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This essay is getting plenty of votes so maybe I am an uncultured yokel, but to me this essay smacks of an inflated sense of self-importance. Lines like "My ge

This essay is getting plenty of votes so maybe I am an uncultured yokel, but to me this essay smacks of an inflated sense of self-importance. Lines like "My generation of writers—and yours, if you are reading this—lives in the shadow of Auden’s famous attack on the relevance of writing to life, when he wrote that 'poetry makes nothing happen'" and "Only in America do we ask our writers to believe they don’t matter as a condition of writing" and "I know I’ll have a shorter career for being American in this current age, and a shorter life also. And that is by my country’s design. It is the intention." It comes off as one of those essays that is trying to use a veneer of profundity to mask unsupported hyperbole. Maybe I am being too harsh here...this is just a person who has written something they feel passionate about and that reflects their personal experience. The stories were touching, but what is the takeaway here? Raising awareness that writers and their craft are under attack? Helping writers to feel better about their self-worth? I'm curious to know what about this piece resonated with other readers.

randcraw 9y ago
Most pieces I've read by urban authors are basically koans. The don't seek definitive answers or promise deep insights. They act more as a lens, to highlight something that's been overlooked or underappreciated. They offer the reader an opportunity to reflect and maybe think fresh thoughts.
typomatic 9y ago
> what is the takeaway here? You didn't seem to have the endurance to make it to the closing paragraph, so I've reproduced it here: > I have new lessons in not stopping, after the election. If you are reading this, and you’re a writer, and you, like me, are gripped with despair, when you think you might stop: Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes—and make no mistake, it is already here—be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get there? The author believes that writing, and especially writing in America, is devalued to such an extent that he personally feels a sense of loss and fear. His advice to himself and others is that writing and self-expression has real value outside of whatever the people around you ascribe to it. Let me know if you want me to break it down any more.
- Nelkins 9y ago
  I found the writer.
- bernardino 9y ago
  > The author believes that writing, and especially writing in America, is devalued to such an extent that he personally feels a sense of loss and fear. His advice to himself and others is that writing and self-expression has real value outside of whatever the people around you ascribe to it. I don't see why he would feel loss and fear. Do you think you could break it down for me? I mean, American culture is particularly toxic and anyways, one should not be influenced by it but rather think for himself. I would expect as a writer he would be aware that writing in itself is for the writer, first and foremost, then for anyone else. With that said, why would it matter if a particular culture devalues writing? A writer knows inwardly that words and words alone are beyond powerful. It just seems he is already aware of the falseness of American culture, so why feel loss and fear in regard to what it devalues? It's all gravy, just write.
  - watwut 9y ago
    That is not how feeling works and author talks about feelings. Breaking feelings down is exercise in rationalization usually. Feeling is effectively chemical reaction in your brain after all. Why would you expect writer to feel the same feelings then you? People are influenced by culture around them, that is just how we are wired and that is what allowed us to build civilizations. The one "should not be influenced by culture" is not fully achievable goal. The the extend it is achievable, you start by realizing how it is influencing you, by thinking about it and that is what article is doing.
- vonnik 9y ago
  Writers have been despairing about writing in America for the last couple decades, maybe longer.[0] They are right to note that serious writing has been eclipsed by other media, like television, gaming, movies and the Internet. It's hard to make a living as a writer. Lots of people want to write, but nobody owes them a living, and they end up caught between their own inclinations and an indifferent market. Most of them end up teaching to pay the rent, like Chee. (That of course is pyramid scheme, like others in academia, where teachers teach would-be teachers even though there are not enough teaching roles to go around.) Chee has written some pretty good things.[1] He has also written some self-indulgent things, which, in my opinion, includes the essay through the link above. Self-indulgence is one hallmark of contemporary creative non-fiction in America. It's frequently soft autobiography and banal scenes ginned up with internal melodramas. Whether or not one enjoys that is a matter of taste that we won't settle here. Those who are put off by the self-indulgence will be less likely to read Chee in the future, which makes his expressions of despair the trigger of a vicious circle. But Chee is not writing for a general readership here. He says he is writing for other writers, and the general readers among us just stumbled on his letter to them. Maybe it's just what they needed. [0] Jonathan Franzen "Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a reason to write novels" (Paywall) https://archive.harpers.org/1996/04/pdf/HarpersMagazine-1996-04-0007955.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJUM7PFZHQ4PMJ4LA&Expires=1524535179&Signature=ahDC5czIWIzLbqcu9jouGMvwZqE%3D https://archive.harpers.org/1996/04/pdf/HarpersMagazine-1996... [1] Annie Dillard and the Writing Life https://themorningnews.org/article/annie-dillard-and-the-writing-life https://themorningnews.org/article/annie-dillard-and-the-wri...
slowmovintarget 9y ago
Don't all writers live in the shadow of Socrates' attack (as recorded by Plato) on writing anyway? After all, writing and the corresponding activity of reading diminish the skill of maintaining the Palace of the Mind. If he's responding to Plato, then he's on a well-tread path that nearly ever writer has come to or answered en passant for the last two millennia. Welcome to the club.
1457389 9y ago
I'm glad you made this comment, it really illustrates the thesis of the essay Let's start with the line I find most telling: >...a person who has written something they feel passionate about and that reflects their personal experience...what is the takeaway here? The takeaway? You can't just read an essay and live through someone's qualia for a bit? No wonder writers are despairing. At it's best, the author argues, writing is about: >...mak[ing] something happen in a space barely larger than the span of your hand, behind your eyes, distilled out of all that I have carried, from friends, teachers, people met on planes, people I have seen only in my mind, all my mother and father ever did, every favorite book, until it meets and distills from you, the reader, something out of the everything it finds in you. All of this meets along the edge of a sentence like this one, as if the sentence is a fence, with you on one side and me on the other. But nowadays everything has to be some kind of politicized appeal or self-help panacea for it to make sense (to you, Nelkins). On your substantive points about "unsupported hyperbole", I didn't see much hyperbole there, just a sad reflection on the work culture in this country and the sacrifices we all make to live the "American dream". It is not at all easy to support an arts career in this country, and it is getting more difficult every year. And that is lamentable. To wit: >I have been to convenience stores where I see people working with untreated injuries, and when I leave, I get panhandled in the parking lot by someone in a chain-store uniform who is unable to afford the gas to get home on the last day before payday—someone with two jobs, three jobs. Until recently, I struggled to get by, and yet I am in the top twenty percent of earners in my country. I am currently saving up for dental implants—money I could as easily use for a down payment on a house. But I’m not entirely sure I’ll see the end of a mortgage or that any of us will. I think he's right - there are clear decisions and policies that have created this dystopic state-of-affairs in this country. There was design, and there was intention, and this essay ends with a call to arms to save what may be as well as an elegy for what was. >If you are reading this, and you’re a writer, and you, like me, are gripped with despair, when you think you might stop: Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes—and make no mistake, it is already here—be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get there?

randcraw 9y ago

Most pieces I've read by urban authors are basically koans. The don't seek definitive answers or promise deep insights. They act more as a lens, to highlight something that's been overlooked or underappreciated. They offer the reader an opportunity to reflect and maybe think fresh thoughts.

typomatic 9y ago

> what is the takeaway here? You didn't seem to have the endurance to make it to the closing paragraph, so I've reproduced it here: > I have new lessons in not stopping, after the election. If you are reading this, and you’re a writer, and you, like me, are gripped with despair, when you think you might stop: Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes—and make no mistake, it is already here—be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get there? The author believes that writing, and especially writing in America, is devalued to such an extent that he personally feels a sense of loss and fear. His advice to himself and others is that writing and self-expression has real value outside of whatever the people around you ascribe to it. Let me know if you want me to break it down any more.

Nelkins 9y ago
I found the writer.
bernardino 9y ago
> The author believes that writing, and especially writing in America, is devalued to such an extent that he personally feels a sense of loss and fear. His advice to himself and others is that writing and self-expression has real value outside of whatever the people around you ascribe to it. I don't see why he would feel loss and fear. Do you think you could break it down for me? I mean, American culture is particularly toxic and anyways, one should not be influenced by it but rather think for himself. I would expect as a writer he would be aware that writing in itself is for the writer, first and foremost, then for anyone else. With that said, why would it matter if a particular culture devalues writing? A writer knows inwardly that words and words alone are beyond powerful. It just seems he is already aware of the falseness of American culture, so why feel loss and fear in regard to what it devalues? It's all gravy, just write.
- watwut 9y ago
  That is not how feeling works and author talks about feelings. Breaking feelings down is exercise in rationalization usually. Feeling is effectively chemical reaction in your brain after all. Why would you expect writer to feel the same feelings then you? People are influenced by culture around them, that is just how we are wired and that is what allowed us to build civilizations. The one "should not be influenced by culture" is not fully achievable goal. The the extend it is achievable, you start by realizing how it is influencing you, by thinking about it and that is what article is doing.
vonnik 9y ago
Writers have been despairing about writing in America for the last couple decades, maybe longer.[0] They are right to note that serious writing has been eclipsed by other media, like television, gaming, movies and the Internet. It's hard to make a living as a writer. Lots of people want to write, but nobody owes them a living, and they end up caught between their own inclinations and an indifferent market. Most of them end up teaching to pay the rent, like Chee. (That of course is pyramid scheme, like others in academia, where teachers teach would-be teachers even though there are not enough teaching roles to go around.) Chee has written some pretty good things.[1] He has also written some self-indulgent things, which, in my opinion, includes the essay through the link above. Self-indulgence is one hallmark of contemporary creative non-fiction in America. It's frequently soft autobiography and banal scenes ginned up with internal melodramas. Whether or not one enjoys that is a matter of taste that we won't settle here. Those who are put off by the self-indulgence will be less likely to read Chee in the future, which makes his expressions of despair the trigger of a vicious circle. But Chee is not writing for a general readership here. He says he is writing for other writers, and the general readers among us just stumbled on his letter to them. Maybe it's just what they needed. [0] Jonathan Franzen "Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a reason to write novels" (Paywall) https://archive.harpers.org/1996/04/pdf/HarpersMagazine-1996-04-0007955.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJUM7PFZHQ4PMJ4LA&Expires=1524535179&Signature=ahDC5czIWIzLbqcu9jouGMvwZqE%3D https://archive.harpers.org/1996/04/pdf/HarpersMagazine-1996... [1] Annie Dillard and the Writing Life https://themorningnews.org/article/annie-dillard-and-the-writing-life https://themorningnews.org/article/annie-dillard-and-the-wri...

slowmovintarget 9y ago

Don't all writers live in the shadow of Socrates' attack (as recorded by Plato) on writing anyway? After all, writing and the corresponding activity of reading diminish the skill of maintaining the Palace of the Mind. If he's responding to Plato, then he's on a well-tread path that nearly ever writer has come to or answered en passant for the last two millennia. Welcome to the club.

1457389 9y ago

I'm glad you made this comment, it really illustrates the thesis of the essay Let's start with the line I find most telling: >...a person who has written something they feel passionate about and that reflects their personal experience...what is the takeaway here? The takeaway? You can't just read an essay and live through someone's qualia for a bit? No wonder writers are despairing. At it's best, the author argues, writing is about: >...mak[ing] something happen in a space barely larger than the span of your hand, behind your eyes, distilled out of all that I have carried, from friends, teachers, people met on planes, people I have seen only in my mind, all my mother and father ever did, every favorite book, until it meets and distills from you, the reader, something out of the everything it finds in you. All of this meets along the edge of a sentence like this one, as if the sentence is a fence, with you on one side and me on the other. But nowadays everything has to be some kind of politicized appeal or self-help panacea for it to make sense (to you, Nelkins). On your substantive points about "unsupported hyperbole", I didn't see much hyperbole there, just a sad reflection on the work culture in this country and the sacrifices we all make to live the "American dream". It is not at all easy to support an arts career in this country, and it is getting more difficult every year. And that is lamentable. To wit: >I have been to convenience stores where I see people working with untreated injuries, and when I leave, I get panhandled in the parking lot by someone in a chain-store uniform who is unable to afford the gas to get home on the last day before payday—someone with two jobs, three jobs. Until recently, I struggled to get by, and yet I am in the top twenty percent of earners in my country. I am currently saving up for dental implants—money I could as easily use for a down payment on a house. But I’m not entirely sure I’ll see the end of a mortgage or that any of us will. I think he's right - there are clear decisions and policies that have created this dystopic state-of-affairs in this country. There was design, and there was intention, and this essay ends with a call to arms to save what may be as well as an elegy for what was. >If you are reading this, and you’re a writer, and you, like me, are gripped with despair, when you think you might stop: Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes—and make no mistake, it is already here—be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get there?