No, no, it's plenty tough. Tough is cute. It's too bad words have so many meanings and inflections, etc. Cute is one of my favorite words and I meant it only in the most glowing way.
I don't know. It could be tougher. I could threaten to march on their headquarters and squat, demanding a full lunch and regular happy hours. Maybe we could organize a full assault, demanding open accounting since, evidently, it we who do the work around here. Why don't you stake the place out and send back recon.
"Ralph loved Henry Miller. He worshipped and adored Henry Miller. He had stolen every book Henry Miller ever wrote, some of them hundreds of times over. I don’t think Ralph actually read any of the books; I think he just liked what he’d heard about Henry Miller — that he lived in Paris, fucked a lot of cool chicks and didn’t take any shit off anyone. Well, I take it back. Ralph may at least have skimmed a copy of The Books in My Life, but only to find out what other books were worth stealing. What Ralph liked about books was giving them to people for presents."
"I came on this site because of a writer I admire and because it seemed to be keen to have other writers, not just opinators, bloviators and help gurus of various orthodoxies."
If possible, please identity the writer you are referring to.
I think your suggestions re substack are well-taken
I think I have angered the folks that run this site. My questions are generally not answered.
A writer on substack once answered some of my questions, but I met him on a thread that has been retired by substack. I don't recall his screen name and I don't know how to get in touch with him.
And this brings me to another point, which, unfortunately, is not what your thread is about. And that point is the tenuousness and frailty of human connectedness on the internet. For example, I noted that because of one arguably minor, ministerial act by someone who works at substack, namely the retiring of an old thread, I can no longer contact someone with whom I had once corresponded.
And that prompts this realization: Given the frailty of all human connectedness on the internet, the talk of community, as in a substack community or a facebook community etc., is just pure and unadulterated malarky.
One thing about your communiques, DG - I like to think of you looking out of loft windows somewhere on Broadway below Canal - is there’s a lot in them, always something to gnaw on. Being a lefty, I’ll take it in reverse order.
Agreed about ‘sick and lonely.’ It is my august opinion from watching the world around that attempting to alleviate the loneliness through technology is a dead-end. An easy substitution, particularly for Americans who tend to believe that there is a technical solution for intrinsically human conundrums, but a dead-end nonetheless. I’m not on Substack to deal with my loneliness, though. I’m here to expand my audience starting from scratch, after spending a long time in Europe. Whether or not it will « sell, » is a v open question.
I don’t know what to tell you about threads. They come and they go.
I have the impression that the core staff of substack is quite small. The machine is up and running and now that the site has gotten publicity in the Times and the New Yorker, they must be deluged. There are something like 100,000 newsletters on the site now. Yes, they should add a bar for keywords for each article we write; if Medium can do it, they can, too. Yes, they should have a number of ‘front pages’, giving different writers visibility, just like big cable sites do. But I’m not going to get hung up about it. No time. Bigger questions abound, the prime one being, are there English-language readers (apart from specialists, poli-sci, art historians), interested in Europe, my bailiwick ?
Matt Taibbi is the writer I was thinking of. I know his work from the time he was in Russia. He’s a good writer with valuable insights - you might want to check out his book, ‘Hate, Inc.’
Well, off and running and good luck. Yeah, Substack could use a ‘front page’ for, let’s say, Dissidents. Their cultural and political offerings are very mainstream. I’m sure they respond more quickly to people who are building a base of paying subscriptions - that’s the American model, ain’t it ?
This is cute. Thanks. G.
Comments are hard to come by so I'll take. 'Cute' ? Not tough enough for you ?
No, no, it's plenty tough. Tough is cute. It's too bad words have so many meanings and inflections, etc. Cute is one of my favorite words and I meant it only in the most glowing way.
I don't know. It could be tougher. I could threaten to march on their headquarters and squat, demanding a full lunch and regular happy hours. Maybe we could organize a full assault, demanding open accounting since, evidently, it we who do the work around here. Why don't you stake the place out and send back recon.
"Ralph loved Henry Miller. He worshipped and adored Henry Miller. He had stolen every book Henry Miller ever wrote, some of them hundreds of times over. I don’t think Ralph actually read any of the books; I think he just liked what he’d heard about Henry Miller — that he lived in Paris, fucked a lot of cool chicks and didn’t take any shit off anyone. Well, I take it back. Ralph may at least have skimmed a copy of The Books in My Life, but only to find out what other books were worth stealing. What Ralph liked about books was giving them to people for presents."
What I've learned about platforms is that other people own them. They're theirs. This one seems pretty cool but I haven't run afoul of them as yet.
In your fourth paragraph, you write,
"I came on this site because of a writer I admire and because it seemed to be keen to have other writers, not just opinators, bloviators and help gurus of various orthodoxies."
If possible, please identity the writer you are referring to.
I think your suggestions re substack are well-taken
I think I have angered the folks that run this site. My questions are generally not answered.
A writer on substack once answered some of my questions, but I met him on a thread that has been retired by substack. I don't recall his screen name and I don't know how to get in touch with him.
And this brings me to another point, which, unfortunately, is not what your thread is about. And that point is the tenuousness and frailty of human connectedness on the internet. For example, I noted that because of one arguably minor, ministerial act by someone who works at substack, namely the retiring of an old thread, I can no longer contact someone with whom I had once corresponded.
And that prompts this realization: Given the frailty of all human connectedness on the internet, the talk of community, as in a substack community or a facebook community etc., is just pure and unadulterated malarky.
We live in a sick and lonely world.
One thing about your communiques, DG - I like to think of you looking out of loft windows somewhere on Broadway below Canal - is there’s a lot in them, always something to gnaw on. Being a lefty, I’ll take it in reverse order.
Agreed about ‘sick and lonely.’ It is my august opinion from watching the world around that attempting to alleviate the loneliness through technology is a dead-end. An easy substitution, particularly for Americans who tend to believe that there is a technical solution for intrinsically human conundrums, but a dead-end nonetheless. I’m not on Substack to deal with my loneliness, though. I’m here to expand my audience starting from scratch, after spending a long time in Europe. Whether or not it will « sell, » is a v open question.
I don’t know what to tell you about threads. They come and they go.
I have the impression that the core staff of substack is quite small. The machine is up and running and now that the site has gotten publicity in the Times and the New Yorker, they must be deluged. There are something like 100,000 newsletters on the site now. Yes, they should add a bar for keywords for each article we write; if Medium can do it, they can, too. Yes, they should have a number of ‘front pages’, giving different writers visibility, just like big cable sites do. But I’m not going to get hung up about it. No time. Bigger questions abound, the prime one being, are there English-language readers (apart from specialists, poli-sci, art historians), interested in Europe, my bailiwick ?
Matt Taibbi is the writer I was thinking of. I know his work from the time he was in Russia. He’s a good writer with valuable insights - you might want to check out his book, ‘Hate, Inc.’
Well, off and running and good luck. Yeah, Substack could use a ‘front page’ for, let’s say, Dissidents. Their cultural and political offerings are very mainstream. I’m sure they respond more quickly to people who are building a base of paying subscriptions - that’s the American model, ain’t it ?