*Recommend. RESTACK. Subscribe. Go paid.
**Check out my recorded video/audio conversation with Bowen Dwelle (author of the stack An Ordinary Disaster): We discuss women, manhood, feminism, Joan Didion, mothers, memoir, writing your truth, personal responsibility and more. CLICK HERE.
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Iāve been readingāand have almost finishedāthe novel Sentimental Education (1869) by the French author Gustave Flaubert. Iāll probably write a book review of sorts when Iām done and have absorbed it all. (And there is a lot to absorb.)
Thereās a line in the novel that made me strangely think of Substack and which I love: āIt was like a Stock Exchange of aesthetics.ā The line was a reference to one of the characterās notions of starting, post February 1848 Paris revolution, a sort of Arts Commune for the working artists wherein Art would be valued as much or as or even more than (at least spiritually) commerce.
I stopped at that line, a Stock Exchange of aesthetics. I dragged my pen and highlighter outāthis is how I readāand underlined/highlighted the line, adding little thick blue arrows with my pen to demonstrate the importance, to me, of the clause. And then of course I snapped a photo of the line with my iPhone. (And finally added to my special folder for this particular novel.) This is my weird, specific, meticulous method of reading and absorbing great literature.
The line made me think of Substack, as I said. If you go back to ancient times, say 2015, youāll recall that, pre-Trumpāthat raging lunatic who plunged the nation into wild extremes on both sidesāwe more or less (most of us) basically trusted the major news organizations and papers. For the most part we trusted that when the New York Times said fill-in-the-blank, it actually happened more or less the way it was described in the paper. Fox News we knew exaggerated things and was a bit theatrical and sometimes more or less made things upā¦but that was fine as long as we didnāt have to be indoctrinated ourselves.
Then Trump and 2016 happened and everything changed.
Suddenly the Right was more ridiculous and the Left became more extreme and mired in social justice identity politics. A nasty cultural tug-of-war, which unfortunately sidelined reality, truth and decency on both sides, ensued. Old-school debates and arguments and differences of opinion were flung out for all-out war; it was Realpolitik hardcore.
For the first time in contemporary memory, both sides became suspect, and in many ways deservedly so. Censorship seemed to be on the rise, either regarding articles directly or in the sense of self-censoring in order to get published in the first place, or else from the angle that small but powerful activist groups pressured publishers to drop writers before they even reached audiences, or shortly after. Sometimes the activists succeeded, sometimes they failed. But either way it was censorship. (And theyāre still doing it.)
This occurred not only with news, of course, but with fiction, memoir, personal essay, journalistic essays, etc. The scope of what one could fairly or honestly write aboutāonce quite wideāhad narrowed, to the point of becoming quite sadly myopic and, to use another golden overused 2023 ditty: Narcissistic. The boring, Orwellian moniker āinclusivityā actually in practice meant exclusivity. The phrase ācultural appropriationā meant you had to āstay in your lane,ā whether it be essay, news or fiction; no longer could serious writers (to the extent any of these types were left) use their imagination in a deep, meaningful, open, risky, vulnerable way.
In short: Culture had cracked open exposing the raw nerves and hypocritical absurdity within, which many of us figured had been lying in wait for decades only needing the Molotov cocktail of anarchic stupidity in order to set off the explosive charge.
Enter Donald J. Trump.
But also, thankfully: Enter Substack.
The first time I ever even heard of the platform was in 2020 while strolling around the Great Lawn in Central Park, in Manhattan. All my life Iād identified as a Liberal. Born and raised in the small hippie town of Ojai, in Southern California, from a family littered with mastersā degrees like jewels in a crown, Iād lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for a decade before moving to Manhattan in 2019. Never once in my life have I voted for a Republican. Both my Boomer parents are centrist Democrats. I voted for Obama both times, and for Bernie in 16 and Biden in 20.
Yet the shift since 2016 of the party towards the fringe extreme āWokeā LeftāI know the term Woke is beyond overused, is seen by many on the Left now as a āRepublican talking pointā and is close to meaningless, but you grasp what I mean hereāhas disheartened me greatly. I donāt think the fringe Left is evil or horrible or actively racist or trying to ruin Democracy or the countryā¦I just think theyāre hopelessly lost, naĆÆve, and are taking us all backwards. (Ditto the Republican Party; two wrongs, as we know from history, do not make a right. Pun intended.)
Anyway, enough of politics.
My point is: By 2020 there was 100% a vacuum, a spot which needed, called out desperately to be filled. And that spot was filled by Substack.
The āspotā I refer to here is a more or less neutral, rational, thoughtful, unbiased (as far as that is humanly possible, of course, which is less than 100%) pro-free speech platform wherein anybody could say what they pleased. But we already had that with Facebook, Twitter, etc. Sort of. Regardless of what your views may be on the so-called āTwitter Files,ā etc, the more important comment, in my opinion, is that those platforms, and other social media places like them, were good for outrage, fake culture, dishonesty and advertisers, and terrible for most of us real live good ole human beings: Complex, nuanced, layered, non-linear, social beings who were trying to be seen and heard.
Substack offered the best of both worlds: A free, fair and open platform, coupled with no advertisers, a subscription-based concept which linked writers directly to readers, a reasonable fee taken off paid subscriptions, and a platform that felt like it actually encouraged writers specifically, and more to the point: Thoughtful discourse.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not. I donāt think a āperfectā platform will ever exist, because platforms are designed by people, and people are biased, confused, genetically and environmentally-driven, and flawed.
But I think weāre pretty close, for the time being at least, to something which is highly satisfying. Itās simple to use. I am somewhat of a luddite and Iāve figured it out. The platform showcases bigger, successful writers and Iāve seen many from the political Right, and many from the political Left. I think thatās great. I think news and journalism and all writing, really, has always been intended to allow readers their own opinions based on what they were presented with. The job of a platform or news company or literary journal or podcast etc shouldnāt ever be to tell you how or what to think, but rather to give you what they got and let you decide for yourself. (Without the bad incentives which benefit the companies over the consumers.)
While itās totally true that most newspapers and literary journals have always had a general bias towards the Left or the Right inherent in their mission, this shifted around 2016 from a typical and normal amount toā¦absurdism.
Nowadays we see news articles and journalism that read like op-edsā¦but incredibly arenāt op-eds. The bias is so blatant, so obvious, and so out-in-the-open that it feels like being slapped and spat on while simultaneously a hand is reaching into your pocket and snatching your money. It insults your intelligence.
The ādownsideā of Substack, or any open public platform, of course, is the same downside as Democracy itself: Anyone can express their ideas. I mean anyone. Since the turn of the 21st centuryāwhen digital media really started shifting the physical book landscape, and self-publishing began to proliferate and the internet became everythingāitās become easier and easier for Joe Schmo to get on the computer and start dashing off their ignorant views.
But is that really any different from the twentysomethings who graduated from Yale and Columbia and Harvard who have a profoundly bent bias whoāre writing at say The New Yorker or The New York Times who, even if they wanted toāand 99.999% of them do NOT want toāwould not be able to get their potentially heterodox article past the editor? (Or just an article which hews to reality but happens to not back up the fringe-Left current view?)
(For the record Iām not suggesting that you ācanāt trustā The New York Times but rather that, especially in certain culture war areas (read: Race and gender) the NYT has become close to unreadable, if youāre anyone who has serious critical-thinking skills and you donāt simply subscribe to A Tribe. That said, the NYT has made some progress in this area over the past 3-5 months.)
Anyway. I digress again.
There are some dumb views expressed on Substack. Some of them are expressed by ārubesā from nowhere, yet a great many are expressed by educated fools. Still, there remains a feeling, an environment, a digital landscape of Fair Play on Substack, and, to me, it seems like this has been sorely, brutally missing since 2016.
I tried really, really hard to get several of my 13 completed books published by traditional publishers. No dice. I couldnāt even get an agent, despite some very close calls. I did get a couple dozen short stories published in little literary magazines, including one which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. But I finally realized, by 2022, that the time had come for me to let go of my wild old-school 20th century dreams of getting an agent and having my books traditionally published. It just wasnāt going to happen in the environment in which we currently exist. My writing was and is too raw, too gritty, too real, too honest for our literary and cultural moment right now. And I know I am very much not alone.
Alex Perez said it all in his Hobart Review interview here.
I think of a brilliant, new young writer who published only one book, in 2017, probably one of the very last few which could squeak out like it, called My Absolute Darling. The authorās name, which I find humorous and perfect, is Gabriel Tallent. The book is told from a 14-year-old girlās POV. She lives alone in the woods in the Pacific Northwest with her insane, violent survivalist father. Thereās an incest rape scene which has never left my mind. Yet the story is arresting and gorgeous. Some of the physical nature writing is perhaps worthy of Steinbeck. But this novel could never be published now.
One day, I hope, the traditional publishing world will either crumble completely or the gates will be forced back open for all talented writers, regardless of being white, straight, male, and regardless of the level of violence, grit, raw intensity. I look forward to a day when liberalism, rationality, honesty, fairness, free speech and divergent, transgressive views (which can be held by anyone regardless of race or gender, including white straight men) are once more held in esteem.
Until that day comes, I will continue to write on Substack.
Michael, you nailed on the head. First, before I forget, you might enjoy the article (linked below) by Hamish M about Substack's growth and getting caught in the middle of ideological disputes. Post-DT, I don't trust a single national new outlet. FOX, no way. Then I go over to MSNBC and N Wallace starts the hour thus: "The former discredited and disgraced president, DT...." So I'm done there, too. I have my go-to authors. David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, some others on foreign policy. But I'll never again jump into a post-2016 box. I only trust the Brits -- The Economist and the LFTimes. As for publication, screw it, my friend. I went through that bog for a LONG time and it just isn't worth it. The industry has become so disintermediated that it's easy to self-publish books and just get your ideas out there. I'm not saying that an individual has the power of SImon & Schuster, but it can be done. Good ideas disseminate. And to be perfectly F honest, I just don't care. I've got my merit badges. Now if only I could some more subscribers -- not that I'm not happy with where I am at the moment -- and maybe a signed Ron Guidry jersey.
https://hamish.substack.com/p/escape-from-hell-world?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I think you are right about Substack, and the fact that we are entering a new age of rethinking everything when it comes to publishing (whether books, music, art, etc) and how to connect with readers/listeners/viewers. It' freeing and promising and I hope will continue to develop. And I hope the publishing field will ride its coattails at some point, but probably not in my lifetime.
As for the politics, I will have to respectfully disagree with you. I think the word woke has gotten a bad rap, has been maligned, in fact. Perhaps both the right and left are moving toward the extremes, but I happen to like the "extreme" that the left is moving, opening up gender and racial and sexual divides, giving people more choices in how to identify themselves. There's a richness there, and a kindness, and a truthfulness. Boys have not always been boys and girls have not always been girls from ages past, in the narrow ways the genders have been defined. Do we want biological male who identify a female to play women's sports? Maybe, maybe not. But do we want to ban books about transgenders, about our racial past, about kids with two moms or two dads, that's a solid no for me. The liberal extremes it seems to me is moving in a direction that is more inclusive, more tolerant, more kind, more open-minded, while the conservative Right is moving in a direction that is more intolerant, more exclusive, more mean-spirited, more violent, more racist and homophobic. I can't see how you can equate the two as equally "bad". Maybe you can explain more what you mean.