The Self-Hating Book Critic

The death of the newspaper review meant the end of the literary authority who would declare that books by straight, white men are always the best of books. That books by the conglomerate publishing houses are the best of books. That literary culture exists only in New York City.

.. And that is what all those people on the picket line fought to save: a sexist, racist, elitist system.

.. I want to tell them: this world is not for you, you are better without it. Outside the gates, not in. This world was in fact, in part, designed specifically to keep you out. It does not want you. It will not nourish you.

..  Nobody really wants to be James Joyce, though. When it comes down to it.

.. Totally inaccessible and publishing poison, forced to self-publish with the help of two (inadequately celebrated) lesbians, thought to be a madman, and still cursed to this day. No one really wants to be James Joyce, living in borderline poverty with an insane daughter and a layabout son, quietly changing the world but very rarely, if at all, acknowledged for it. So completely out on the frontier his books were confiscated and destroyed by multiple governments.

But everyone wants to think they’re James Joyce, in their cozy teaching jobs, in mortgaged homes, writing about the same things that everyone else is writing about.

.. Anxiety’s primary function is to ready the body for action and for change. It is a complicated uprooting process, the gathering together of energy and focus so that when you decide what to do, you are able to do it.

.. Give a person absolute freedom and probably what they will do is just copy the person closest to them. The anxiety of making a decision under absolute freedom is too much to bear.

.. It’s why the Internet culture is just a copy of newspaper culture, but with a few fucks and shits thrown in.

.. Don’t think there weren’t nights where I woke up with the thought “My entire purpose in life is to help people make decisions about which books to buy; I am simply part of someone’s marketing strategy,” chilling me to the bone.