Forum / Movie Stars Being Published in the New Yorker

Chris Okum
Sep 09, 09:51pm

Can someone please convince me why this shouldn't be irritating?

Christopher Allen
Sep 09, 10:13pm

Are they intelligent people with something to say? Even movie stars can be smart. ?? Which stars were published? And why?

Chris Okum
Sep 09, 10:34pm

No doubt some movie star are intelligent. Some of them are even good fiction writers, I'm sure. But with all the unheralded fiction writers in this country, I find it irritating that they would publish Jesse Eisenberg (twice in three weeks) and Greta Gerwig. I don't know why. I just do. I find it piggish. As if being a young movie star isn't ego gratification enough, you also have to have your agent call up the editor of the New Yorker and ask if they can publish your fiction. I probably just sound bitter. That's because I am bitter.

mxi wodd
Sep 09, 11:38pm

Bitter?

Yeah, bit him too...

Christian Bell
Sep 10, 01:31pm

Steve Martin used to have some regular work in the New Yorker. I remember that being fairly decent.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 02:48pm

The New Yorker? Are they still around?

Frankie Saxx
Sep 10, 03:04pm

I have never heard of either of those people.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 03:21pm

Eisenberg's a Disney regular... or something.

Greta Gerwig is one of those mumblecore types, so New Yorkers probably think she's all hip and edgy smart. Maybe she is.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 03:25pm

One of the editors at the New Yorker actually puts notes on rejections, encouraging notes, but always rejected my stuff.

It's the new phenomenon, looking to famous people for everything, in or out of their zone... blame it on the alternate reality TV movement, the strange attraction people have for celebrity.

Do you really want to see an Okum story in the New Yorker?

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 05:55pm

"Do you really want to see an Okum story in the New Yorker?"

HELL YESSSSSSSSS

;-)

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 06:15pm

I've been advocating his work here for the past three years...starting back when no one else gave a damn because he didn't play the suck-up game.

I WANT Mr.O to succeed.

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 06:29pm

"the suck-up game"

(Which, for the first three years of this website, was the only game in town...hence the proliferation of fleeting popular mediocrity. But Chris is a ROCK of creativity who deserves his coming fame.)

Frankie Saxx
Sep 10, 07:57pm

"The Suck-Up Game" sounds like a novel.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 08:15pm

It's always nice to hear from a lone voice crying in the wilderness of mirrors.

Sally Houtman
Sep 10, 08:17pm

"Chris is a ROCK of creativity who deserves his coming fame"

And when it does come (and I believe it is inevitable), it will be "clean" i.e. based solely on the merit of his work, earned through hard work, perseverance, and attention to his craft.

As it should be.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 08:20pm

No doubt.

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 08:20pm

It would be very short:

I publish you.
You publish me.
I interview you.
You interview me.
I review* you.
You review me.
I blurb you.
You blurb me.

And no one
in the real world
cares.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* I have yet to see an honest review of any fictionauter by any fictonauter. It's always a puff piece.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 08:23pm

"One of your best for sure."

Hemrod Mcdowd

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 08:32pm

Well, *that* piece of yours WAS one of your best!

;-)

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 08:34pm

(I just don't think the comment box is the place to do a "review" (i.e. speak as if you are writing a blub).

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 09:03pm

"That's because I am bitter."

Success is the best revenge.

Carol Reid
Sep 10, 09:24pm

I'm wondering why the New Yorker is still seen as the pinnacle ( if it is...I haven't read it in years) but it does annoy me, mildly, when literary space is appropriated by other kinds of celebrities. It does seem uncalled for and greedy, but yep, this is a have-not talking.

It happens in music, too and that I find even more annoying ( I have always enjoyed Jeff Bridges as an actor, but did he really have to take a slot on Austin City Limits? Really?)

Oh, were we talking about Chris Okum? I agree that his work deserves a wider, attentive audience.

I gotta say, re : reviews. I published several reviews of Fictionauters' short story collections and I stand by them as honest reviews.

mxi wodd
Sep 10, 09:24pm

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stick to your heart/mind, dude.

You'll make it.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 10, 09:56pm

Fictionaut is more of a place where writers can help one another by bolstering their work. There are venues where 'honest' reviews are expected. Although it's true that people use the social media to ramp up the attention and some are bold enough here to ask others for 'faves.' "You fave mine, I'll fave yours." But on the whole, people tend to pay attention to work that is both both brief and of high quality. Ignore the small stuff. Life is too short.

Chris Okum has been consistent in the creative quality of his work and receives well-earned recognition for his work here regardless of the games. The truth? If I had not joined Fictionaut, I might never have read his stories. The greatest value here must finally be exposure.

There are many people who post here who I would not have read elsewhere. And I do believe Fictionaut has helped me personally through exposure. One thing that would be a great help to the advocacy of writers here would be active involvement by more people with a venue, an outlet for the talent that exists. There are some, but more is always better. For writers, real advocacy is measured in exposure, in publication.

I can only applaud those people who bring exposure to the writers here by any means necessary, including those who tweet, retweet, blog, rumorize, gossip, scmooze, and otherwise make noise.

It's a jungle out there.

It shouldn't be a jungle in here.

Chris Okum
Sep 10, 09:58pm

Carol: I think you're right in being mildly annoyed, as opposed to my intense annoyance. And I'm glad there's someone else who thinks it's greedy. Because it is.

And yes, I guess I still idealize the New Yorker and what it stands for vis a vis the world of contemporary American fiction. I was always under the impression that you had to earn being published in the New Yorker. I guess I'm naive, along with being bitter.

Naive and bitter. That pretty much sums it up.

Amanda Harris
Sep 10, 11:59pm

It annoys me too-and I think it's bigger than just The New Yorker. It's grabbing book deals, big book deals, that anyone who's not a famous actor has to spend anywhere from decades to years for (James Franco, anyone?).

If the writing were good, maybe I might be a little less agitated, but when the writing is mediocre, it's really hard to treat it like it got there on its own merit-especially when you know that a magazine or a press probably had several better-crafted stories sitting in that slush pile.

mxi wodd
Sep 11, 04:16am

"It shouldn't be a jungle in here."

The jungle (Eden?) is the only proper background, canvass, for our lives and art.

Else we might as well wander aimlessly among the fluorescent-lit WalMart aisles, nodding and grinning and applauding each other like fools.

mxi wodd
Sep 11, 04:33am

Okum enters the jungle to write, and comes out with a new beast almost every time (and occasionally some minor twigs and unimportant clinging-vines wrapped around his boots....but that's the unavoidable result of the solitary creative journey).

The real stuff ALL takes place in the jungle.
At nighttime.

Frankie Saxx
Sep 11, 07:15am

Even when you live in the jungle, sometimes you need a cave to sit in for a while before you go back out into the nighttime jungle.

Frankie Saxx
Sep 11, 07:19am

Dear Chris,

I don't read the New Yorker anymore but I always read you.

----

If there was really amazing fiction in the New Yorker, it was before my time reading it. Or after. Or maybe in the periods where I looked at the money I was spending on a subscription and ditched it because there are other magazines I'd rather read and it seemed stupid to spend money on one I don't care for just because of its reputation.

I suspect the New Yorker has stories by celebrities for the same reason tabloids have up-skirt shots of them getting out of cars.

Christian Bell
Sep 11, 01:23pm

If Chris Okum were in the New Yorker, I’d resubscribe.

I would say that the New Yorker is still the pinnacle. For short fiction, it’s probably still one of the highest paying, if that’s anyone’s concern (the exposure would be more valuable than the several thousand dollars in pay). Given the amount of fiction they publish, and the writers they publish (usually, well-known writers at least in literary circles, and many of them are repeats in that magazine), and the restrictions on submitting (is it still once per year?), the chances are beyond slim of getting published there. For me, it’s not worth the energy—the lottery might be more worth my time. So, it’s not really my pinnacle anymore.

strannikov
Sep 11, 03:42pm

Having movie stars getting their deathless prose published in the New Yorker is the other side of the coin, so to speak: New Yorker-type authors have for years been writing material to further the careers of Hollywood stars.

My efforts at screenwriting, though I consider they helped focus my intentions, lasted but briefly and began evaporating as soon as I saw that Hollywood is even less amenable to writers than professional publishing has made itself (abiding as it does by its own star system). WGAE registration of my screenplays actually did nothing to enhance the quality of my writing, id est.

One challenge writers face now: to write stories that CANNOT BE FILMED. Our task is investigating interiority, which remains off-limits to filmmakers, and respecting OUR medium, which is words on paper and/or text on screen: WORDS, not photographs that fail to illustrate human interiority.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 11, 05:10pm

Gives rise to the phrase, interiority complex. Sorry, Strannikov. Could not keep my hands off the keyboard.

mxi wodd
Sep 11, 06:35pm

A magazine is gonna do what a magazine has gotta do

to survive

in this day and age.

Even The New Yorker.

If it gets a few more readers they're gonna do it.

Sally Houtman
Sep 11, 07:22pm

"Movie Stars Being Published in the New Yorker"

Perhaps the mistake is in calling it 'publication'.

It's not publication unless it's undergone (largely anonymous) editorial scrutiny.

Think of it as strategic marketing and it stings less.

Any large enterprise is about brand awareness, product placement, visibility, through whatever means.

Celebrities call attention to their brand.

They're a big, flashy sign to get you into their store.

Ann Bogle
Sep 11, 08:40pm

Once the NYer kept a story I submitted six months. I wrote a letter then and asked to be paid $26,000 for the story. I said I deserved it because I had submitted an actual short story of about 6,500 words rather than a novella. I also said that where I lived, in the sporadically affluent western suburbs of Minneapolis, that it felt unsafe not to drive a new American car. I explained that people against foreign cars might injure someone with a foreign car but that people not against foreign cars would not injure someone with an American car. No one would injure for that reason.

A series of stories by Chris Okum in the NYer would be a deserved and special delight. I already subscribe; a series by Okum would get me to read, to hurry eagerly to the mailbox Monday to see if it had arrived.

Ann Bogle
Sep 11, 08:42pm

Another thing I wrote in the letter: "It is as though I am sending you a cob of corn and you are returning the cob."

Charlotte Hamrick
Sep 12, 05:00pm

But, wait! Didn't Penny Goring say, "i’m always deeply cringing at any sweeping statements about what art is or isn’t etc. ugh. i’m not comfortable with the capital A either. "

;)

Frankie Saxx
Sep 12, 05:22pm

And yet another reason to love Penny.

Jane Flett
Sep 14, 07:50am

Guys! James Franco did not get your book deal! Lena Dunham did not get your book deal! Celebrities in the New Yorker did not get your book deal!

Go read Roxane Gay, she is the smarts:

"The only thing you can control in this crazy, crazy world is what you read and write. You can worry about James Franco or you can read and write or do other things like play Scrabble or Monopoly or go outside and exercise or hang out with friends or whatever normals do. "

http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/38196631347/james-franco-did-not-get-your-book-deal

and

"Yes, I am fucking jealous as hell but jealousy isn’t even the word. I don’t do what Dunham does. I write dirty realist fiction and popular culture and book criticism. There’s no comparison there. I don’t care about this particular book. I’ll read it. I might enjoy it. I don’t begrudge the book, the writer, or the deal. It’s all about me, really, sort of wondering, hey, when’s it my turn? When’s it the turn of all my awesome friends? This lamentation won’t keep me from keeping on, though. I have shit to do. And so do you."

http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/33168431829/we-are-all-going-to-be-okay

For what it's worth, though, I am also fucking jealous. And naive. But trying to keep off of the bitter.

Jane Flett
Sep 14, 07:50am

Guys! James Franco did not get your book deal! Lena Dunham did not get your book deal! Celebrities in the New Yorker did not get your book deal!

Go read Roxane Gay, she is the smarts:

"The only thing you can control in this crazy, crazy world is what you read and write. You can worry about James Franco or you can read and write or do other things like play Scrabble or Monopoly or go outside and exercise or hang out with friends or whatever normals do. "

http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/38196631347/james-franco-did-not-get-your-book-deal

and

"Yes, I am fucking jealous as hell but jealousy isn’t even the word. I don’t do what Dunham does. I write dirty realist fiction and popular culture and book criticism. There’s no comparison there. I don’t care about this particular book. I’ll read it. I might enjoy it. I don’t begrudge the book, the writer, or the deal. It’s all about me, really, sort of wondering, hey, when’s it my turn? When’s it the turn of all my awesome friends? This lamentation won’t keep me from keeping on, though. I have shit to do. And so do you."

http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/33168431829/we-are-all-going-to-be-okay

For what it's worth, though, I am also fucking jealous. And naive. But trying to keep off of the bitter.

Jane Flett
Sep 14, 07:51am

Argh, wo ist mein Löschen-Taste?

Frankie Saxx
Sep 14, 10:05am

Jane:

Love Roxane Gay on tumblr & twitter both, and the other places I find her work. Did you read the enchilada post?

Ann Bogle
Sep 14, 02:45pm

I love Roxane Gay's common sense and her uncommon ability to write short story fiction.

Charlotte Hamrick
Sep 14, 05:39pm

Thanks for pointing me to Roxane. Seems she has her shit together.

Henry Standing Bear
Sep 15, 08:34pm

I don't much care.

Sally Houtman
Sep 16, 01:30am

Well alrighty then.

Jane Flett
Sep 18, 02:08pm

I love the enchilada post! I love all her recipes. CHOP CHOP CHOP, STIR STIR STIR.

This is also wonderful: http://roxanegay.tumblr.com/post/29504832600/how-to-be-a-contemporary-writer

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 18, 02:44pm

So many lists. I would heartily endorse the first three in Roxanne's list, but to that I would personally only only add voodoo ceremonies and other surreptitious vehicles of influence, such as using any connections you may have with Corsican crime families, trout fishing terrorists, et al. Beyond that? Write well; write a lot; and convince yourself that you don't really care.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 18, 03:43pm

How barbaric... I've added an extra 'n' to Roxane's name. Excuse me while I seek out a hair shirt and flog.
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