Over at The Rumpus, I’ve got a long interview with Sam Anderson, the book critic at New York magazine. He had a lot of interesting things to say about reading and reviewing, online and off, so check it out.
Author: Craig Fehrman
Craig Fehrman is the author of Author in Chief (February 11, 2020). Find out more at his website http://craigfehrman.com.
Prepreprofessionalism
The academic journal College Literature just published my essay on applying to grad school. You can read it here on Project MUSE, or visit this site’s archive for an open-access .pdf.
As in most academic publishing, this took positively forever to come out—in between my final revision and the issue’s printing, U. S. News & World Report not only issued two new sets of grad-school rankings, it also ceased to be a print publication (with the exception of best-selling special issues like said grad-school rankings). Underscoring this lag is the fact that my essay’s subject is a group of online message boards that discuss applying to grad school. These were very real-time and very soul-crushing, as I remember them, but we applicants couldn’t stop talking about rankings, publishing, conferencing, and everything else.
The Freelance Life
The latest issue of the Oxford American includes their annual “Best of the South” package, but it’s also got an essay on the struggles of freelancing, a subject that knows no geographical bounds.
For almost 20 years, Thomas Swick edited his newspaper’s travel section, freelancing a couple of books along the way. After getting laid off, Swick decided to write full time, and he packs the essay with reflections on this transition. For example: “Writing is one of the few trades in which the older you get, the harder the actual business of it becomes (especially in a culture that glorifies youth).”
Despite this anxiety, Swick’s best moments come on technology—and they’re not of the “these damn kids and their computers won’t get off my lawn” variety. Here’s my favorite passage:
I’d been warned of a new etiquette, or lack thereof, by which editors feel no obligation to respond to e-mails—presumably because they receive so many. The ease of communication has so crowded the field that it has ended communication. This makes life difficult for any writer, but especially for one who was recently an editor. And even more so for one who was a writer/editor. For nearly two decades, I assigned myself stories, turned them in to my unwavering approval, and then got back to myself immediately regarding publication dates. Being your own man pales in comparison to being your own editor (which, among other things, allows for the former).
Even if younger writers have never known a better way, it’s still frustrating when editors—present company excluded—leave one’s proposals to ripen, wither, and die. But Swick doesn’t just complain about this trend, he diagnoses its effects: “While writing, I am forever conscious of the potential arrival of a verdict on my writing”; or: “You can log off e-mail, of course, but you can’t turn your mind off the idea of e-mail.”
The essay’s not all doom and gloom, and Swick’s style will cheer you up, even if his conclusions don’t. Interestingly, he never mentions what newspaper axed him. Well, I looked it up—it was the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and things there seem to be getting worse.
LeBron Being LeBron
Two bits of news reminded me of a story I wrote last summer for PopMatters. In the first, CBS Sports reported that, after Xavier’s Jordan Crawford threw down an ostensibly monstrous dunk on LeBron James, Nike operatives confiscated all videotapes of the event. Predictably, the Internet uproar over this has reflected far more poorly on James than even the worst dunk could have.
Even more predictable is the fact that James would fuss over his image. James is, by all accounts, a supremely decent person and a positively extraterrestrial talent, but, as I wrote in “LeBron James and the Beat Book,” which surveyed the surprising number of books about LeBron James, he’s also “the most hands-on athlete today—remember, he created his own sports marketing agency.”
Which brings us to the second piece of news: Buzz Bissinger just co-wrote Shooting Stars, a new book with (and about) LeBron. Do you suppose it will have any Friday Night Lights-level revelations?
Meth and the Midwest
[Bookslut]
My review of Nick Redding’s Methland: The Death and Life of An American Small Town is in the July issue of Bookslut. It was supposed to be in the June issue, actually, but I missed my deadline and am now crushed to see the book get the coveted front-page slot in the latest NYT‘s Sunday Book Review.
“Crushed” for me, but ecstatic for Redding—he’s written a great book that deserves a wide readership. And as for that NYT review? I think we can all agree that my lede’s better.
Craig Fehrman 