Keith Gessen Blog

It’s been brought to our attention by an alert reader that the TNR essay on Lionel Trilling was written by Cynthia Ozick, not Emily Gould.

Our apologies to the charming Miss Gould.

Actually, while we’re at it, let’s see what else is in the reader mail bag.

What is this shit?

Sorry?

This blog sucks. Who are you?

I’m Keith Gessen.

No you’re not. Keith Gessen is a famous writer. He hangs out in his Park Slope digs with Puffy. He’s not writing some crazy-ass blog on the internet.

Well, you’d think that. But I don’t live in Park Slope. And how many hours in the day can I really hang out with Puffy? I mean, I can hang out with him as much as I want. You have a problem with that? But Puffy’s got stuff to do too. He has a MySpace page, for example.

Well, whatever. You may be Keith Gessen, but this blog still sucks.

Well I know the whole blogosphere is tired to death, sick unto death, of hearing about Emily Gould’s cover piece on Lionel Trilling in the new TNR. I mean (as if you don’t already perfectly well know) Emily’s OOOH, look at me!, I read Middle of the Journey which no one else has read because while it’s not very long it IS very boring and then I read Trilling’s journals (ditto) and then of course all his essays and lectures and introductions (those were good, actually), and then LOOK AT ME I went and read his new undiscovered just-discovered new novel which, boy, on the boring front, double-triple ditto! LOOK AT ME WEE-EEE!

Like, OK, Emily. You like Lionel Trilling. We get it.

And, you know, I have nothing to add to the collective wisdom of the blogosphere. The blogosphere’s always right. I just… I… I guess I just want people to like me, that’s why I wrote this post about Emily Gould. I thought people would come to my blog and see I agreed with them and like me. That’s all I ever really wanted. Is that so bad?

Former proprietor of Party Photo Orgy Party Photo Blog, Hampton is now a scholar in residence at the CUNY Graduate Center. We caught up with him while he was buying an overpriced slice of pepperoni pizza at the rip-off Sbarro’s on 34th Street.

Hampton, man, are you a sight for sore eyes.

Thank you. You’re not the first person to say that to me, you know.

I’ve had a rough month, Hampton. I’ve really been buffeted.

I know. I’ve been Googling you.

You have? What do you… make of it?

Well, you should never have written a book, for one thing.

I know that. What else?

Books are dead. Pizza lives. The future of books is pizza.

I should have made a pizza.

You? No. They’d have gotten you for it. Because you know why? I’ll tell you why. You would have stuck your dick in the pizza.

I don’t think that’s true.

You know perfectly well it’s true. At least you’d have tried.

Do you blame me?

I don’t blame you. I’m just explaining something to you. The future of books is pizza. Not your dick.

Are you a total fucking hypocrite?

Say more.

Well I was reading your so-called website and there was a long article from Issue 4—by you, as it happens—about how authors shouldn’t earn any money, and then how they shouldn’t be in—I’m quoting you here, man—“idiotic ‘lifestyle’ pieces”—and then how they shouldn’t even be photographed! And you’ve done all those things in the past month, times a hundred.

…

Well?

I’m thinking.

I mean…

I don’t know what to say, really. I did do all those things. There were some things I definitely refused to do. For what that’s worth. But then I did get photographed, and I did do the Times piece, which was in the Styles section. Yup.

It’s an impossible situation. Are you going to refuse the Styles section? On what grounds? That an author shouldn’t be photographed? Well, everyone’s always been photographed. We don’t all have little photos of Samuel Beckett and William Faulkner next to our desks because those guys refused to be photographed.

We don’t have photos of Pynchon—-and Pynchon was right. But you need to have a very strong paranoid reading of modernity in order to come to that conclusion. MG refuses to be photographed; he does have such a vision. I don’t. It’s possible I’m wrong, highly possible.

I guess the point I was making was that we live in a situation where everyone is forced to do these things, and it’s a lousy situation. Of course one step toward fixing that would have been not to do them myself.

One thing I didn’t anticipate—when I was writing my fearsome denunciations of all things publicity in Issue 4—was how much pressure the process of publishing would exert, without the publisher actually doing much pressuring at all. Other people pressuring me, I can sort of handle that. But self-pressure, less so. For one thing, there’s money involved. In my case, it wasn’t a whole lot of money, even by publishing standards, but it was still more money than I’d been in contact with, and so I felt—without them having to make so much as a peep about it—obligated to do whatever I could to get the book out there. Here these nice people had agreed to print my crazy thoughts and also had given me a nice little advance on it. And so down the slippery slope I went… I made some refusals at the beginning—like I refused to build a website and start blogging on it, for one, ho ha—and they looked a little sad but said, OK, sure. And I refused to write a Modern Love column for the Times—-and my publicist—who was so sweet—looked cresftallen but said, OK, sure. And I felt terrible! And so eventually I became a little easier to deal with, for them.

Having said all that, are there things I shouldn’t have done? Maybe. I wish my author photo—taken by my friend Suzy, not by a professional author photographer—looked a little less, well, professional. And people make fun of the fact that I played football for the Styles section? But, well, the hell with that. We play football every Saturday at 11:30. And it’s a fast game and if you come out there we’ll break your neck, you know? And in the end the Times writer had one of the most insightful lines about the book, which is that it’s not a roman a clef or description of my friends but a “dark joke” on my own literary career. That’s exactly right.

So what’s the upshot? In the end, unless you totally refuse to do anything at all, the best you can do is try to set some boundaries. Don’t write for free. Don’t get photographed in flip-flops, obviously. And also, while we’re at it, maybe better to stay off your bed, when the photographer’s around. And, ok, yeah, don’t stand on piers looking pensive. Unless you’ve written a book about the sea.

Why did you start this tumblr?

Well, for a few years now I’ve been thinking a lot about this one time Curt Schilling was accused of having fake-bloodied his sock during the World Series. The bloody sock is in Cooperstown but someone suggested during an interview that the blood wasn’t real. So what did Curt Schilling do?

What?

As it turned out, he had a blog, it was called 38 Pitches. And he went on his blog, and he said, you know, that’s real blood. Go to Cooperstown and check it. I’ll give you a blood sample.

Anyway, I thought: If someone ever accuses me of having bloodied my sock with ketchup, I’ll start a blog like Curt Schilling did.

Someone accused you of that?

No. But some Gawker commenter accused me of drinking $3.50 lattes. Now, I’ve taken a lot of shit since my book came out. I’ve been accused of all sorts of things. Some of those things are true. Some, not so much. But this is just beyond the pale. I don’t even know what a fucking latte is. Much less have I ever had one to drink. Much less for three dollars and fifty cents!

Are you serious?

Yes I’m serious.

You couldn’t look it up? What’s in a latte, I mean?

But then I’d know what it was! I’m just saying. I mean, I suspect it’s like espresso plus milk. Is that what it is? And it’s not like I’ve never had an expensive drink. I mean, in the past couple of years. Not in my twenties. But once I turned thirty, I would once in a while have a frappucinno.

Look. The point is, are these people kidding me? People: Are you kidding me? Do you know anything about me? Have you read my book?

Of course you haven’t read my book.

OK, have you read *anything* I’ve written?

Of course you haven’t read anything I’ve written.

So let’s get this straight. You are going to accuse me of sipping lattes and claim to be downtrodden American proletarians——in the comments section of Gawker? A gossip website for New York media profesionals?

Are you joking?

OK, next question.

Why else did you start this blog?

Well, also I’ve seen some really interesting reactions to the book online that I’d like to address. And this seems like a reasonable way to do it.

Why not do it at n+1?

I’m not sure the n+1 readership wants to be dragged through the mud like this. Besides, by the time n+1 got off its ass to actually set up a tumblr—I mean, we’d have to have a board meeting, then an editorial board meeting, then we’d have to write up minutes (I would, actually, as the secretary), and then we’d have to send out emails, and—-well, in short, by the time this all happened I would be a lot less angry, and this wouldn’t be any fun.

Does setting up this tumblr maybe suggest that you’ve lost your mind?

Yeah, well. Maybe.