay connecting “Red Pill” and “Fake Accounts,” but I considered them more from the aesthetic point of view of “internet novels” as well as the genre of “Americans in Europe.” I didn’t really focus on conspiracy theories, but I did comment on the way the internet affects the consciousness of both protagonists and how this is represented on the page. I’d be really curious to know what you think of my essay since we seem to be interested in something similar here.
Love the Cleveland Review essay!! Thanks for writing and sharing. It's a niche view I've wanted articulated for a long time. If you're a fairly comfortable liberal in a well-off country and really take the liberty to talk to others in different spheres of global society, it's clear that there's no way to parse the kinds of things that systemically disadvantaged people believe about institutions unless you are committed to believing they are simply intellectually impoverished; less capable of reason (and therefore deserving of their place in the world). But it almost reads like a tautology when you say it as a matter of fact: people who are let down by institutions... have less trust in institutions. This is not surprising.
In some way the conspiracy theory is an attempt to create a simple narrative about the evil *outcomes* institutions when the actual reality is far more convoluted and also far stupider (idiotic rather than evil - or rather a banal type of evil). Simple in the sense that is simpler to believe that an institution is evil because it wishes and is designed to be evil, not because it is stupid. But, crucially, the evil is there.
Loved reading this and loved reading the essay! The intertwining steps of researching and writing is true for me as well. But I don't often talk to others about what I'm writing, and I think that could be key to staying excited about an idea and making connections I wouldn't otherwise have... I will be doing this more.
Also, this made me want to buy Gogarty's book and read Sedgwick’s "paranoid reading" chapter. I've seen the paranoid reading approach in my fiction book club, strangely enough, and it's such a striking approach to an activity that's mainly for fun. Some members only seem to evaluate a book by how un-problematic it is, and take issue with others finding anything good in the story. It bothered me, but I didn't have a way to describe it until now.
As someone who is also extremely curious about process, I loved seeing your drafts evolve! It reminded me of a project founded by Annelyse Gelman, in which you can watch poems get written from start to finish: https://midst.press
This was SUCH a great read. Loved getting a peak into your writing process. Please do more of these!
C.
thank you Chloé! I do wonder sometimes what is useful “thinking about thinking” versus navel gazing—but I definitely want to write more about this in the future, and hopefully in ways that are interesting to others too!
This was a really fun peek under the hood of the essay. I’m always recommending Samuel Delany’s book ABOUT WRITING—he doesn’t quite do “case studies” (although he does give an incredibly exhaustive and instructive critique of a bad workshop story) but he does get VERY specific about the actual process of writing, in a way this reminds me of.
thank you Phil! also, this is a new writing book rec for me and I’m so excited—it looks like the SF Public Library doesn’t have an ebook copy, but maybe I can request that the library buy one?
just found Delany’s essay in the Yale Review and I really admire the candor and introspective rigor he has: https://yalereview.org/article/samuel-r-delany-science-fiction-why-i-write
The essay ROCKS, my dude! Also the Moshfegh quote in relation to it is gold! The whole subgenre of “why-does-everything-have-to-be-direct-and-what-do-we-even-mean-by-direct?” is evergreen for me, and this post is now part of its canon. Many thanks for this insightful writing!🥹 (btw a fave writer of mine in the aforementioned subgenre and whom I NEVER pass up an opportunity to recommend is Timothy Morton. They’ve got this line I can never get out of my head about how there’s “always a gap between something’s appearance and its essence,” and therefore directness is impossible)😮
I’m very intrigued by the Morton quote you shared! is it from Hyperobjects? I have to confess I have an instinctual FEAR whenever Morton comes up because I still have no clue what object-oriented ontology means in philosophy, even though I keep on opening the Wikipedia article to try and figure out…
I think it’s from “Realist Magic” (2013)— but it’s also an idea I think they’ve mentioned in more than one book before too?😅 So we’re BOTH right!
But yes, I TOTALLY get you on how daunting all the Morton stuff is, though! From what I understand of it, at least, I think Object-Oriented-Ontology/speculative-realism — if ya had to simplify it out of its annoyingly dense grad-school lingo— is kinda just a way to blend old pre-humanist metaphysics about “inter-connectedness” with modern science? Kinda like what Robin Wall Kimmerer did with “Braiding Sweetgrass,” except with psychology and astrophysics?
Lol that may have actually made it MORE confusing, huh?🤣 What a mess. Whoopsie language is a cage, etc., etc.
I love love love that you included the website that shows your process! It's so refreshing to see transparency and vulnerability around the process :-). Absolutely love your work!
thank you Travis! the website was honestly quite fun to make—and a very revealing experience (I knew I’d made a lot of changes to the intro, but I didn’t realize HOW much until I put the 3 versions side by side!)
thank you for reading & clicking into the website & viewing!!
I too always crave this niche genre! I’m so with you on desire for craft-level deconstruction. The food is delicious but I want to see the ingredients list and the recipe. It’s all about PROCESS 🤌 thanks for sharing this, been loving your substack lately
omg yes, whenever I go to a restaurant and eat something amazing, I want to reverse-engineer it and figure out what I like about it! And cooking isn’t even the craft I’m serious about; for the ones I take very seriously (design and writing), that craving for process work is even stronger.
Thank you for reading and for your very kind words!! 💌
haha yes me too re: art and writing, I meant the metaphorical food and recipe :)
not me taking things far too literally 🙈🙈 but yes!
I discovered your substack through your piece about the work / research / thinking that went into your Sheila Heti review (incredible), and when I saw this review out with CRB (also blew me away), I hoped there might be a newsletter on its way!! Couldn't agree more with your line about how endlessly fascinating it is to see the detailed behind-the-scenes of different people's work and processes and what they're passionate about, through interviews, marginalia / ephemera, archives, drafts, etc, and now your new (?) category of “process essay," which is endlessly fascinating to me! Would truly never stop reading if something like this were available behind every article, novel, piece of criticism I found interesting
I love reading about other people's processes. Thank you for sharing yours!
You should check out the graphic (comic) series Department of Truth. It's a fascinating fictional take on this subject.
The website is amazing!! As was reading this whole piece. Now off to read the actual review :)
Really interesting essay in the CRB. I’m compelled to leave a comment because I also wrote an essay connecting “Red Pill” and “Fake Accounts,” but I considered them more from the aesthetic point of view of “internet novels” as well as the genre of “Americans in Europe.” I didn’t really focus on conspiracy theories, but I did comment on the way the internet affects the consciousness of both protagonists and how this is represented on the page. I’d be really curious to know what you think of my essay since we seem to be interested in something similar here.
https://open.substack.com/pub/derekneal/p/against-the-internet-novel?r=76737&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Love the Cleveland Review essay!! Thanks for writing and sharing. It's a niche view I've wanted articulated for a long time. If you're a fairly comfortable liberal in a well-off country and really take the liberty to talk to others in different spheres of global society, it's clear that there's no way to parse the kinds of things that systemically disadvantaged people believe about institutions unless you are committed to believing they are simply intellectually impoverished; less capable of reason (and therefore deserving of their place in the world). But it almost reads like a tautology when you say it as a matter of fact: people who are let down by institutions... have less trust in institutions. This is not surprising.
In some way the conspiracy theory is an attempt to create a simple narrative about the evil *outcomes* institutions when the actual reality is far more convoluted and also far stupider (idiotic rather than evil - or rather a banal type of evil). Simple in the sense that is simpler to believe that an institution is evil because it wishes and is designed to be evil, not because it is stupid. But, crucially, the evil is there.
Fascinating! Thank you for this.
Loved reading this and loved reading the essay! The intertwining steps of researching and writing is true for me as well. But I don't often talk to others about what I'm writing, and I think that could be key to staying excited about an idea and making connections I wouldn't otherwise have... I will be doing this more.
Also, this made me want to buy Gogarty's book and read Sedgwick’s "paranoid reading" chapter. I've seen the paranoid reading approach in my fiction book club, strangely enough, and it's such a striking approach to an activity that's mainly for fun. Some members only seem to evaluate a book by how un-problematic it is, and take issue with others finding anything good in the story. It bothered me, but I didn't have a way to describe it until now.
great post-and great article, I've just finished reading it
thank you so much
As someone who is also extremely curious about process, I loved seeing your drafts evolve! It reminded me of a project founded by Annelyse Gelman, in which you can watch poems get written from start to finish: https://midst.press