Your New Boyfriend: This Terrible Novelist Who Couldn't Get Published Because Sexism Against Men.

[niyad]

Your New Boyfriend: This Terrible Novelist Who Couldn't Get Published Because Sexism Against Men.


Every so often on this here internet, we get a hate read that is so perfect, that so aptly encapsulates a particular form of douchebaggery that we all must collectively gasp at it's awfulness and revel in the general repulsiveness of the arrogant human being so lacking in self-awareness that they actually thought it would be a good idea to write such a thing. Today, I bring you such a hate read -- Matthew Binder's A Glimpse Into the Ideological Monoculture of Literary New York. And yes, it's actually worse than it sounds, if that is possible. Matthew Binder is a "novelist." He wrote a novel. And unlike every other aspiring novelist on earth, he did not immediately get published by a fancy publishing house, skyrocketing him to fame and worldwide adoration. Why? Because he is a white man. In an essay for Quillette, the premier online destination for people who are not fun at parties, Binder details the horror of a New York City literary scene filled with liberals and publishers who did not want to publish his book and asked him to leave parties because he was being a jackass.

It is, I think, the worst thing I have ever read in my life. It is transcendently bad. If I were to write a satire of an entitled, Bret Easton Ellis wannabe male writer who is not actually very good at writing but who believes himself to be the second coming of Hemingway, it would be nowhere near this perfect. Every sentence is a gift, gently reminding the reader that Matthew Binder is every obnoxious man they ever shared a creative writing class with.
He writes:
As Quillette writer Gabriel Scorgie noted recently, it's become difficult for beginning writers to get book contracts. But I dove in, nonetheless.

It has never not been difficult for beginning writers to get book contracts. Getting a book contract is a notoriously hard thing to do! Who gets into writing -- or any art form -- and doesn't expect to have half of their life be rejection? Is the term "starving artist" unknown to him? If anything, it's a hell of a lot easier to publish a book than it ever has been. There are small presses everywhere, not to mention the fact that it is now pretty easy to self-publish a book. He imagines that in a different time, before the world started being so sexist towards white men, that he would have never had such trouble publishing his novel.

Henry David Thoreau didn't get recognized until decades after he died, and was only able to get two books published in his lifetime. Van Gogh never sold a painting while he was alive. Emily Dickinson only published seven poems before she died. Neither Kafka nor Poe were celebrated until after they died. But Matthew Binder? Matthew Binder is better than all of them and deserves his acclaim for his bad writing right now, please and thank you.
I digress.
At the time, I was living in Albuquerque, NM, working for a solar energy company where my job prospects didn't seem particularly bright. A day after taking inspiration from a 2015 episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown about Budapest, I tendered my resignation and bought a one-way ticket for Hungary, figuring that this would be a good place to be an author.



. . . .

https://www.wonkette.com/your-new-boyfriend-this-terrible-novelist-who-couldnt-get-published-because-sexism-against-men

[mr_lebowski]

1. It would be helpful if you designated in an obvious fashion (via formatting) which parts

of your piece are your own commentary and which parts

are quotations from the article you're referring to.

Just trying to help

I'll look forward to checking it out.

[niyad]

2. since none of it is my commentary, but that of the Wonkette editor. . . .

[mr_lebowski]

3. Then, the commentary of the Wonkette article vs the content from the whiny 'author'

Same principle

Every so often on this here internet, we get a hate read that is so perfect, that so aptly encapsulates a particular form of douchebaggery that we all must collectively gasp at it's awfulness and revel in the general repulsiveness of the arrogant human being so lacking in self-awareness that they actually thought it would be a good idea to write such a thing....

He writes:

As Quillette writer Gabriel Scorgie noted recently, it's become difficult for beginning writers to get book contracts. But I dove in, nonetheless.

It has never not been difficult for beginning writers to get book contracts....

I digress....

At the time, I was living in Albuquerque, NM, working for a solar energy company where my job prospects didn't seem particularly bright. A day after taking inspiration from a 2015 episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown about Budapest, I tendered my resignation and bought a one-way ticket for Hungary, figuring that this would be a good place to be an author.

That sort of thing ... makes for a more understandable read as a consumer

[niyad]

6. take it up with the author.

[mr_lebowski]

8. I just did ;)

[ret5hd]

4. "DAILY PRAYER TO COMBAT IMPOSTOR SYNDROME: God give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude"

[hunter]

5. This has got to be satire... it's just got to be.

satire.

Otherwise it's just sad.

[niyad]

7. sadly, NOT satire. think of the incels--the redditt subgroups, and a whole bunch

more than make you need a hazmat delousing just for knowing they exist