Photo: evoo73 via Flickr
Not much, maybe, but something.
That’s the idea behind Dutch Kills Press, LLC.
It’s the company I started to publish e-books.
Each contributor earns 50% of the profit from his or her e-book.
So if a contributor doesn’t earn much, neither does the company.
The summer list is up.
If you don’t have a Kindle or whatever, you can find
a very easy way to peruse, purchase and
read our e-books here.
Video: “How do peasants die?” On the life and death of Tolstoy, famous vegetarian.
I love me some novels and short stories. But I am particularly attracted to novellas. (Here’s mine! Buy them!) I was reminded of this after re-reading one that blew me away (see #20). So I thought I’d revisit my own list.
Again, this is not intended to be a definitive list and it’s in no particular order, save for # 1, which you should read (or-read) immediately. Okay, novellas. Here goes:
1. Death of Ivan Illyich, Leo Tolstoy
The best novella ever, if not the high point of world literature.
2. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
When reading “The Trial” to his buddy Max Brod, Kafka laughed his ass off. Read “The Metamorphosis” again and think of Kafka laughing.
3. What Kind of Day Did You Have, Saul Bellow
Immensely rewarding and bristling with life. A portrait of an aging “intellectual captain” and his clumsy, appealing mistress.
4. Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
Weird, brilliant, prescient and also surprisingly funny.
5. Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
Sublime creepiness.
6. Animal Farm, George Orwell
Many people will disagree about this one because they associate it with high school. Read it again.
7. The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Ah, Fedya. If only you always wrote this short.
8. Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
See #7.
9. Daisy Miller, Henry James
Ah, Henry. If only you always wrote this short.
10. War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
Wonderfully imaginative and a fast read.
11. The Dead, James Joyce
I read this so long ago that I can’t remember a thing about it, but it’s James Joyce, so it has to be here.
12. Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
If you haven’t read this, shame on you.
13. No One Writes to the Colonel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Simultaneously fascinating and frightening.
14. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
This one made a strong impression on me in high school.
15. Billy Budd, Herman Melville
Fills the reader with a kind of epic futility.
16. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Ludicrous dialogue: “I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.” But a great story nevertheless.
17. The Aspern Papers, Henry James
Astonishing to say this about anything by him, but: it’s fun.
18. Goodbye Columbus, Philip Roth
Dissecting the foibles and petty snobbery of suburban Jews. It pissed off almost everyone in my parents’ generation, so I was almost obliged to love it.
19. Him With His Foot in His Mouth, Saul Bellow
Actually the collection of that name is my favorite book.
20. A Love Child, Doris Lessing
I find this story absolutely brilliant and truly frightening. In fact, I’m going to read it again as soon as I am done with this post.
Bonus: Three Famous Ones That I Have Mixed Feelings About
1. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The first time I read this (in my lonely apartment in Warsaw) I thought it was genius. The second time I picked it up, I couldn’t get past page 8.
2. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
I have tried and failed to read this story more times than I can remember.
3. Seize the Day, Saul Bellow
Marvelous writing, but not nearly as affecting as it thinks it is.
Did I miss anything? Send me an email and let me know.
We should introduce this guy to Eraserhead. Photo by Drew Coffman, via Flickr.
(N.B. I originally posted this last year; reposting and sticking it at the top of my blog to remember that there is a way to navigate the ridiculousness of writing with dignity and integrity.)
1. I will use social media wisely. If I have work to share, I will share it. But I will never blog/tweet/Facebook about how hard writing is or how many words I wrote today. Nobody cares! And every time I get caught humblebragging (“I am overwhelmed by all the talent here at Yaddo!”) I will donate $10 to PEN.
2. I will not be a dick. Given the following conditions, I will always help other writers: (a) the other writer is deserving of help, that is, not a dick and talented; (b) the request is reasonable; and (c) the request does not greatly infringe upon my own time.
3. I will not surrender my autonomy to gatekeepers. I will not wait around for some magic agent or editor to magically make my career magical, especially when I can be writing, submitting and networking for myself. Nor will I ever (and this is really important) assume that anyone in the publishing business will put my needs above his or her own.
4. I will learn how to say no. I will politely decline unpleasant social obligations whenever possible, especially if they interfere with my writing schedule.
5. I will learn how to say yes. Like most writers, I have a day job. So I don’t have much time. However, I will still allow time for rewarding relationships (friends, family, etc.). I will just be clear about my boundaries.
6. I will stay off the Internet when I’m writing. No more, “I’ll just look this up quickly for research.” If necessary, I will download Internet blocking software or take pen and paper to the park.
7. I will value my work. I will not write for “exposure.” I will write for money. If there are exceptions, they will be exceptions that I can live with, for example if it’s a short story that I’m happy to get off my desk, or I have something to promote.
8. I will keep to a schedule. I will write regularly, even when I don’t have a lot of time, for two reasons: (a) so I can actually get some work done; and (b) so that I don’t always feel like I should be writing. If all I have is my lunch hour, that’s fine, because a few weeks of lunch hours will add up to a draft of a short story or a couple of poems. And then when I’m not writing I can be fully present for my kids or friends or significant other.
9. I will strive for graciousness. “Envy is the central fact of American life,” wrote Gore Vidal. But I will not make it the central fact of my life. The best way to avoid the corrosive effects of envy is, counter-intuitively, to accept it: “I am feeling really envious right now, and that’s fine.” I will try to be outwardly gracious and share the truly venomous feelings only with my journal or my best friend or my spouse. I will also remember that it is possible to feel happy for people.
10. I will value myself. I am not worthless because [check whichever applies:] I haven’t yet published. Because I haven’t been paid for a story. Because I don’t have a book. Because my book didn’t go into paperback or it’s not a bestseller or I didn’t sell the movie rights and so on. I will acknowledge and accept my disappointment. But I will try not let it reinforce a sense of worthlessness. I will instead earn my self-worth through self-discipline and sustaining healthy relationships.
Dear Mr. Long,
Greetings from New York City, land of liberals and lattes!
I read that the Board of Governors of the UNC System voted to discontinue 46 degree programs. I am sure that you know all about that, because, as the Vice-Chairman of the Planning Committee, you voted for the cuts.
I am writing because I was disturbed to read that you said, in regard to the cuts, “We’re capitalists, and we have to look at what the demand is, and we have to respond to the demand.”
I strongly disagree with this statement. In fact, I believe that the assumptions behind this statement have ruined higher education in America. No, that’s not strong enough. The assumptions behind this statement may actually lead to the ruination of America, period.
This letter will explain why. I hope you will believe me when I tell you that I write not to attack you personally. I am going to go out on a limb and say that you are a religious man. Me too! And my religion (which is Judaism! I’m a Jew!) teaches that it is wrong to embarrass people. So while I may seem harsh, please take it in the spirit of the Judeo-Christian ethic, or something, I am less and less clear on what that means, but that’s a letter for another time.
Anyway. Allow me to take a moment and discuss the UNC’s Board of Governors itself, which, according to my desultory research, doesn’t seem to have UNC students’ best interests at heart. This is just a guess, but I think it’s a solid one. Why? Because it seems that patronage, and not competence, has a lot to do with who gets on the Board in the first place. Candidates for the board (or their family members) donate up to tens of thousands to the politicians who appoint the board. Call me cynical, but that smells bad.
You may argue, Mr. Long, that the board members work in the public interest. I doubt it, as the board doesn’t (how should I put this?) reflect the public. In a state whose population is over 20% African-American and presumably 50% female, the board is (surprise!) overwhelmingly white and male. I am not going to dwell on this too long, as I felt really icky staring at tiny pictures of the Board of Governors and counting black people.
I will say that you, Mr. Long, seem to be confusing ideology with public service. Let’s be honest here. You were a board member of the Civitas Institute, which is the kind of place that makes my Brooklyn friends tremble with rage over their craft beers. My personal favorite indication of your political proclivities, Mr. Long, was when you kvetched about the UNC Center for Civil Rights. For focusing too much on racial equality. As opposed to “other civil rights,” like freedoms of religion and the right to bear arms. In North Carolina.
That one, Mr. Long, deserves some kind of award.
All that said, the most telling thing was when the Daily Tarheel quoted you as saying, and I think it bears repeating, “We’re capitalists, and we have to look at what the demand is, and we have to respond to the demand.”
Now here you and I are going to have a big disagreement. Which is a shame, because I believe that capitalism is grand. Seriously. I’m not a liberal. Nor am I a conservative, really, but again, that’s an issue for another time.
The issue, Mr. Long, is your assumption that the market solves everything, that the market is everything, that there is no question of ethics or inequality that cannot be addressed by the free market. Because if we are to be intellectually honest (and face up to things like “evidence” and “history”) then we should agree that although capitalism solves lots of things and economic freedom is indeed a crucial element of liberty, it is an egregious oversimplification to believe that everything must work according to supply and demand.
If it makes sense to cut the jazz major from North Carolina Central University, by all means do so. I love jazz, I love the arts, but if there’s a budget crunch and only two kids signed up for the major and one of them doesn’t seem very serious, well then, cut away, you can use my scissors. This is a non-partisan opinion, Mr. Long; I’d say the same thing about a major in Wiccan Studies or the Awesomeness of President Reagan.
But when I look at what kinds of majors are also being “discontinued”, I see disproportionate cuts to programs in elementary and secondary education. (See below.) That’s really disappointing, Mr. Long, considering how desperately North Carolina needs good teachers.
Imagine, Mr. Long, that you’re a student commuting to UNC-Greensboro or UNC-Charolotte or Appalachian State University and you really, really want to be a teacher. But that’s going to be tough because you can’t afford to go away to school and your nearby study options have been severely curtailed and anyway the pay for teachers in North Carolina is so bad that they’re being poached by Houston area schools.
(Wait a minute. The job fairs mentioned in the link above—the ones where Houston schools came to North Carolina and said, “Come work for us, you’ll be able to eat”—those job fairs were held in Greensboro, which lost 5 programs for secondary education. This is a coincidence, right? Because wouldn’t interfering with the students of Greenboro’s ability to make a decent living be interfering with capitalism?)
(Come to think of it, since you’re a tax lawyer and a libertarian you might like this idea: grant serious tax breaks to NC teachers so that their net income approaches their Texan colleagues’.)
Let me get to the point, Mr. Long. The reason I am writing this instead of (say) doing something that actually will earn me money is because I care about education very much. And while of course you need to act within budget constraints, I’ll send $50 to this North Carolina charity for homeless children—which surely we can agree is a worthy cause—if you can prove to me that you actually give a rat’s ass about improving (a) access to education and (b) education itself for the many, many poor people (or even middle-class people!) in your beautiful state.
Mr. Long, as you know, the goal of capitalism is to make money. The nice thing about it is that (while trickle-down is nonsense) a rising tide does seem to lift all boats, or at least many boats, or at least some boats. But that’s a nice unintended consequence. The capitalist doesn’t care about lifting boats. The capitalist cares about making money. Which is fine, I don’t care. All I am saying is that it’s a dumb idea to conflate the goals of education with the goals of capitalism.
So what is the goal of education? You might say, “Helping students get jobs.” Whereas I say, “Sure, help them get jobs, and teach them to read and write, and a little something about the world, and how to be well informed citizens, because unless they acquire some critical thinking skills, then it becomes real easy to impinge upon their liberty, I mean really impinge upon it, in a ‘the NSA-is-listening way.'”
If you’re really concerned about liberty, Mr. Long, you’d be doing everything possible to improve the fucked-up mess that is education in your fine state.
If you want to look at it purely from a budgetary perspective, why aren’t you concerned about easing administrative bloat—one crucial factor in tuition hikes? I am always curious why free-market types, who are all about efficiency and lowering overhead, don’t fire a shitload of deans. Admittedly, this may not be under your purview. But don’t you find it at all disturbing how tuition keeps rising?
When you graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1982, Mr. Long, the cost of attendance was $2512. That’s somewhere between $5k and $6k in today’s money. The current cost of attendance is $24,120. Today’s students do not have access to the same quality, affordable education that you did. Are you cool with that?
I am not trying to put words in your mouth. But your own comments suggest that you ascribe to these assumptions. If I am incorrect, please let me know. Please, let me know if you feel tar-heeled with the same brush (get it?).
Because I suspect that you support an educational system that does not exist to help its students acquire basic skills and even learn something beautiful but financially useless. I suspect that you support an educational system that exists only to make good little workers—which sounds a lot like Communism.
Yours,
Gordon Haber
You may have read Negotiating Your Way to a Fair Adjunct Experience on Vitae. I am not linking to it because I have no interest in helping the Chronicle get more pageviews, even the modest number this blog may provide.
Anyway. The piece is about how adjuncts should negotiate and be willing to walk if they don’t get what they want. Which is true, strictly speaking: if you’re not capable of walking away from a negotiation your counterpart will eat your metaphorical lunch. The thing this guy seems to forget is that most adjuncts are in no position to negotiate because they teach the shitty courses that tenured faculty don’t want: 4-hour comp courses that meet at 6am Sunday mornings, Intro to Some Social Science 101.
Or does he?
I have enjoyed every course that I’ve taught as an adjunct. I’ve been treated fairly because I’ve negotiated contracts that ensured that I wasn’t being exploited. But I’ve walked away from more adjunct contracts than I’ve accepted. When you’re a struggling academic who’s barely making poverty wages, walking away from work, even exploitative work, is the hardest thing to do, but you can only negotiate for a better deal if you’re willing to say no to an offer that doesn’t sufficiently value your expertise.
My first response to this is to point out that the author of said piece is a “deep-sea ecologist.” If you can lecture for 90 minutes on the life cycle of the angler fish then you indeed are in a position to negotiate. Most adjuncts, however, are not. So thanks for the wisdom, now kiss my ass.
My second response is that if this guy was “barely making poverty wages” then he would not have walked away from teaching a 4-hour section of Intro to Farts that meets 6am Sunday mornings. And a quick look at his cv suggests that if he’s had lean times, they were in graduate school and that doesn’t count.
We’re seeing a lot of this lately: some white male suggesting that he’s had his own hard times but by the way it’s still all your fucking fault, adjunct. Now, I don’t have anything against white males. Some of my best friends are white males. I am a white male. But I do find it telling that it’s almost always white males whitemalesplaining to adjuncts how they need to get their shit together and be more white-maley. I haven’t seen any people of color publicly suggesting to adjuncts that it’s all their fucking fault. I can think of only one woman who publicly told adjuncts that it was all their fucking fault.
The piece in question is supposed to be about academia. Instead I think it’s an example of the parlous state of American journalism. When I write for a newspaper, in general I am trying to write something interesting and informative for the reader. If it’s criticism, I consider it a service. My job is tell you if something is worth your time. And I try to make the piece worth your time as well.
But what are the chances a piece like this one will actually help anybody? How many adjuncts do you imagine have read it and thought, Hmmm, negotiating, what a fine idea, I will do so forthwith. Four? Five? Maybe a dozen?
A piece like this has two goals, one for the paper and another for the writer. For the paper, the idea is to produce a headline so infuriating silly that readers will be unable to stop themselves from clicking even when it makes them feel that the world is hurtling towards its own demise and nobody loves anybody. The second goal is to make the writer of said piece look good.
Here’s a suggestion for those academics who are doing quite well, thank you, and want to tell others how they can do this same: keep your trap shut.
Here’s a suggestion for the Chronicle: aim higher.
Successful people will usually be working instead of mountain climbing. Photo: _T604
Many people have asked me how I got so successful.
“Gordon,” they say. “How did you get so much of the success?”
The first thing I tell them is that behind every good man there is a good woman with a better job.
The second thing I tell them is that success is less about what you do than what you don‘t do. So here’s a list of things that I never do, especially not on Monday mornings when I have deadlines and I shouldn’t be dicking around on my blog.
Some time ago I begged people to stop writing stupid things about adjuncts, because I am unable to stop myself from responding and thus I take time away from writing for money. Therefore every time you write something stupid about adjuncts, you are taking food from my child’s mouth.
Today my hackles have been raised by one Phillip W. Magness, who wrote what he probably thinks is a devastating blog post debunking the idea of the “minimum wage adjunct.” Magness does the math and concludes—wait for it—that adjuncts actually earn more than minimum wage! So everything is okay then!
Still I want to respond to a few of Dr. Magness’s points (his in bold).
Based on these weak premises, Magness concludes that an adjunct teaching a 4/4 load should ample time to do all the other shit that goes along with academia. My favorite part is when he lists all great stuff he accomplished while adjuncting—finishing a dissertation, writing articles, finding a job, etc.
The gist of all this is pretty much what all the other trolls are saying, which is “I did it so how hard can it be.” And “if you don’t like it you can always leave.” In other words, here’s another guy who simply can’t imagine that someone might have a different set of challenges than he does, and that leaving paying work, even when it’s a terrible situation, is easy.
My favorite part is when he writes, “rather than spreading mythologies about ‘minimum wage adjuncts,’ our discussion of the subject needs to be grounded in a heavy dose of fact.” Indeed it does. Here’s some facts:
N.B. Any and all adjuncts are still welcome to email me for a free copy of my novella, Adjunctivitis. It ain’t much, but it’s the least I can do.
It is your fault!
The arrogant libertarian troll (aka Jason Brennan) argues that (1) adjuncts should have known what the risks were and how bad the system is and (2) they have better options. In other words, adjuncts, it’s your own damn fault. Adjuncts should have known how hard it is to get a decent job in academia and that administrators don’t give a shit about their pay or working conditions. And when they realize how bad it is to be an adjunct they should pursue another line of work. Because of course everyone makes great life decisions when they start grad school at 25. And there’s no possibility that Brennan is blaming the victim due to hindsight bias. And there’s no possibility that adjuncting is the only job some people can find. And there’s no such thing as learned helplessness. So unless you can be as rational (and successful!) as Brennan, you deserve your shitty job.
You’re stupid for trying!
Another great point Brennan makes is that when adjuncts agitate they’re only hurting themselves, because there aren’t enough good jobs to go around. If every institution of higher learning switches to, say, the contract model, many adjuncts aren’t going to get jobs. Ergo we may as well just leave things as they are!
Free markets and social justice!
Brennan is a libertarian, which means that he is a white male under 50 who earns a decent living. And if the system has worked out fine for him, there must not be anything wrong with it! Because free markets are fully compatible with social justice and everything will be grand once any impediments to business are gone. Because there are so many happy workers in business-friendly places like China and Dubai.
In conclusion!
Strictly speaking, Brennan has a point. Especially since all adjuncts share the exact same circumstances and took the same paths to adjuncting and anyway they’ll have a better life if they retrain as computer programmers or whatever, because it’s so easy to change jobs. And the people who put this kind of hyper-rational bullshit out into the world are not gloating, nor lacking in empathy to the point where they seem to enjoy antagonizing the weak. Because what kind of a person would try to get attention for himself with such pointless cruelty?
You should see the other guy