Franzenfreude

Following up on the Franzen Frenzy, I keep thinking about the Twitter-spawned debate against the praise of Freedom launched by popular novelists Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner. As Michelle Dean at The Awl has written about this so-called "Franzenfreude," Picoult and Weiner "began complaining on Twitter...that the Times only liked books by 'white men from Brooklyn.'"

("Franzenfreude" is a malapropism, incidentally. "Freude" means "joy" and I don't think "Franzen Joy" is what Jennifer Weiner had in mind when she coined the term.)



The debate went on to the blogs at Huffington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, and more. Said Lisa Solod Warren in Huffington Post, "The truth is that authors like Picoult and Weiner can't hold a candle to Franzen... Why the two women are picking a fight with the coverage of Franzen's new novel is confusing. It seems more about professional jealousy than equal coverage or women's rights." And plenty of others have poked holes in the authors' argument.

Unfortunately, what gets lost in this smokescreen is the more important (and dangerously tricky) question of "Why isn't there more serious literary fiction being published by women?" But Picoult and Weiner don't appear to be calling for more serious literature from women--they are calling for lighter weight fiction by women to be taken as seriously as heavyweight fiction in general.

Weiner wrapped up her whole point thus: "In summation: NYT sexist, unfair, loves Gary Shteyngart, hates chick lit, ignores romance. And now, to go weep into my royalty statement."

In the world imagined here, Sex & the City should be awarded the Pulitzer Prize.



When it comes to contemporary women writers, I'd rather pick up something by Jennifer Egan or Claire Messud. I have not read Weiner or Picoult, so I can't critique their writing. I know that many people enjoy it. Their books sell in the gazillions and Cameron Diaz stars in their movies. They do alright. They are immensely popular.

Franzen will never reach that level of popularity. His characters tend to be (gasp!) unlikeable and, in this Internet age where personality is priority, audiences tend to see Franzen himself as unlikeable. He is called "high-minded," "too smart," and "pretentious." This goes far beyond Weiner and Picoult's tweets, which are just one part of the argument against Franzen (he dared to disparage Oprah!).

To me, it feels a lot like the anti-intellectual trend raging in this country today. And we need to be very careful when "high-minded" becomes a slur.



More and more, we are becoming a nation of know-nothings. When the serious reviewers of serious fiction start giving equal weight to "chick-lit," romance, and for gender parity, empty-calorie male writing, we will have taken the next step towards our impending Idiocracy. In a culture that encourages everyone to "Be Stupid" and "Stop Thinking," in which 1 in 5 Americans think Obama is a Muslim, and 18% believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, that is a step too far.

A literary novel is stirring up excitement today, in a time when literature has been declared dead. Everyday, we hear about how the Internet is making us stupider and how books are dying, even though they make us smarter, deeper thinkers--if we give them the time.

At this moment, do we really need attacks on any fine writer whose mission has been to "help restore Serious Literary Fiction to some place of importance in our culture"?



Everyone who cares about the future of reading and writing should push for the publication of intelligent books by female and male writers who challenge their readers to think.

As Franzen said in his cover story in TIME: "We are so distracted by and engulfed by the technologies we've created, and by the constant barrage of so-called information that comes our way, that more than ever to immerse yourself in an involving book seems socially useful. The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world."

Book Stigma

I've been trying for some time now to get my head around this new anti-book trend that has led to the popularity of soulless "vooks" like the Kindle and the Nook. Of course, there are many reasons for it, but in an article that scores major points for the coming Idiocracy, the New York Times recently revealed a shocking piece of the puzzle.

Apparently, there is a social stigma attached to reading books alone in public.


Pathetic misanthrope with no friends

This terrible stigma afflicts people not just in illiterate parts of the country and on junior-high cheerleading squads, but all across New York City, a one-time literary capital. What is the stigma? Simply put, if you are caught reading a book in public, you will appear to be: alone, unapproachable, "bookish," unwilling to socialize, and introverted. How awful. But there is hope!

Says a dermatologist on the subject, this dreadful stigma "no longer exists because of the advancement of our current technology. We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone."


Portrait of a stigmatized loser

Dermatologists ought to know. Maybe reading books is also bad for the skin? Perhaps a little Botox for reading wrinkles? Thinking is known to furrow the brow. No, the cure for this stigma does not come from any bacterial neurotoxin (well, maybe it does). The cure is simply: Buy an e-reader, preferably from Apple.

E-readers allow you to be connected to the hive while you pretend to be engrossed in reading. "Given that some e-readers can display books while connecting online, there’s a chance the erstwhile bookworm is already plugged into a conversation somewhere," said a professor of communication and media studies.


Marilyn Monroe: Bravely battling with book stigma

In other words: Reading without digital distraction is social suicide. It will make you unpopular. You will appear intelligent and, therefore, ill-tempered and unfuckable.

Always be connected and distracted, so you appear to be more socially attuned, even though, as anyone who walks the streets of New York knows: People on smartphones, iPads, and the like pay no attention whatsoever to other human beings, rapidly moving vehicles, or open manhole covers. They are in a sociopathic trance, and that is somehow preferable to reading a book?


Unlike lame books, the iPad will get you laid

What the dermatologist and the media professor, and other iPad lovers in the Times article, fail to understand, it seems, is that book lovers are very connected, especially in the presence of other book lovers. When reading a book, we are also connected to our deeper selves, and to the "bigger picture," to universal ways of being, to--dare I say it?--the human condition.

In the New Autistic World Order, the only thing we're permitted to connect with is the anti-human "Borg" system of electronic media. Failure to do so will lead to ostracism from the hive-mind.

But would that really be so bad?

Put us all on an island without Kindles, Nooks, iPads, iPhones, and Blackberries, with lots of bookstores and avid readers, and we'll do just fine. Oh, wait, wasn't that Manhattan not long ago?

• Read the whole Times story here
• On the Future of Books
• The loser bookworm's post-apocalyptic dream
  

Years ago, they put images of total losers on college buildings--
now only ugly gargoyles who can't get laid read books
(photo: Ephemeral NY)

Autistic Age

I came upon the following article in issue #58 of Philosophy Now. Published in 2006, it shows us how the age of the Yunnie is really becoming the age of the Autist, who rules our current, post-postmodern world, called here "pseudo-modernism."

I've excerpted a few key passages below, but the whole article is worth reading as it is relevant to issues on our minds today--like the effect of screen reading on our brains, the demise of books, the rise of plagiarism, and the end of empathy.



from "The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond," by Alan Kirby:

"In postmodernism, one read, watched, listened, as before. In pseudo-modernism one phones, clicks, presses, surfs, chooses, moves, downloads. There is a generation gap here, roughly separating people born before and after 1980.

Those born later might see their peers as free, autonomous, inventive, expressive, dynamic, empowered, independent, their voices unique, raised and heard: postmodernism and everything before it will by contrast seem elitist, dull, a distant and droning monologue which oppresses and occludes them.

Those born before 1980 may see, not the people, but contemporary texts which are alternately violent, pornographic, unreal, trite, vapid, conformist, consumerist, meaningless and brainless (see the drivel found, say, on some Wikipedia pages, or the lack of context on Ceefax). To them what came before pseudo-modernism will increasingly seem a golden age of intelligence, creativity, rebellion and authenticity."


Borg cupcakes

"The world has narrowed intellectually, not broadened, in the last ten years. Where Lyotard saw the eclipse of Grand Narratives, pseudo-modernism sees the ideology of globalised market economics raised to the level of the sole and over-powering regulator of all social activity--monopolistic, all-engulfing, all-explaining, all-structuring, as every academic must disagreeably recognise. Pseudo-modernism is of course consumerist and conformist, a matter of moving around the world as it is given or sold."



"This pseudo-modern world, so frightening and seemingly uncontrollable, inevitably feeds a desire to return to the infantile playing with toys which also characterises the pseudo-modern cultural world. Here, the typical emotional state, radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony, is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your activity.

In place of the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism, pseudo-modernism takes the world away, by creating a new weightless nowhere of silent autism."



"You click, you punch the keys, you are ‘involved’, engulfed, deciding. You are the text, there is no-one else, no ‘author’; there is nowhere else, no other time or place. You are free: you are the text: the text is superseded."

© Dr Alan Kirby 2006

No-Shoe Rules

In response to an article in the New York Times this week about how real-estate brokers are making potential buyers remove their shoes during open houses, many Times commenters defended no-shoe rules. I hate having to remove my shoes at other people's homes, and I didn't think I was in the minority, so I was sort of appalled and surprised by the anti-shoe outcry.

I then discovered an entire blog (Shoes Off at the Door, Please) dedicated to the no-shoe rule. In fact, a Google search about the rule yielded many blogs, threads, and other commentaries from people who make their guests remove their shoes at the door.

Is this annoying habit becoming a city-wide trend? Brian at Gawker had a rant about it earlier this year, and then there was an article in the Huffington Post, and now this piece in the Times. I think it's officially a new trend.



I suspect that this is yet another California thing that has overtaken New York.

It made me think of the "Porno Gil" episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry refuses to remove his shoes at a dinner party. He won't take off his shoes, and in the end, he's screamed at by the enraged hostess: "When you walk through my door you play by my rules! You take off your fucking shoes!"

Apartment Therapy in LA polled their readers a couple of years ago and found that the majority of responders make their guests remove their shoes. So maybe it is a California thing.

Californians definitely have a problem with shoes, in general. In high school, the girl who sat behind me in History class was from California. She put her bare feet all over my chair, and would often walk around school without shoes. Out there, they have a thing about sunshine and grass and being "comfortable."


Anti-shoe rage

But it's not just about California. That Google search I did on the no-shoe rule revealed more about who is enforcing it. Here are the primary suspects:

Moms
"Green" people
Germaphobes
People from Ohio
House fetishists
People who prioritize feeling "cozy"
White-carpet lovers
People who grew up with "mud rooms"
Japanese people (they're excused, it's legitimately cultural)

The germ excuse is a myth. MSNBC interviewed an infectious disease expert on the topic, who said, “If you want to prepare your cheeseboard on the bottom of someone’s shoe and eat it without sterilizing it, you could get yourself infected, but in ordinary life, shoes are not a known risk for infection."

Shaking hands and kissing your guests hello is worse. Said the expert, "Your body has more microbial cells than human cells. You’re more germ than you are you."



So, really, isn't it all about control? Above all, people want to have things the way they want them. Larry David's no-shoe fascist said it clearly: "When you walk through my door you play by my rules!"

In which case, it's time to fight against the no-shoe trend. Become what the no-shoe blogger calls a refusenik.

Don't take off your shoes in other people's apartments (unless they are Japanese, and spending a few weeks on vacation in Japan doesn't count). Don't slip hospital booties over your shoes, either, as many suggest. And don't swap your shoes for the creepy crocheted slippers these people keep in a basket by the door for guests.

Just say no to the no-shoe rule!

Meatpacking Abs

High above the Meatpacking District, a new Armani Exchange billboard has risen. It's an arresting image--mostly because there is something visually disturbing about it. Something not quite right.

It's those abs.



Did the male model swallow a cupcake pan? Is that an ab implant?

Could these abs really be real, or are they another example in the trend of rampant and vigorous airbrushing and photoshopping? Recall the whole Ralph Lauren brouhaha about what Boing Boing called the "creepily retouched" stick-thin model (who later said she was fired for being too fat).



In the UK, the government is now reaching towards a crackdown on airbrushing in ads and magazines. The Equalities Minister says it contributes to "the dreadful pressure that young people, girls and women come under to conform to completely unachievable body stereotypes."

Actress Emily Blunt recently came out against airbrushing, saying, "It makes you look like a Barbie. Who the hell looks like that?" And Liv Tyler wants to see airbrushing banned.

This week, Jezebel scooped some images from Ann Taylor featuring photoshopped "ribless monstrosities."


from Tweebie, "Hunky Ken Dolls" on flickr

The outcry is all about photoshopping's effect on self-esteem in women and girls, and that's important. But what about its effect on the body image of men and boys? Not to mention the way men are viewed and desired by others.

I don't know if the abs on the Armani Meatpacking man are real or fake. But does it even matter? Either way, we have a situation on our hands.

Sidewalk I.D.

Now and then, more often than one might think, when you are walking down the sidewalk in New York City, you find yourself stumbling into a reality-TV shoot.

Usually, being reality TV, it's something stupid and uncomfortably fascinating. Like a woman dressed in a bacon suit and chattering to a hot dog man. Or a woman and man dressed in towels and tin tutus for a show the PA guy tells you is called "Just Ask Mom," or "What Would Mom Think," or something like that.

(After a bit of research, I'm pretty sure that was food TV's celebu-mom Paula Deen taping the pilot for "Mom Logic.")


September 2009

If you're curious and have time to spare, you might lurk around a bit, listening and watching. But be careful. The production people sometimes carry signs like this:

"By entering this area, you consent to being photographed by means of video recording and you grant producer, carrier stations, sponsors, as well as their affiliated and related entities the right to record and use your name, voice, and likeness worldwide in perpetuity for any purpose whatsoever. In addition, you release the above parties from any and all liability in connection with your appearance and/or for loss or damage to person or property."



Let's repeat that: Simply by walking on a public sidewalk, you have somehow given several corporate entities, including advertisers--like the makers of Viagra and Preparation H--the right to use your name, voice, and likeness.

Into eternity.

For whatever purpose they desire.

If they want to put your face on a hemorrhoid and digitally manipulate your mouth to sing "Baby Got Back" while they machine-gun you with bullet-shaped Preparation-H suppositories, they can do that. And even if it causes you to lose your job and spiral into depression, you can't hold them liable. Really?



It's bad enough the streets are full of photo-snapping bloggers (like myself), cam-happy iPhoners, surveillance cameras, and the Google Streetview car. By now, we're all coming to terms with the fact that we are being watched and recorded much of the time. In public, we can have no expectation of privacy.

But the reality shows? They own your identity. And there is no getting it back.

Forever

In another blow to our public privacy, the new Forever 21 behemoth store in Times Square has installed a digital interactive billboard that incorporates...you. You might be walking by or standing around on 7th Avenue when this giant computerized model plucks you from the crowd. On the billboard, for all to see, she actually grabs an image of you.



Then she either kisses you and puts you in a Forever 21 shopping bag, sticks you under her hat, or makes a disgusted face and tosses you over her shoulder.

Naturally, people can't wait to be a part of this marketing stunt. They are crowding around, waving their hands in the air, trying to grab the attention of the computerized lady.

Will you be next?


images and video from DesignBoom