minor beef[s] is a new feature where you can express your literary gripes, complaints and pet hates …
Is there a writer you despise who is getting too much praise? a lauded critic whose opinions suck? a trend which makes your skin crawl? Let us know …
Dear editors,
I was pleased to learn of your intention to publish literary beef on your platform, as this is something that would make the indie scene more fun and exciting. Sadly, I think you are doomed to fail: (most) writers these days are career—and careering—cowards, and it is very unlikely anyone will tell you what they really think of their peers or the scene, even if you offer them the opportunity to vent their grievances anonymously. And if someone indeed does accept your invitation, the beef delivered will, most likely than not, be construed as bullying. Part and parcel of having a literary culture that shuns harsh but fair criticism is taking any negativity as an ad hominem attack. Due to the personal nature of their work, poets, memoirists, and translators are the worst of the lot at this, but—sadly—the trend is infecting everyone else.
The creative writing racket—with its MFA pipelines, workshop fetishism and middle-class etiquette—has taught a generation of writers to conflate criticism with cruelty and originality with CV-building. These days, no one simply disagrees; we are only allowed to interrogate, complicate, and hold space for nuance. Criticism must flatter identities, amplify feelings, and foster the literary community, preferably while sitting with discomfort (but never someone else’s). Punching up is allowed, but punching laterally is a sin punished with banishment. All this choreography of care is designed to ensure that no one ever says aloud that a book is bad, derivative, or dull—this is a snobbery of sameness. And the only winners of this scam are book marketers and the usual suspects: the major publishers who profit from a docile literary culture and an ever widening pool of undiscerning customers in order to push their slop down our throats.
A so-called indie culture that rejects negativity in the name of a false camaraderie is one that invites backstabbing and passive aggression. It becomes a culture complicit in treating literature as a soft arm of capitalism. I am not sure your noble attempt can help reverse this trend. I hope to be proven wrong.
Longing for a literature that is dangerous,
Anonymous
minor literature[s] 