Dead on Arrival

I am habitually late to parties. I tease the line that divides chic and forgivably unpunctual with poor taste, leaving the murky business of establishing an evening’s tone to early goers when possible, preferring instead, a lively entrance or to slip on as an addendum to half-formed clusters of conversations. Such social tendencies are mirrored in my media engagement. Continuously, I find myself behind the moment, reading a book or watching a movie after the takes have passed and something new is in the spotlight. I would love to claim my cultural tardiness is always intentional, that I avoid having my perception of a text clouded by popular discourse, or that I am above chasing the elation of Best Immediate Response. Mostly, I am forgetful and have clung to my midwestern sensibility of often being a little out of step.

The above is the lede of an essay on Raven Leilani’s Luster, originally commissioned by an online platform though ultimately killed by the editor of the site as she discovered that her readers, self-identified book lovers, preferred short content over long essays. I came to Luster two years after it debuted to rave reviews and was picked up by HBO for a show adaptation that is hopefully still forthcoming. Numerous pieces were written about it at the time of its release and I was eager to voice my own impressions that had been overlooked in many of these articles. Leilani has been compared to Sally Rooney as they are both millennial writers interested in intimacy and sex, and depict messy angst-riddled women struggling to find their footing. Luster, was often described as a dark comedy and a spin on the domestic novel. Yet I was interested in the book’s preoccupation with displacement, both as a material reality and an emotional space, experienced by the black characters of the story. But I was late. 

I’ve wondered if the editor of the platform for self-identified book lovers would have reconsidered the piece, despite its length of 2,000 words, had it been more timely.  Timeliness has long been a feature of what  is published, particularly in hard news and journalism where audiences are expecting updates on current events. In the space of culture writing however, I’ve questioned this primacy of timeliness or temporary relevance. Why this story now? A publication’s pitch guidelines might ask you to consider before submitting, to which I often think, why not? Have we become too reliant on marketing campaigns established by public relations teams to determine what is worthy of interrogation and when?

I frequently think of Soraya Robert’s 2018 essay, “On Flooding: Drowning the Culture in Sameness” which analyzed the uniformity across subjects of written pieces as well as the style.

“The web once made something of a biblical promise to give all of us a voice, but in the ensuing flood — and the ensuing floods after that — only a few bobbed to the top. With increased diversity, this hasn’t changed — there are more diverse voices, but the same ones float up each time. There remains a tension that critics, and the larger media, must balance, reflecting what’s in the culture in all its repetitive glory while also nudging it toward the future. But we are repeatedly failing at this by repeatedly drowning ourselves in the first part. This is flooding…the practice of unleashing a mass torrent of the same stories by the same storytellers at the same time, making it almost impossible for anyone but the same select few to rise to the surface.”

The flood of sameness in turn, reduces critical thinking and writing to takes and discourse. It  prizes “content” and subjects deemed click-worthy over an exploration of ideas. The 24-hour news and trend cycles have upped the pressure to have a response prepared whether it be to a movie, a book, an album, or a politician’s Twitter feed. Though we are inundated more than ever with cultural objects to engage, the availability to do so has narrowed. 

You likely know all of this and have your own complaints: private equity devouring and gutting independent media; legacy publications facilitating genocide propaganda; unanswered pitches; not enough money; not enough time; fewer resources to develop a story; an increasingly hostile world becoming more inhabitable. You may have dealt with these frustrations with the launching of a newsletter, lit mag, reading series, writing group, or anything that challenges the dire state of affairs. 

This is my own entry into the saturated web. Too often when an essay or a pitch is rejected, I let it die in the inbox of the editor who decided it wasn’t a good fit instead of allowing it to live elsewhere. Here, I’ll share those burgeoning ideas that were considered too late, first drafts of published essays, writings on long-held or recent fixations, and whatever else comes up. Some of it will be timely, much of it will not. I hope you find some of it interesting and if writing is something you do or want to do, I hope to read yours as well.