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On success and envy
[Comments closed, see this post for explanation. Thanks for your responses!]
There has been of late an argument, advanced in online political sniping, that criticism of a few relatively popular bloggers constitutes jealousy of those bloggers’ success. It’s not a new argument. It shows its ugly head all over the place. It popped up here almost a year ago, in comment number three in this thread. The argument has been popping up elsewhere these days, that last example with a heavy gloss of anti-idealistic cynicism.
It’s a poisonous conceit, really, at least when expressed by people presumably past high school age. It’s a convenient way of insulating one’s self from the discomfort of self-examination. Never mind that the “success” at issue is the literary equivalent of winning a video game: satisfying within certain strictly limited bounds that have essentially nothing to do with the actual world, actual work to make the world better, or actual effects on people’s lives other than raising ire. I have played a few video games in my day. I understand that they can seem compelling, even important, in those moments before “game over” appears on the screen and your life resumes, exactly the same as it was before, except with less time remaining in your life to do useful work.
I just wonder how those people explain me. Because I’m in the general group of writers charged with being envious of other bloggers’ “success,” and yet some of the people making those accusations know full well I repudiated exactly that kind of “success” in the last year. I found it puerile and dishonest, unsatisfying, and ultimately useless.
Some of you may not know to what I refer, and so hereinafter, some quick specifics. I beg the regulars’ indulgence of my self indulgence. After all, it’s my birthday week.
A year ago a very prominent liberal blog invited me to come onboard as a writer, along with a few other quite talented folks. I will continue to self-indulge my self long enough to say that the announcement of my joining that blog was met by very generous acclaim among the commenters, and much of my writing seemed to strike a chord with the blog regulars. It was a period in which that blog achieved flavor-of-the-month national notoriety, not because of me, and some of the things I wrote there nonetheless attracted attention that briefly outstripped the flavor-of-the-month traffic, at least in terms of incoming links. (Here’s an example, reprinted on another site.)
The reasons I left that blog are complex. Some of it was the nastiness dealt out in response to the politics I expressed. (The only thing liberals hate and fear more than fascists? Leftists.) Losing Zeke deprived me of a lot of the emotional energy I could have used to buck up under the assholery. Some of it was seeing a change in myself toward greater assholery, a tendency to fly off the handle more quickly, to react more uncharitably to disagreement. A lot of it was the personal specifics of the situation, manipulation, condescension, lying. I’d given someone the benefit of the doubt who turned out not to merit it.
The biggest thing, though, was that writing there was a distraction from doing real work. Work that makes a difference. I could have overlooked all the other negatives, written more incendiary cleverness to whore for links, written slightly offbeat takes on the political blog subject du jour just novel enough to be taken for what passes, among “successful” bloggers, as “insightful.” I could have cultivated a fractious and troll-infested readership, on the theory that nasty arguments spur repeat viewing of blog ads, and actual discussion be damned. And let’s get real: I could have done it without breaking a sweat. It’s not work. It’s following a formula. The majority of readers of those blogs expect no more. Hell, they demand no more.
But when I took a step back from that shit to catch my breath in the wake of that “nastiness” thread, when I looked at what I had done at Pandagon, the applause with which writing that showed the worst of me was greeted, and the utter yawning indifference, or hostility, to my writing there that expressed nuance or challenged people to think, I was repelled.
Is that “sour grapes,” as Puchalsky put it in that old CRN comment I linked above? Sounds enough like it that some people will probably dismiss what I’ve said here. Those people would find some reason to dismiss me anyway. “Bitter” is closer to the truth than “sour.” I wasted time and energy and credibility and in fact love on a literary video game. I walked away from it. I burned a bridge.
And this is a much better blog, as a result. My writing is better, as a result.
And I’m supposed to envy that shit I walked away from. Of what, precisely, am I supposed to be envious? Money? I left a political writing job a year ago that paid more in a year than most “successful” bloggers see in three years of their day jobs. Recognition? The Earth Island Journal just won the Utne Reader Alternative Press Award for 2007 due in large part to the work I’d done there in the previous five years. Site traffic? Technorati standing? Recognition is lovely, it’s true, and yet that Blog Awards win reminded me that traffic brings with it people whose only aim is to vandalize.
Vandalism seems an appropriate concept here. I wrote this week, if obliquely, of vandals throwing beer bottles at ancient geoglyph intaglios in the Mojave. I actually saw this first with the figure of Mastamho, not far north of Blythe. Look at aerial photos of the intaglios and you’ll see that before they were fenced off, people were apparently in the habit of doing donuts on the gravel atop them, defacing the figures permanently with tire tracks. Who could do such a thing? People who assume their desires, their comfort, their fun, their egos are the most important things in the world. When the existence of something outside their experience hints that there is a rich, diverse world with a varied history, they start to feel insignificant and powerless. They get angry. They deny that the thing that made them feel this way has value. Sometimes they deny this so thoroughly that they fool themselves into sincerely believing the things do not exist. If they do admit the things exist, that admission is usually made with visible resentment. There follows the deliberate attempt to deface.
Meeting sincere criticism with charges of envy is, I think, a form of vandalism.
Among the critics lately accused of “envy” of “successful” bloggers are people whose writing has won prestigious awards. We include people who have crafted careers for themselves while raising families alone. We include young people who take time out from building their lives to offer the world their creativity, their opinions, and who are repaid with hostility, and nonetheless keep writing. We include people like me for whom blogging is a distraction from existing success. We include young people with brilliant careers ahead of them in that small portion of the human cultural world that is not indexed in Technorati. We include people who speak eloquently from distinct personal and cultural and political points of view, who represent a glimpse of the intellectual richness available outside the confines of the ridiculously-defined “mainstream.”
And that limited, insular, self-referential “mainstream,” made to feel smaller, more ephemeral by the richness that confronts them, would vandalize our work by charging us with envy of “success” at mere blogging, to spray paint insults over the tapestry, to deny that there is anything of value outside their puerile, self-aggrandizing snark and sanctimony.
Sometimes people tell me I have written things on this blog that have influenced them on a deep level. Sometimes people tell me I have written things here that have made them cry. Sometimes the responses to my writing here affect make me cry. Sometimes people find a sentence I write, or a phrase, so well encapsulates a thought for them that that sentence or phrase gets cut and pasted to heck and back. Sometimes people find my writing here so off-the-mark that they take me to task, and sometimes they persuade me that they are right. Sometimes I change their minds. Sometimes each of us moves closer to the other’s position. Sometimes I read old posts and find bits of writing about which I’d forgotten, of which on rereading I am proud.
Sometimes, in the process of writing on a topic I thought I knew well, I learn something that shakes my world view to the core.
That is success.
And it is a manner of success not pervious to envy, because it is available to anyone who wants it and tries hard enough. It requires a willingness to admit that you may be wrong, and further a willingness once you have admitted being wrong to try to stop being wrong in that same way in the future. The brittle and the sociopathic may find that is too high a price for them to pay, and that’s their right.
But that’s their flaw, not ours.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
There are many millions of us who don’t really know what you’re talking about when you mention the sniping, because that branch of the blogosphere is on an entirely different tree from the one we’re climbing. Sometimes I like to climb down from my tree and check out the Joshua tree you’re perched in (under? beside?). The comments you wrote back in the day at Michael Bérubé‘s blog were uniformly smart and funny, but a lot of people can pull off smart and funny politicalish writing. I don’t encounter much nature writing, thought, so this place is a gem. The bits of memoir are the, um, icing on the desert gem cake.
By: By Orange on 2008 01 05
That’s a terrific definition of success. Maybe the germ of a personal bloggers’ manifesto?
By: By Dave on 2008 01 05
Of what, precisely, am I supposed to be envious?
When I do get envious, my envy is that other people are getting the part of blogging that keeps me stuck in it. I know that I blog for attention, that I am addicted to the attention and use it as a comfort and distraction. Writing has nothing to do with my career, and I don’t need money from it. I only like recognition as much as it boosts attention. But until I am enlightened, I still need that source of attention.*
There are obvious flaws in envying blog attention. First, it is pretty crappy attention, all weak and dilute, nothing like a gaze from a real person. Envying it is dumb, because the quantity of attention isn’t zero sum. There’s no call to envy; just do better work and draw your own attention.
I don’t know what success would be. I don’t think I’ll stop needing attention. Building a strong and deep enough real life that it meets those needs would be good. My other approach is to improve the quality of the attention, by knowing that the thin internets attention comes from people I respect or who actually know me. That helps. Thoughtful blogging, not facile or clever, is the route to that.
I’ve only read your work recently, but you have my attention and respect. Of course you’re a success by your measures, but you’re rating high by mine as well.
*If I were getting it other ways, in front of a classroom, for example, I think that need would be fed without blogging.
By: By Megan on 2008 01 05
Yup.
And Gilly’s giving you some MAJOR cookies for that very nice rollover trick, about which I am still laughing.
You know, the basic insecurity and self-loathing motivating these kinds of poseur/posturing attacks defining criticism as ‘jealousy’ of ‘success’ is clear as day.
But even recognizing that, it gets no sympathy from me because these are adults who are responsible for their own behavior, not kids acting out their abuse on the playground.
‘Course, you wouldn’t know that a lot of the time, but since this stuff does real harm to real people (actions for which we, as adults, are responsible) - no free pass.
Re: the measurement of success - yeah, I measure it in a similar way.
Did I tell the truth? Did I say what I meant to? Was I kind? Did I confront what needed to be confronted? Was I generous? Did I risk? Did I do my best?
Sure, I’m psyched that my published writing has gotten its nods from Pushcart, Best American Short Stories, NEA/State funding that allowed me to survive (and write) without a full time job for a short time. And I worked my ass off for years to acquire the skill necessary to get that kind of support/notice; it doesn’t come to whipped off crap or a sense of entitlement.
More than that, though, I’m psyched that my writing has cast some lifelines for people who have felt a least a little less alone than they did before they read it, or been helped in crafting their own sustaining narrative by it, or just been held by the buoyancy of words crafted with care and love - energized to get up another day to keep writing, working, loving, fighting in their own lives.
Mainly? I write because I have to. Because nothing else gives me such joy, and because I have no choice. It’s what I am, what I do, where and how I live.
A blog is a minuscule sliver of that life - even the kind of blogging I do, which is more writing-focused than sound-byte link politics (mostly, except when I get very, very angry, or when Gilly takes over and it’s all about the dog).
What blogging does for me is engage me in wonderful, sustaining community with the people who are not in it for status or some bizarre mini-celebrity existing nowhere except online, limited in form and content both.
It puts me in the online stream of writers with whom I can share love of language and ideas, the power of good writing to effect real change.
Those are the successful bloggers, in my mind. We feed and teach each other.
Okay, inner-editor getting out the hook and removing inner-novelist from the stage.
Thanks for this post, Chris. Raises a whole lotta lot, and good.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 01 05
Criminy that was long. Shoulda maybe made my own post.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 01 05
There’s no such things as successful bloggers, only sucessful blogging.
And cat blogging. Cat blogging is approved by 9 out of 10 of our Supreme Feline Overlords, so it must be okay.
I physically gasped and put my hand to my mouth in horror when I read about the Geo Glyphs, that’s truly appalling.
I remember at Punkass, I generally thought of my posts as falling into two categories: Light posts, which where generally an excuse to post a picture of Vox day’s hairdo and laugh, bitch at Kos a bit, and generally wallow in the filth of the blagotubular discharge because that’d get the links, and bump up ad revenue and stuff, and get my co-bloggers read (I’ve always been far more happier with blog whoring for other people’s writing, did you read bellatry’s last halloween post connecting Tam Lin and Labyrinth? that was awesome).
And then there was the more serious, theory heavy posts which I only did a few of, and then I realised that Marc was a bit more centrist than I was and I held back, and then burkagate occured with its unpleasentness.
I dunno, I have to say that I found the fluff posts to be as fun to write as the serious ones, they have a certain comforting edge to them, like a yo’ mama slinging contest with a close friend, so maybe it’s just different strokes for different folks really, they’re definately purile and undeniably the polar opposite of what one might call “serious” blogging and stuff.
And they ensure that a blogger doesn’t have to risk being wrong or threaten their opinions and preconceptions, or those of their readers, just tappity out something they know will get them attention and which they know they could produce a pretty much endless stream of.
By: By R. Mildred on 2008 01 05
Which is not to disagree, just thought I’d explain how it felt from the point of view of a lesser writer, which you’d be unfamiliar with of course.
I agree is what I think I’m trying to say.
By: By R. Mildred on 2008 01 05
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
You know, earlier this year, I got caught up in the game, too. I had sand kicked in my face in my very first very own little blogwar, my hit counter went through the ceiling, and I just ran with it. And a lot of people read, a lot more than before, and some good things got done and said, sure.
But I got pulled away from other things that were important, and I got pulled away from the kind of writing I wanted to do, anyhow. And I slowed down. I passed up a couple of opportunities. I fell off the radar, some. And it’s okay.
I have a very, very small readership, and I’m not ashamed of it, because they’re good readers, and when I’m too ill to post for two weeks, they e-mail me asking how I am, and I like to think I’ve touched them with things I’ve written. If there’s one person who checks in every day, or every week, because one thing I wrote did something or them—okay. Just—okay.
I don’t need to be striding with seven-league internet boots, you know? Mattering to someone is enough. Doing honest work is enough. Writing for me, and not for a shadowy audience, is enough. Famous on the Internets was okay, for five minutes, but…well.
The game is a game. Games are fine for what the are. But I’m not jockeying for position, here. I’m just talking, and hoping it matters.
By: By little light on 2008 01 05
R Mildred, you start calling anyone a lesser writer compared to me, especially yourself, I’ma hafta kick your ass.
But thanks.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 05
And hello, it’s the internet. A nifty tool among many other tools, yes, but reading little light, I thought of Sylvia’s post “Some Quick Reflections” from today. Especially this:
In the meantime, in the real world, people are dying and being raped and losing their homes and losing their jobs and unable to feed their children and unable to reach a place where the value of work means so much more to their families than the places where they were born. People are drinking and buying land and crashing cars and losing kids. People are cramming institutions and poets and equations and experiments and outlines and projections into two- to three-hour study blocks for the next mental dump so they can move as far away from poverty as possible. People are stringing together paper clips to make windmills, weaving and gluing the mundane together to make something beautiful of this broken and nomadic world, where there is nowhere to lay your head, and no one is truly okay.
And probably 90% of these people are wondering, “What the fuck is a blogosphere?”
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 01 05
Yeah, Tmorph. You beat me to linking to Sylvia.
And by the way, this blog gets better every time you leave a long comment on it. So qwitcher apologizing.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 05
‘K. Sorry.
; )
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 01 05
‘Course, you wouldn’t know that a lot of the time, but since this stuff does real harm to real people (actions for which we, as adults, are responsible) - no free pass.
POC have a hard time getting these “populists” to understand this point. They seem to think it’s all a game with winners and losers to theoretical arguments. They don’t understand that we are genuinely upset and angry because we are talking about our reality, not something theoretical. That is what angered me about Amanda’s latest comment at Hugo’s, she said something like she will no longer engage in arguments she can’t win. Meanwhile that wasn’t the point to engaging her, or Hugo, or anyone else for most people of color. It isn’t about winning the argument and looking the smartest, it’s about taking the blinders off and seeing that we live a different reality. As Kai pointed out, Hugo can’t even see that when he uses words like “we” or “us” or “our” he is already excluding POC, that he is talking about the benevolent white people deciding to include us in their movement, their feminism, and their publishing industry etc. If POC were already part of “we” then we wouldn’t need inclusion, we’d already be an integral part of the movement, feminism, publishing etc.
By: By Donna on 2008 01 06
Yes, exactly.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 01 06
You’re disemblogrolling voldemort.com? Damn. I DO have an impact.
And the Second-Life-mansion thing is so apt I laughed. Didn’t LOL. I laughed out loud.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 06
*laughs and does a happy dance
I especially loved your use of link description tags ! I laughed out loud and when love of my life wondered what I was giggling at, I realised I couldn’t explain it. A definite case of “you have to have been there”
You made a great start to my Sunday. Thanks !
By: By Devious Diva on 2008 01 06
Envy, success, reflection…mhm….this post is great.
Thank you for this. Thank you.
By: By Sudy on 2008 01 06
Thanks, sudy, DD, Donna, et al. Really glad it spoke to you.
And it took more more than 12 hours before someone read this post as my calling for the net to become an “elitist writer’s forum.” Not bad, considering. Though it is the weekend.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 06
Yeah, I just saw that one. I linked it on my blog and told people to defend the fact that I’m right all the time. Which means I may have missed the point.
But yes, Chris, this post rocks and fits into your modus operandi of rockitude. Especially in this paragraph:
And it is a manner of success not pervious to envy, because it is available to anyone who wants it and tries hard enough. It requires a willingness to admit that you may be wrong, and further a willingness once you have admitted being wrong to try to stop being wrong in that same way in the future. The brittle and the sociopathic may find that is too high a price for them to pay, and that’s their right.
Since I’m never wrong, I don’t necessarily relate to it, but you know.
I can imagine for about five minutes how important learning from wrongness helps others to agree with me in the long run.
By: By Sylvia/M on 2008 01 06
Amanda? Is that you?
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 06
Ha.
Yeah, I saw that writers = elitists trope, too, and while I absolutely get (and agree with) the larger point about the many possible functions of blogs and the many kinds of writing online which do effect real shifts in people’s thinking, I sure wish we could drop that particular dig. Ah well. The larger point stands.
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 01 06
Yeah, it’s a good post Christina’s got aside from that.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 06
I am *so* glad you figured this out, and got out. And pretty fast too, you smart guy.
By: By beth on 2008 01 06
Excellent piece Chris. For me, two things have become yard sticks for how I view success in my own writing and in a sense my own life.
One, I think authentic consistency is a very underrated attribute, and something I am seeing less and less of. It becomes harder to swallow the thrust of a writer when all you notice are the land fault shifts around them. Observing the scattering mass establish their vantage point of safety, all with an eye to others relative positioning around them, becomes tedious at best.
The other point I will always see as important is an appreciation for the potential in our words. Obviously consistency is a factor here as well, but often there is something else being missed (or perhaps viewed as irrelevant). Being able to still recognize that a “trite” and “sentimental” post, horribly out of fashion at progressive and edgy blog of the moment X, can often be to someone, somewhere, nothing less than a lifeline.
As always, I see those traits in abundance when I read your work, and I am inspired to do better. Thank you.
By: By Al on 2008 01 06
Ever done much thinking about what might be going on with you, Chris Clarke—you the white heterosexual dude—when you get that familiar impulase to trash a woman? And what you might actually be doing when you act on that familiar impulse? Ever done much thinking about whether it’s really your place—as a white heterosexual man—to pile on when a feminist woman is down?
What a cheap shot, actually a series of (leftist-misogynist) cheap shots, all gussied up, as though you are this really great white het dude, not like all those other guys, being all “reasonable” and “charitable” and thoughtful, and it worked, you got points, huh—at the expense of women it is still permissible for you to treat hatefully.
What you’ve done here is same misogynist, sexist, arrogant, patriarchal bullshit, different day. It’s sad (but not surprising) to note who’s down with it.
By: By Reader on 2008 01 06
Lots of vague allegations having nothing to do with the post, no specifics, anonymous first-time commenter. Hmmm.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 06
OK, two minutes go by and it dawns on me.
Criticize my sexism all you want. I will listen. Of course, it’ll save both of our time if you actually have specific objections to specific behavior, but that’s really my job.
But that last sentence of yours is really the point of your whole comment, isn’t it.
It’s a silencing comment addressed to the women who’ve found something of value in this post and have said so. And you’re too chickenshit to come out and slam those women directly, so you hide it behind a wall of criticism of my sexism, which is 1) undeniably there and I’m the first to admit it and 2) SO beside the point of this post.
I am fucking sick to death of seeing ego-driven shitheels of WHATEVER gender kick women I respect, admire, and love in the teeth. And I’m not shutting up about it anymore.
If the price of saying so is being called a misogynist by people with a stake in the movement power structure, then Bring. It. The. Fuck. On.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2008 01 06
I am *so* glad you figured this out, and got out.
That was my reaction, too. I just gotted sucked into reading the linked post by Hugo Whatshisfuck and attending comment thread. I suppose the best that could be said about it is that it’s a useful reminder of what I’ve been missing. But I feel like I have to take a long, soaking bath now.
By: By Dave on 2008 01 06
But that last sentence of yours is really the point of your whole comment, isn’t it.
Well, one of the points, maybe.
Ever done much thinking about whether it’s really your place—as a white heterosexual man—to pile on when a feminist woman is down?
Oh dear. I am feeling like it’s time for a cliche! Like… ain’t I a woman? Ain’t Black Amazon a woman? Ain’t bfp a woman? Sylvia, Donna, Theriomorph, Ilyka and more than I can mention (sorry to tell you, there are quite an awful lot of people who consider themselves “feminist (or no) women”) - ain’t we all women?
And if not, why not? If so, is not Chris - as a white heterosexual man - actually piling on with standing up for and standing with “a feminist woman” (and more than one) when she is down?
If the women above are not included in the “feminist women” category, and thus considered not worthy of being stood by and and stood up with, yes, even in opposition or in disagreement with another woman! or on issues related to this post, which did not arise out of a vacuum - well, then what ARE we considered?
Perhaps you will expand on all this, dear Reader.
By: By Nanette on 2008 01 06
Wow, Chris… how come you always do brilliant work when I’m not around to immediately give it the attention it deserves?
(*grumbles* Internet still down at home…)
This is a lovely and useful post though, truly. And here’s to success, in piles and heaps and bushels, overflowing. :)
By: By Magniloquence on 2008 01 06
I’m a step behind Nanette - I don’t even know to which women/woman Reader does refer.
Oh WAIT.
Hmmmmm.
Gee, I wonder.
This is excellent, though. In just two days I’ve now been transformed into both a woman of color and a man as a result of rejecting the Kool Aid of Misdirection. Does my shapeshifting heart good.
Maybe I can be a troll next!
And Dave, would you be so kind as to let me know when you’re done with that tub?
By: By Theriomorph on 2008 01 06
I am totally uninterested in what Reader thinks or meant. I have spent far to much time trying to understand what people are on about when in truth they are just (rather thinly disguised) attempts to shut certain people up. It’s not working.
I am proud to be standing with that
sad but not surprising
group of people who are
down with it
By: By Devious Diva on 2008 01 07
Categories:
Garden
