synapse collapse

I recently came across an editorial by Minnesota Native and New York resident Garrison Keillor. More accurately, I came across several responses lambasting Keillor’s editorial in the New York Times.

Back in the day, we became writers through the laying on of hands. Some teacher who we worshipped touched our shoulder, and this benediction saw us through a hundred defeats. And then an editor smiled on us and wrote us a check and our babies got shoes. But in the New Era, writers will be self-anointed. No passing of the torch. Just sit down and write the book. And the New York Times, the great brand name of publishing, will vanish (POOF) whose imprimatur you covet for your book (“brilliantly lyrical, edgy, suffused with light” — NY Times). And editors will vanish.

I don’t believe he’s lamenting the apparently already-bygone era of the powerful editor, the lowly writer, and the few Successful Authors. I don’t think that era is now, or will be, gone. It will change, and the role of the editor will be fulfilled by an as-yet unrecognizable person, but there will still be a need for the aggregator, just as there will be a need for both authors and writers. And as has always been the case, there will be many unsuccessful writers for every successful author.

Tony Delgrosso is one of the talented authors which Keillor targets. New age, self-published, and on the defensive. He writes:

In the end, Keillor’s message is just one more thinly veiled pity-party; he cares not so much about the arguable demise of publishing as an industry, but about the unwashed masses who now have the ability to reach an audience without the barriers to entry that he encountered. You can almost hear him whining, “But it’s not fair.”

Perhaps I misread Garrison, but I think this editorial is laced with his midwestern cheeky satire. Garrison’s midwesternly “nice” yet cynical and fatalist tone is apparently lost in print—especially in New York, where if someone doesn’t like you, they say so to your face. I don’t read him [Keillor] as lamenting the loss, and I especially don’t see him as lamenting the democratization of a previously controlling industry. My case falters severely with a line like Self-publishing will destroy the aura of martyrdom that writers have enjoyed for centuries. Tortured geniuses, rejected by publishers, etc., etc. If you publish yourself, this doesn’t work anymore, alas. But even at this, keep in mind Keillor has already proclaimed himself more a writer than a Successful Author, what with the 150,000 miles on his car and all. And I think there’s more than a little bit of satire in that “alas.” Never mind the fact that no true midwesterner, no matter how long they’ve been a New York transplant, would refer to himself as a genius, tortured, waterboarded, or otherwise.

Children, I am an author who used to type a book manuscript on a manual typewriter. Yes, I did. And mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it. And kept a carbon copy for myself. I waited for a month or so and then got an acceptance letter in the mail. It was typed on paper. They offered to pay me a large sum of money. I read it over and over and ran up and down the rows of corn whooping. It was beautiful, the Old Era. I’m sorry you missed it.

No, I see this referring to the upside of that torturous process. The moment when your hard work pays off and you get that first letter. The moment you get that check. The moment you get that review in the Times. And on that, Keillor is correct, much of that will indeed go away with self-publishing, be it via Lulu or Blogspot or Tumblr. As for the “glorious” piece at Flavorwire, my guess is Keillor is happy to have ruffled the feathers of those who would otherwise carry on that hierarchical, painful process. The way I read Keillor’s editorial, writers like Tony should be learning what he’s missing out on while celebrating the death of a really shitty part of the industry of words.

We will still see published authors, some of whom will be fantastic, and some who will indeed get a review in the Times. And I can promise you this: the moment that self-published or online author catches an accolade like that, no amount of blathering by an idiot like me with my fourteen readers (Hello, dear brother! Mom wants you to call.) will be able to make up for the feeling that author will have after being Recognized and Lauded. And I’m still waiting to make $1.75 off writing. But then, I’m no Author.