Blog Agonistes: Sandra Scoppettone in the Crosshairs
Everyone has problems. Writers have a unique set of issues to deal with, art versus commerce, the folly of a singular vision being hacked to pieces en route to the marketplace ( all better now! ). The double or triple standard of professional advice, tough love, incentive laced contracts, rewrites, rejections, thanks for thinking of us. Truth be told I wasn’t thinking of you, I was thinking of me, a violation of Judeo-Christian tradition for which punishments most dire were carefully outlined in catechism class. Thus chastened we stand in the corner of the virtual classroom inhaling chalk dust awaiting the wet embrace of conformity.
The ruler is being tapped against the lectern, time to settle down. I’ve chosen the wrong moment to peek inside my desk to check my rock collection, no, they weren’t moving around, they were comfortable, inert, and now in the harsh light of day deemed wholly inappropriate for classroom use and are being returned to the wild. Okay. Crime and punishment calls for a trip to the principal’s office, but first there is the awful waiting, the squirming in the hard backed chair while administrative staff ignore you, go about the grim business of photocopying, data entering, keyboarding, calling parents on the telephone. Yours could be next. Hmm. Is plausible deniabilty even an option? Try it: I don’t how my desk came to be full of rocks. An earthquake could do it, a meteor shower, some confluence of volcanic activity and school roof repairs, the work of Doctor No? Then one of the younger teachers winks at you. You have a champion.
Joe Blades was the champion for the writers he edited and now he’s gone. Sandra Scoppettone blogged about it, her reaction, her angst at this unexpected turn of events. Maybe her honesty was not the most politic response or even how she feels a few days later, but her blog did reflect the uncertainties of being a writer. Calling her names, as Miss Snark did, and inviting cheap shot comments seems more than inappropriate, it’s demeaning to everyone who risks their psyche to put words on paper. This is not a beauty pageant, although, God knows, the resemblance is becoming spooky as poise and hair styles overcome skill and talent, and we are bathing in the tepid shower of celebrity more often these days. I don’t know why Joe Blades left his job, why he burned out or if he burned out, but I can understand how unsettling his departure must be for the authors he worked with.
November 30th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
I gotta say, maybe writers should just write–and do so in a medium that gets disseminated less rapidly than webspeed.
As a class I think most literary people are reasonably nice; but combine the lack of personal contact of the web with the hit-submit-before-you-think options of a blog, and I think a lot of otherwise-nice folks end up saying things that they might not say if a) they were in personal touch with their audience or b) they had time to mull it over.
Writing for publication is, we are always told, a long and arduous process, with both a need and an opportunity for rethinking and revision. Perhaps stomping on the gas pedal and zooming around that process isn’t such a fine idea.
I’ve recently read Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles” and watched the Scorsese documentary, and one thing I noted was Dylan’s reluctance to make public statements or answer questions or offer his opinions. It seems odd at first–that someone so stridently verbal in his songs would be so reticent to shoot his mouth off. But now that I think about it, I’ve come to believe his attitude had a great deal to be said for it.
So I’ll shut up now.
David Isaak