PW has published this depressing list of editors who have been laid off. Really it is meant to publicize their current contact information, but it comes across as a bit more sad than that. I can't tell if it's a nice resource or an insensitive gaff (via GalleyCat).
11 comments:
How are the college journal editors doing. That's what I'd like to know. They like to call themselves the last bastions of literature but that's a lie. They're nothing but a profitable club for insiders. I'm sick of it and I hope these schools start to look into it. When they see that these journals are tarnishing their college images maybe things will change.
How thoughtful, P&W wants to make sure they don't pass up on any investment opportunities in Nigeria, or special deals on c!ali$. I hope the have enough space in their accounts to handle 100MB attachments of fanfiction novels.
I think you missed something more important that just came out in here, W,R
The new Poets & Writers has an article by Amy Shearn that talks about the very thing that LROD has been going on about. Sounds like she's been reading this blog!
Story is called "Revenge of the Nerds" and is about the MFA programs and the kind of writers is produces.
Says Shearn, "During my years at the University of Minnesota's MFA program -- my class was, admittedly, a particularly staid collection of nice midwestern folk -- more than one of us divulged, during tentative moments of confidence, that this was not quite what we had expected. Where were the mini Hemingways and the ersatz Fitzgeralds? Where were the pill-popping Bill Burroughses and Hunter S. Thompsons? Where were the Norman Mailers with their puffed-out chests and bellowing voices, or the Dylan Thomases with their taste for whiskey?"
They're not being accepted by the academic journals, that's for sure.
"Where were the mini Hemingways and the ersatz Fitzgeralds? Where were the pill-popping Bill Burroughses and Hunter S. Thompsons? Where were the Norman Mailers with their puffed-out chests and bellowing voices, or the Dylan Thomases with their taste for whiskey?"
Where are the teary-eyed anonymi of LROD? Where are the whiners, the bad writers, and the perpetually rejected because they're not insiders? Where's John Bruce and gimme? Where are the belly-achers and the I-can't-drag-myself-away-from-duotrope-ers?
Oh, wait -- they're all here. Never mind.
Many MFAers are hiding the fact now. They used to broadcast it, now you have to do a bit of research to find out the name of the school where they learned how to write all that good stuff they write.
Which means they're on the run.
I'd like to know the Shoney's where those editors have jobs waiting tables. I can go in, order a dinner, take one bite and announce that the food is inedible. Storm out of the place (first stopping to tell the manager that my server was rude and inattentive and should be fired).
As a writer on the hunt for publisher, I'm thinking of taking advantage of the situation: send queries directly to the some of the laid-offees. They're likely looking for work at present; what better to bring to a job interview than a good-lookin' novel?
(my blogger id is 'quescaisje' ---I've been unable to sign in for some reason)
"Where are the teary-eyed anonymi of LROD? Where are the whiners, the bad writers, and the perpetually rejected because they're not insiders? Where's John Bruce and gimme? Where are the belly-achers and the I-can't-drag-myself-away-from-duotrope-ers?"
Don't like all the attention, eh?
You know what I hate? That I can't get hired as a doctor just because I don't have the right connections and didn't go to some Med school with the rest of the lemmings.
Yeah...8 years of medical training plus rigorous medical board licensing so you can deal in life and death matters with sick people versus 2 years in writing workshops so you can publish your novel. That's really analogous. Give me a break.
That is funny. Well, maybe not to those who have stood in the stick man's (or is that a stick woman?) shoes.
Sorry. I see he/she is not wearing shoes.
Eight years is too much. I want to be done in five.
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