Who says blogging doesn't pay? The day after I posted this screed, a magazine editor asked me to turn it into an article. So, I am.
Also, I got enlisted to do the longest feature I've ever done on something I've been wanting to write about for several years. Hints: Kentucky, obscenity, and men. Go figure!
And ... there's something else in the mix.
Have a great weekend, dammit! You've earned it. You sexy beast.
Because most male writers are dorks. Who wish they were tough guys. Because male writers are too confused by feminism and women in general to portray "real men" on the page, much less in reality. And Palahniuk is their role model? Palahniuk is gay. How the leader of the New Manliness turned out to be a mostly closeted homosexual is a source of endless mystery to me.
Take "Tool Academy," by way of example. The perfect example, really. Because it reveals that the new women are men. All those peacocks greasing up their bodies, wearing thongs and preening, crying and apologizing. These contestants are not men. They are women with penises. Gender is a masquerade. Welcome to our reality, dudes.
Where's our 21st century Kerouac? The man on the train so skullfucked by the hijacked American way that he can't help but see the world and himself truly? He's probably in diapers. It'll take a post-male man to bring literature out of the ladies room.
Intriguing, because I discussed something very similar with an old friend. Or rather, she expressed her frustration while I mostly listened, sipped wine and nodded in agreement.
"Can any of these 'sad young literary men' match Chandler's achievement with Marlowe?" She asked. I couldn't think of any. We both love Marlowe and for the same reason: Chandler created an archetype who was smart and stupid and tough and vulnerable and observant and thick headed and non-racist and racist, all wrapped -- remarkably -- in a disciplined, thoroughly grown up package.
As she talked, a theory, or something close enough, came to mind which I'll flesh out as I type.
Chandler's life wasn't easy. He took great personal risks, and during the depression. By the time he moved to Los Angeles, he was pretty well seasoned. LA added its own special qualities to his thinking. In Los Angeles, no one can hear you scream. You either carve out your niche or settle into oblivion. When you have that sort of life, and Chandler's talent, a Marlowe is almost inevitable. 'Almost inevitable', because at the heart of a Marlowe is an awareness of fragility (perhaps the essence of true adulthood). The fragility of life, of comfort, of civilization even of the Earth herself. Chandler had such an awareness. He poured it into his most famous creation.
Our current crop of young male writers -- through no fault of their own (because, you live in the world as you find it) -- have nothing to match that. Mostly, they're just clever lads who enjoy a way with words. They don't have any real stories to tell. Hold on, I take that back. They do have stories to tell but they're all of a type: the 30-something suburban man-child who cheats on his wife to feel 'alive'. The 20-something suburban man-child who's unlucky in love ('unlucky' meaning, he gets laid a lot by Anne Hathaway look and sound-alikes, but scratches his head in puzzlement at their romcom antics). The 20-something who longs to be like Hemingway and so, moves to Spain...where he gets tangled up with a Penélope Cruz look and sound alike. Bottles of Amontillado are smashed, hair is tousled. Self consciously sensitive feelings are recorded. The tough talking lout who isn't really tough -- that is, ruthless like Robespierre (who dressed as a dandy but moved with the deliberateness of a python) -- but just another douchebag waving a gun around.
And on and on.
You asked:
Where's our 21st century Kerouac? The man on the train so skullfucked by the hijacked American way that he can't help but see the world and himself truly? He's probably in diapers. It'll take a post-male man to bring literature out of the ladies room.
Sounds about right to me. The 21st century is going to produce a whole lot of strange. To get through will require a tough sort of open mindedness. I think writers like William Gibson have provided extended tours of that sensibility-in-making. China Miéville is almost there, I think.
By the time I'm an old bastard, sipping my genetech dinner through a straw, I expect to start reading fiction from young men who know what they're about.
Update 2: Tomas emails:
If gender is a masquerade, what is a "real man"? Is it a tough guy? And what does Palahniuk being gay really have to do with anything?
Your comment suggests that the only way Obama could bring on a post-race discussion is if his blackness is never in question. But it's exactly his multiple shadings that allow him to view himself as both black and as many other backgrounds. If you're looking for a post-gender world, your new Kerouac's orientation will be totally irrelevant. And, besides which, sometimes those guys were gay too!
I suspect you jumped on Palahniuk largely because you don't like his writing. Maybe you would also rather his homosexuality were widely-known. But it seems to me, that as part of the masquerade, it should be perfectly normal that straight guys get macho tips even from queens.
Are you looking for some kind of masculine authenticity for the New Manliness? Perhaps someone who is sexually confident and doesn't care about our gender norms. Acts just as he feels. I'm not going for it.
The post-male hero is probably not going to be a standard tough guy, and I would think has spent time figuring out how to navigate feminism and women. And masculinity. And he could benefit from more nuanced discussion from normally thoughtful writers like you.
Male writing is largely the domain of upper middle class (white) men who suffer from emasculation issues. I'm black, I write fiction. I come from a working class background (scholarship kid, NYU grad). Back when I was repped by William Morris, I remember going to NYC lit events and feeling like I should be bouncing at the front door. Kerouac and others like him didn't come from the establishment and suddenly read FIGHT CLUB and decide they wanted to play too, but unfortunately that's where most male writers come from these days.
Every hedge fund pimp I've ever known is struggling to finish a novel about how difficult it is to be a hedge fund pimp.
There's also the crisis of masculinity itself. To me, it seems that my generation (I'm 31) defines masculinity solely through the pursuit of women. I love women. I'm married to one, but when the only rite of passage is reading "The Game", then there's a problem in the world of men. What is the male culture independent of the influence of women?
Which brings me back to gay old Chuck. How did a gay man become the icon of masculinity for the commuter crowd?
FIGHT CLUB is hip-hop for white men. (Although hip-hop is hip-hop for white men, but I digress...). Dick lit is fantasy fulfillment. It's the ridiculous idea that even if you've been a sheltered, pampered, entitled prick for most of your life -- a month doing sit ups and you can turn into Chuck Lidell. These books convince soft-natured fellas that they have a boxer's pain threshold, an animal's savagery, and a gladiator's soul. Just like rap music convinces every black kid that being black somehow makes you inherently more badass than everyone else (it doesn't), these books convince yuppies that they're not fragile.
And just like black kids who watch Scarface and miss the fact that Tony Montana dies in a hail of gunfire, alone, addicted to cocaine and insane -- the "man fans" miss the fact that FIGHT CLUB is about a narrator who is so shit-scared of asking out Marla Singer that he invents another personality in order to fuck her. FIGHT CLUB isn't about a world without women. FIGHT CLUB is about a sub-culture created because of a woman. It's not about empowerment. It's an essay about how men can't escape emasculation.
When men find motivations separate from their relationships with women, that's when we get our balls back.
I've posted about this before, but when something is good, you are required to repeat it. What you see here is the 30-second trailer for what is not the best porn movie ever made, but the only good porn movie ever made, and, of course, it's not really a porn movie at all, but a work of art.
It's 13 minutes long, and it's 13 years old. It's called "The Operation," and if you're familiar with it, you are cool. The film, a collaboration by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas, was shot in infrared and directed by Jacob Pander. It stars the terrifically luminmous Gina Velour, aka Marne Lucas, a woman who knows something about beauty.
Amazon.com: "The infrared renders the protagonists bodies as translucent. The familiar territory of the flesh is re-negotiated as a vein delineated web of continual transmutation, in which hot and cold zones fluctuate according to changes in temperature, itself dictated by erogenous stimulation. The folds of the labia and the flesh of the penis - no longer the pink/ red/ purple of video pornography - are instead white hot , while teeth, and the colder extremities appear as black. The Operation is a film not about light, but about heat. It does not seek to reproduce a representation of `reality', rather it creates a phantasmagorical trope based on the bio-physical response of the body to stimulation. The film is an exegesis of sex manifested via a thermo-physiological cartography of the body."
I posted something about pornography, and scopophilia, and what women really want when it comes to sex over at The XX Factor.
"Over the years, porn has taken a beating at the hands of those who believe it to be misogynist garbage. In fact, pornography is obsessed primarily with female desire. That the product its industry produces is less socially acceptable than the polysyllabic studies of Bergner's 'postfeminist' desire hunters in lab coats doesn't make it any less revealing of how complicated it gets for all of us when it comes to sex, and how little any of us know about our own desires."
I'm done with the second full edit of my novel manuscript. I'm about 3/4 done with the third and final edit. February 2, it goes to my agent. If he doesn't like it, I'll set up a webcam, stab myself in the neck, and you can watch me bleed out. Deal? Or no deal.
Regarding this, American Apparel did not ask me or pay me to blog about the ads that run on this site or their clothes. Late last year, I was approached by AA and asked if I wanted to run the ads. I agreed. That was it.
Of course, the author of the Jezebel post would have known this had she taken five minutes to send me an email asking if I had been paid to blog about the ads or clothes. But that would have required her to perform an act of journalism. And everybody knows that's not the business Gawker Media is in.
Lastly, the idea of someone writing under a pseudonym calling my credibility into question is laughable, at best.
Update: Fleshbot's Lux Alptraum weighs in: "On the balance, American Apparel seems no more or less shady than any other clothing company—but because they're interested in pushing boundaries, in experimenting with sexuality, in (gasp!) putting nipples into their ads, they're far more likely to draw attention (and raise a bit of ire in the process)."
I adore this latest layout for Vogue Italia by Steven Klein, starring Lara Stone in "Lara Fiction Noire." (Full set here and bigger scans here.) Shades of panopticons, super-surveillance, the late great Joker, military rape states, and overzealous wampires.
"Up until now, I had only dabbled with random women here and there. I was seriously starting to have some sense of my sexuality and what it meant to me. On one hand, I saw women in this disgusting light that my father had painted for me - a light that showed all the ugliness in people. But through all that, I found such a unique beauty in women, and tried to find anything that was beautiful in those women, as an act of defiance towards my father. He wanted to show me what whores women were, and I wanted to show him what angels they were if he would only look. This is where I really started to realize that I was different than most - I looked for different things in life. I always had to find something beautiful in the trash."
In an email, JS quotes Charles Isherwood, "I am a stand in for everyone who wants to look and to see, as we do, with the spirit of scopophilia, giving all of us the right to look at that which we are 'not supposed to' look, but without guilt, or judgment, or fear," from I Am a Camera.
As I've stated here previously, the Letters Project will be closing to submissions this month, although both sites will remain online. Letters from Johns closed on January 3, and Letters from Working Girls will close on January 14. In the last week, I've gotten three new letters from working girls.
"I Was a 35 Yr Old Single Mom": "I loved the way he treated me, but, was not in love with him. In fact, I could barely stand him. He was a white republican and I was not."
"I Figured, What the Hell": "Part of me does this to boost a self-esteem that isn't always there and the other part of me enjoys the power in it all. That is, having something that men want and then making them pay for it."
"I Am a Christian": "Don't get me wrong, most nights i enjoy what i do and some of the stuff i do is so crazy and funny that i can't wait to tell my fiance' or his friends, but the twist is, do they really want to know about it."
If you're a working girl with a story to tell, you've got 48 hours.
Not long ago, Wired's Clive Thompson wrote an article with an eye-catching title: "Why We Need More Torture in Videogames." Using World of Warcraft as his example, Thompson proclaimed video games should not only include torture, but more of it. "I think we need more torture in videogames." He adds, "And better torture."
Thompson's interest isn't in promoting torture: "In the real world, I'm unconditionally opposed to torture." While many Americans have seen the photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib, many Americans have turned a blind-eye to the realities of their country's position on torture. Video games, says Thompson, encourage us to engage deeply with complicated questions, torture among them. "Which is why we need more torture in videogames."
In "Porn Up, Rape Down," Northwestern University law professor Anthony D'Amato ventures a parallel provocative theory. The increased availability of pornography over the last quarter century and the 85 percent decrease in sexual violence (according to a 2006 DoJ study) over the same time period are interrelated.
D'Amato writes: "My theory is that the sharp rise in access to pornography accounts for the decline in rape." To wit: "the more pornography, the less rape." And yet: "The American public is probably not ready to believe it."
If Thompson and D'Amato are correct, what America needs is more torture and more porn. Although, if more Americans spent their time attempting to understand why virtual torture and hardcore sex are what tames the beast within, they might have a better understanding of what makes them human.
This post is cross-posted at the Huffington Post, if you'd like to add your comments.
I had a kind of rough week. Then I saw "How to Make Bukkake Udon." Suddenly, everything was so much better.
This week on the XX Factor, I girlcrushed on Jackie O. Jr., appreciated Obama art, and called everyone whores. Some guy on Politico acknowledged me as the emerging political commentating talent that I am, as did Tracy Quan. In a matter of no time, I'll be reporting live from the White House, no doubt.
I do a fair amount of research for my novel, and during a recent fact-checking session I came across "When Cathouses Ruled California." It's an amazing history of the Pussycat Theatre chain, with tons of pictures and the kind of odd details that resurrect the story before your eyes.
"Though operated under the Walnut umbrella, Miranda took great personal interest in the Pussycats. He outfitted each theater with crimson carpeting, velveteen fixtures, decorated walls (usually including selections from his own huge collection of painted nudes), beveled glass foyer partitions, and crystal chandeliers with golden fittings.
Unlike many - if not most - porn theaters to follow, Miranda instructed all his managers that 'Theater marquees should never be offensive looking, because you have people going by on their way to church and we don’t want to upset them.'
If an X-movie's poster wasn't particularly attractive in the marquee showcase, he'd commission and produce his own colorful, relatively 'classy' display posters, shipped to managers chainwide to use as their public face in communities increasingly -- surprisingly -- receptive to hosting an X-rated theater or drive-in."
"The good part of the whole thing is that i have learned a great deal about myself, my limits, my interests, my needs. The bad side is that i have discovered that my needs keeps going up a level the longer i do this. This story has no ending."
Remember, Letters from Working Girls closes on January 14, although the site will remain online. Letters from Johns closed on January 3, although the site will remain online. The intended duration of The Letters Project was one year.
If you're a working girl who wants to tell her story, now is the time.
"One night, for no particular reason, he went out to wander around the lifeless neighborhood of the West Fifties and walked into a topless bar. As he sat there at his table drinking a beer, he suddenly found himself sitting next to a voluptuously naked young woman. She sidled up to him and began to describe all the lewd things she would do to him if he paid her to go to 'the back room.' There was something so openly humorous and matter-of-fact about her approach, that he finally agreed to her proposition. The best thing, they decided, would be for her to suck his penis, since she claimed an extraordinary talent for this activity. And indeed, she threw herself into it with an enthusiasm that fairly astonished him. As he came in her mouth a few moments later, with a long and throbbing flood of semen, he had this vision, at just that second, which has continued to radiate inside him: that each ejaculation contains several billion sperm cells--or roughly the same number as there are people in the world--which means that, in himself, each man holds the potential of an entire world. And what would happen, could it happen, is the full range of possibilities: a spawn of idiots and geniuses, of the beautiful and the deformed, of saints, catatonics, thieves, stock brokers, and high-wire artists. Each man, therefore, is the entire world, bearing within his genes a memory of all mankind. Or, as Leibniz put it: 'Every living substance is a perpetual living mirror of the universe.' For the fact is, we are of the same stuff that came into being with the first explosion of the first spark in the infinite emptiness of space. Or so he said to himself, at that moment, as his penis exploded into the mouth of that naked woman, whose name he has now forgotten. He thought: the irreducible monad. And then, as though taking hold of it at last, he thought of the furtive, microscopic cell that had fought its way up through his wife's body, some three years earlier, to become his son." Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude, care of A.
Spent New Year's eve at home alone, had no drop of alcohol and dropped no acid, went to bed at 8:30PM, woke up at 3:30AM with the worst headache in recent memory, spent the morning on my hands and knees, worshiping the porcelain throne, throwing up multiple times.
Had a dream this morning I went into a crowded bathroom to check the size of my pants, emerged to find Eliot Spitzer talking on a cell phone, shook his hand, he talked into the phone about something being "long and hard," I squeezed his hand and laughed, he looked at me unsure if I was kidding or not, the sun shining around his head like he was Jesus.
I'm a freelance journalist. I've written for Details, Harper's Bazaar, Newsweek,
Radar, Women's Health, Salon, Slate, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Variety, Inc., Esquire, The Atlantic, and I'm a Forbes contributor. In 2008, TIME named me one of the best bloggers of the year. I've appeared on CNN, NPR, and "Politically Incorrect." [EMAIL]
