A friend sent me an article, published by New York Magazine, titled “Au Revoir, New York ‘Literary’ Scene.” The article is about a blog post that caught the mag’s eye — The Revolution will be Tumblrized, written by a 20 year old NYU student, Jessica Roy (of this blog). She’s a typical indie kid — dark eyeliner, a headband on her head, blogging about “stuff.” This girl, however, “had just recently suffered her first really demoralizing New York media experience.” She wound up at a New York-writers party in a “multi-million-dollar brownstone in Brooklyn:”
A part of me longed to be absorbed into that elite circle of Ivy-educated literature nuts who have co-opted what it means to be a writer in New York. Because these days, if you’re not with them, you’re being mocked by them. I have thin skin, so I figured the former would be my best bet.
Until the other night, when the people whose Internet personas I had admired appeared to me in the flesh…
It just was all so fucking fake. These people that I had admired my entire New York existence — they all disappointed me. I don’t understand how people can exist in such a dishonest way and still call themselves writers. Isn’t it the responsibility of a writer to be honest? And why would you uphold a conversation with someone whom you’re going to talk shit on while walking back to the G train? They’re living in a box, where they only talk to others who have read Gessen’s book and think it sucks but will tell him it’s brilliant because they need his approval.
I did not move to New York to return to high school, but that’s exactly what it felt like.
In a sense, she appears to be Emily Gould reincarnated. In case you’re just tuning in, Gould is a blogger who published an article (months ago) in the New York Times Magazine entitled, “Exposed,” in which she publicly reevaluated her career and her participation in the controversial Manhattan gossip site known as Gawker. Although I notice similarities between Jessica Roy’s article and Gould’s, Roy actually notes that Gould was at this disappointing New York writer’s party — She is mentioned in the article as someone who was part of the “demoralizing new york media experience.” Roy’s article isn’t nearly as long as Gould’s NYTimes piece, so…read it.
I recommend it because I get it — I have always believed that I would have to move to New York if I wanted to become a “writer.” I believed I could never “make it” anywhere else. I’m only recently abandoning this concept, and I admit that it’s an ongoing struggle. Obviously this girl, Jessica, feels similarly: New York = Success. Unfortunately disappointment can be a big part of this so-called “success.” I know it, even though I haven’t quite experienced it. ::side note…I guess I should give myself some credit for actually having published my writing (thanks to the SFReporter and The Santa Fean). Sometimes I forget that I can call myself a writer, but I guess that’s a different story, for a different time::
Of course, Jessica Roy is heading to Paris in an effort to escape New York before it poisons her. Me? Yeah, I’m jealous.
P.S. Yesterday’s post at Jessica’s Blog is titled About that elephant in the room (a la Emily Gould herself who, after her NYTimes article, acknowledged the “elephant in the room” in a blog post. Isn’t there a contradiction here? Isn’t Jessica claiming that Gould is part of the poison?). Jessica’s post is a retort to all the petty assumptions one can make after reading the NYMag piece — mighty bold of her, if I do say so myself.
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Wow. I have to say—wait, do I have to say it? Let me see….Yes, yes I really do—I think she is about the worst young writer I’ve read online in a satisfyingly long time. New York apparently not doin’ much for her, maybe she should hole up in the university library and read some damn books. Phew.
She’s also—sorry, thought I was through but apparently am not!—so, so, SO immature. “I don’t understand how people can exist in such a dishonest way and still call themselves writers”? I don’t even know where to start with THAT one, other than thinking wearily: Oh honey you got a long way to go. (Then, unfairly weakened by a brief surge of pity, I am forced to rassle with a clot of plug-ugly prose like “uphold a conversation with someone whom you’re going to talk shit on”? Go on, kick me when I’m down.)
Clunky clauses, alarmingly enough, aren’t the worst of it; the worst of it is being godawful boring,; and I would wager that these other morally disappointing writers aren’t big swinging dicks because they’re intellectual whores or “Ivy-educated” or whatever “truths” Ms. Disillusioned thinks she’s penetrated in the course of a single evening out. They’re big swinging dicks because somehow, even if by accident, they learned how to launch, maneuver, and successfully land a compound sentence in English. What atrocities will she commit in French? The mind quails. (Plus, if she thinks NY is meretricious, she’s hysterically unprepared for Paris, where they invented literary pretension. For the first time in her LIFE she felt intellectually inferior? They’re gonna eat her brains before her very eyes.)
Jessica Roy, please. One wannabe writer to another. It’s a good idea to begin every day by feeling intellectually inferior. It’s tonic. So first of all drop the Gaddis, which I doubt you can make heads or tails of anyway, and start bludgeoning yourself with real stylists. I have three names for you: Virginia Woolf. George Orwell. EB White. Start, in fact, with the latter’s Here Is New York. Do you even know anything about the crazed, scintillating literary history of the city in which you’re privileged enough to be living? —Actually, scotch that. Go back still further and start with Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott.
When was the last time you loved a book?
And now this hair-rending, teeth-gnashing, eye-rolling rhetorical tirade is OVER. Sorry I stole your blog, TMK! I should probably post this comment on hers instead, but I’m too terrified of tangling with an unbelievably powerful juggernaut of New York frenemies.
And yes, she said with dignity; why yes I am PMSing.
longest comments in the history of blogging? winner is: the unreliable narrator!!!! congrats my dear! ;) and boy, do you write long comments when you’re pms’ing!
but you’re right — she’s idealizing paris just like she idealized new york, which means, of course…more disillusionment to come.
me thinks disillusionment is a part of the process…
the last thing it should do is shock us.
Meh, she goes to college there, is all. How’d you get jobs at the SFR and Santa Fean? Same thing, there’s just more jobs for the getting.
Plus maybe she blew some editors just KIDDING oh come on Jessica Roy can you not take a joke.
Though I agree emily gould is a poison it is to pop culture, not writing.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of the article written by the “writer” from NYU, a school I spent 4 years attending in a city I miss, but as with anything she realized that in life one must sometimes move on and out. Unfortunately for her when trying to make her experience something special she bored to tears. No wonder she can’t get anywhere.
I think there is a probably a theme of disillusionment in any field with any prestige.
As young and ambitious, you idolize where you want to be, and desperately want to believed “with hard work (and insert rest of the American dream cliches here)” you can be there, too. But there are political undertones and a seedy belly in almost all of these fields, if you look hard enough… music, art, academic, etc, etc, etc.
I read the Emily Gould article a few months ago although I hadn’t heard about this one until now. I agree that there’s this type of disillusionment in many fields, it just takes different forms. Having been to Paris a few times, I would move there too but it’s most likely going to be the same experience as New York, especially for writing.
She is hopeful for something that does not exist. She is expecting something that will not come. It’s like discovering in high school that sex can indeed be bad and that love will betray you. It’s like finding out prince charming is a poseur and even if you work really really hard for something, it may not come to be.
She is learning life is unfair. There is no purity, there is no escaping it. We are all cavemen.
Perhaps she’s never felt this, or learned this before. Perhaps she remained sheltered for long enough that her ignorance of this world was blissful.
For those reasons, I’m inclined to cut her some slack. There’s time enough for her to be jaded without her readers calling her out as naive and immature. She knows it now.
And if she doesn’t know any better? Then she’s certainly no different than those she describes. She will be “absorbed” into that world. And some other young thing will hop along and write bitter sounding prose about her.
There is no justice in this world, no fairness. Jessica Roy has perhaps learned that. We shouldn’t worship that fact just because she chose to share it with us.
I’m slightly drunk so I apologize for any misspellings….
aren’t we all naive?
aren’t we all learning these lessons, just like jessica roy?
i write this post because i admire her — it’s better to express yourself than keep everything locked up inside.
i do not believe that we can judge her or dismiss her. i do not believe it is our position to do either.
i have respect for her honesty and her desire to make it public.
had i been 20 and in a room full of the literary elite of New York City, i could not help but feel intimidated. hell, i felt intimidated by every professor i had for fear that they would see what a pathetic fraud i was. i don’t believe this was what jessica roy was feeling, however.
my blog is more of a journal i keep intensely private, available only to friends from high school, people whose opinions don’t matter. each time i post (getting rarer) i hover over the button, unsure if i want the drivel i spent 3 hours spewing out to be seen by anyone else. it’s emo shit. blogs are an uncomfortable artistic medium for me, something between cerebral vomit, hastily scribbled break-up poetry and (rarer still) a few aesthetically decent words strung together forming an original thought. part of me still sees blogs as a juvenile libation meant to spark creativity, where inevitably the words are drunk with their own self-importance, the author’s “feelings” a daily source of inspiration. the other part sees the potential for a valid and articulate source of art, a refreshing down-to-earth approach that again totes honesty as it’s foundation.
i’ve seen both.
i see jessica roy as the former. the almost right word, the latter. i feel the two styles shouldn’t mix. the end result? we all read the article, the lashing comments, and the rebuttal. i don’t have the heart to tear her to shreds because she has not learned the mother of all rules of blogging: filter those intense emotions into something you will not hate yourself for later, something coherent at least. blogger’s remorse is awful. i know she felt it. not for her topic or opinion, but critiques on style and word choice are harsh. when you’re your own editor things go to press that a fellow writer would have never let slide.
i think i will sit back on my pedestal now and enjoy the view ;)
In great menstrual wretchedness (plus my shoulder’s out, which makes typing literally a scream) I can only totter to the computer, read my “lashing comments” and laugh unsteadily.
How could I have been so shortsighted? I totally take it all back. Because, you know, really? She should read JANE AUSTEN, that’s who she should read.
—Um, okay, seriously. Sorry for the more unnecessary of the acid-splashing…and in fact I *did* find a couple of posts on her and her confrère’s site that I rather liked; but then my favorite was yanked down today. Someone’s being her own editor over there, for sure.
Of course I judge things, and sometimes I dismiss them (though not casually). That’s what readers do, or we’re kidding ourselves. (And here I deleted a brief tractatus On Criticism, because this is the a.r.w.’s blog, not mine; and it’s a beautiful growing organic thing she’s got goin’ on here, praise be!)
Erratum: I should have been more explicit that as a critic I judge literary artifacts (id est, “things”), not people whom I don’t even know. (Actually I try even harder not to judge the people I DO know, but it’s admittedly much more tempting to do so.)