Oddly Preempted

Like John Scalzi, my most immediate reaction to Steve Almond's "The Blogger Who Loathed Me," was to wonder why in the world the powers that be at Salon thought this sophomoric essay ought to be published. It's about nothing other than the author's own apparently inexhaustible egomania and adds nothing other than verbal flatulence to the discussion of the role of literary weblogs, if this was in some way intended to be the subject of Almond's gaseous outburst.

As far as I can tell, Almond is upset that two years ago Mark Sarvas commented on his weblog that "From the very first days of this site, I've shaken my head in a sort of dazed wonder at the wake of overheated prose stylings [Almond] leaves behind" and that "If Almond devoted a fraction of the effort he brings to self-promotion to his writing, he might finally be on to something." Almond calls these statements "long-distance slander" (although not until he's indulged in a couple of smarmy paragraphs mocking Sarvas on the basis of a photograph and because he lives in Los Angeles).

Later, Almond reads another of Mark's comments, this time in a libloggers' forum organized by Dan Wickett. (I participated in this one myself. Dan has conducted several such forums, interviewing dozens of bloggers by now.) Mark writes that "I launched The Elegant Variation in a fit of madness on October 14, 2003 with a declaration of my love for James Wood and my loathing for Steve Almond." Since Mark's "love" of James Wood is clearly of the literary variety, it is equally obvious that likewise his "loathing" of Steve Almond is an expression of distaste for Almond's writing, not of Almond the author. But Almond inflates this statement of literary opinion into the assertion that Mark must "the president of the Official Steve Almond Haters Club."

Finally, Almond quotes from a passage Mark wrote after a reading given by Almond:

. . .we can report that Steve Almond's reading did nothing to alter our opinion of him. . .We found his story to be wholly not our cup of tea, its literary sensibilities a bit too informed by the pages of Penthouse Forum for our tastes ... We're scarcely prudes but Almond's work is all assfucking and facials without much to commend itself for ... we're struck by an absence of context ... of character ... of depth. . . .

To this bit of thoroughly cogent literary criticism, Almond responds with some eighth grade-quality sex talk: "Sarvas couldn't have known this, but my response to this entry was a distinct sense of arousal ... thinking about him typing those words ... assfucking and facials ... with his actual fingers ... we wondered what Sarvas might have been wearing when he posted ... was he dressed in a leather jacket? ... maybe nothing but a leather jacket ... might he be whispering my name?"

Thus out of a few scattered remarks summing up Mark Sarvas's opinion of Steve Almond's fiction is built a 4,000 word essay the ultimate point of which seems to be that criticism of Almond's work should be off limits, especially to bloggers who overuse the royal "We." I got nothing else out of it, except that Steve Almond really likes the--nudge, nudge--sniggering sexual innuendo.

Although a clear implication of Almond's essay is that bloggers ought to leave poor writers alone--or at least writers who, like Almond, have reached a level of dismal semi-fame--it turns out that his biggest grievance is that Mark, well, left him alone. When Almond comes across him at the reading mentioned above he's prepared to have it out, but Mark pays him no mind. How dare he not acknowedge that here before him is the dedicated writer he's maligned and merely allow him to go about his business. "I felt oddly preempted. After all, it had been my plan to pretend I didn't know who Sarvas was, and here he was pretending he didn't know who I was, even though I had just introduced myself to him." The unmitigated gall. Whoever heard of considering literary diiferences to be only that and refusing to make a public spectacle out of them?

As if realizing his own unseemly preoccupation with Mark Sarvas is unwittingly painting a very ugly picture of him, Almond switches tactics and pretends he sees Mark as some kind of doppelganger: "Sarvas horrifies me precisely because he represents certain desires that live inside of me: the desire to avoid the solitude and humiliation of sustained creative work, to choose grievance over mercy, to find a shortcut to fame." It certainly is the case that in writing this Salon essay Almond has found a way "to avoid the solitude and humiliation of sustained creative work"--although he ought to find the essay he's written humiliating enough. And in accusing Mark Sarvas of seeking "a shortcut to fame," he only reveals that it is "fame" he himself is after, "sustained creative work" being the means to accomplish this, the long way around presumably a better way to convince oneself one deserves one's fame.

Almond's defenders assure us that at least his essay is funny. I've gone over it several times now and have yet to find a single funny line. Is this supposed to be it?: "For another thing, my discussion with Pete had hipped me to the idea that Sarvas wanted, rather desperately, to be involved with me. Whether he knew it or not -- chances are not -- he was toting around a whole scrotum full of fantasies." This?: "Then later, if it felt right -- and only if it felt right -- I would pull down his Underoos and spank him on his hot little blogger bottom." Or this?: "I stood there for another few seconds, kind of confused, staring at Sarvas as he stared at his computer screen. I wanted to say something to him, something like: 'Does anyone around here smell blog pussy?'"

Boffo! Guffaw! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. I might have found this sort of thing funny when I was a college freshman and discovered there were writers who actually used dirty words in print, but that was quite a long time ago, and I now find it rather pathetic that some writers must still find it daring. Snore.

Oh, yeah. There's this: "[Robert] Birnbaum is not a young, African-American blogger from Compton who goes by the street handle OGB (Original Gangsta Blogga). He is a paunchy middle-aged Jew. . ."

What a laugh fest!

Salon honcho Laura Miller has come in for a good deal of criticism on literary blogs, especially for the shallowness of the essays she once wrote for the New York Times Book Review. One wonders if the appearance of "The Blogger Who Loathed Me" isn't in part an effort on Miller's part to exact some revenge. There's certainly a good deal of generalized hostility to litblogs in Almond's essay. "[Sarvas's] entries did not compose a meaningful discussion of literature -- few of the so-called lit blogs actually undertake such a thing," Almond writes. But this is simply wrong. Clicking through to any number of the blogs listed on the right will reward the reader with a great deal of intelligent, well-considered literary discussion. Certainly more intelligent, well-considered discussion than one finds at Salon these days.

Comments

[Birnbaum]

I suppose strictly speaking one must distinguish criticism from the so called logical fallacy of ad hominem attack but I can't help but think that when you criticize an artist or creative person's work the net psychological effect is of a personal attack. It makes sense that one's personal (emotional) investment in one's work would make it very difficult to accept any negative response as anything other than personal.

So it comes down to style and intention— I think. One tips off the other. I don't much care to argue the merits of publicist Almond's fiction. Some (seemingly smart) people like it—others don't. But I damn well will weigh in on his self-aggrandizing and disrespectful posturing on the work of other writers. Granted this moves the conversation—such as it is— from the literary to the ethical but what the hey.

Also, it appears to me that this Salon piece is an attempt to capitolize on an anti weblog backlash. But that's a dispute for another day.

I'll give PR flack Almond credit for one thing, he apparently has resurrected the ad caninem argument.

[Dan Green]

Alan: That's a very tortured analysis. If Almond were a better writer, perhaps he could bring that sort of thing off (and I'd believe that's what he's doing.) But I don't buy it.

[Alan]

Why is everybody getting so worked up over this? It seems to me that Almond is skewering himself and his own ego. Read it again, but this time try to ignore the cockfight and pay attention to the underlying structure. Most of the piece is about Almond's fantasizing about Sarvas' fantasies, obsessing about Sarvas' obsessions, formulating plans to act disinterested upon meeting the blogger he has promoted to nemesis only to be preemptively ignored. For every accusation leveled at Sarvas, he clearly details his own, greater guilt. How could it not be intentional?

[Dan Green]

I've circled no wagons. I read Almond's essay and thought it was abysmally bad. I would have said the same thing if his target had been Joe Schmo.

What's demented about suggesting Laura Miller might not like litblogs after some of the things that have been said about her writing? I've written very little about her, myself.

[Hi]

Dan,

"One little comment"? So I'm a "little" right, in my "totally unconvincing" way? Your own feelings about self-promotion as aired on this blog are well known to regular readers. You wasted John Wray for taking a trip down the Mississippi and accused him of doing it to buy a vacation home. The fact that his is a good novel that was on the verge of disappearing didn't move you. And the vacation home bit smacks of the ad hominem as well. But I'm used to your ideas, Dan. You repeat them often, and forcefully, and quite eloquently at times. Sometimes they're very good ideas and I'm delighted that you advocate them. For example, I often agree with you about literature per se. But you often frame an argument that all too plainly illuminates your own personal crotchets as having a literary basis. In other words, here as occasionally elsewhere, you're talking through your hat.

By the way, If you and Ed and whomever else has weighed in on this think circling the blogger wagons and defending Mark Sarvas' "little" transgression against big, bad -- very, very bad, let's never ever forget -- Steve Almond and stupid, stupid Salon, then you're all mistaken. It's just proving Almond's points. You don't like Laura Miller? Well, raving about her hidden influence in the Steve Almond piece just makes you look like a paranoiac, Dan. Sorry, it's true. It's a demented comment, worthy of the consummate conspiracy theorist. Laura MIller will bring down the blogs by having Steve Almond attack poor Mark Sarvas. Just hold still, this won't hurt a bit.

[Dan Green]

Do you really believe that one little comment about Almond's tendency to self-promotion warranted a 4,000 word response? Doesn't the essay itself show that Mark is right?

I did split the love/loathe hair. Read the post again.

As to the reading: Please. It's manifestly evident that Mark is talking about Almond's fiction.

Your argument is totally unconvincing.

[Hi]

Dan,

"If Almond devoted a fraction of the efforts [sic] he brings to self-promotion to his writing..." This is absolutely ad hominem. How could Sarvas possibly know anything about the amount of "efforts" Almond brings to his work? He concludes, "...he might be on to something. But I doubt it." Why? Because his judgment is that Almond's writing is irredeemable? In what way then does the glimmer of being "on to something" appear as a possibility? No, it's just a dumb little mot, neither funny nor scathing. Besides, to put a writer down for being self-promoting is to impute a flaw in the writer's character, to strongly imply dislike. It is a wholly extraliterary concern.

"My loathing for Steve Almond..." This doesn't say "my loathing for Steve Almond's work." This doesn't say "My loathing for the way that Steve Almond self-promotes." It's quite clear and unequivocal. Or is this not a hair you're willing to split, Dan?

"Almond's reading did nothing to alter our opinion of him..." Again, this is unequivocal. How are we to "know" that Sarvas means Almond's work. The addition of a single word and the alteration of another turns the sentence into "...our opinion of his work." It seems that the "basic distinction" is one you're unable to make.

Sorry, Sarvas attacked Almond. It reeked of the personal. It was just persistent enough that I picked up on it long before Almond published the Salon piece. The guy really hates Steve Almond, is the general impression I got. But it didn't get weird until Sarvas linked to a piece tearing him into little pieces, to use his own phrase. _That's_ weird.

By the way, I get a big kick out of the image of you, hunched before the computer, "going over [Almond's essay] several times" in search of something funny. You didn't think it was funny. I did. Humor's like that, your forensic efforts notwithstanding. Seems like you can take the boy out of academia. . .

[Jonathan Mayhew]

I don't think either writer comes off particularly well in this exchange. Almond seems self-absorbed and juvenile, long-winded and hardly "devastating" in his prose style or sense of proportion. If he's in a wholly different league from Sarvas, his article doesn't show it. (Is this the fatuous guy who's been all over NPR talking about candy?) Well he does manage to make Sarvas sound a tad foolish too, but he brings himself down as well. I'm not sure why Sarvas bothers with Almond either, for that matter. Both can use the occasion to promote a sense of self-importance, no doubt.

[Robert Nagle]

I read both articles and confess to feeling a tad jealous. 2 litbloggers...in the same city...in the same room even? What a remarkable occurence! We certainly don't have that sort of activity in Houston--where I live and blog.

Well, perhaps there are more important things to write articles about than literary rivalries, but then again, Salon.com bought it....

The crazy thing about lit bloggers is that if you diss somebody online, chances are they'll get around to reading (and responding to) it. When I started writing book reviews, I used to assume that nobody (not even the author) would read the books I reviewed. Nowadays though, posts are just a google search away, so that should make critics more careful about the things they say. That's a good thing.

BTW, I could really identify with Almond's remark about wanting to come face-to-face with the person who had a grudge towards him. That happens a lot at an arts conference I attend in Austin, SXSW, where I frequently meet (and gush over) netizens who are used to living in obscurity. It's a sort of uncomfortable assymetrical relationship where I know a lot about Individual X and Individual X knows next to nothing about me. Perhaps when I have earned someone's enmity, that's when I'll feel that I've really made it.

[Dan Green]

"I don't think Sarvas' gratuitous and ad hominem attacks on Steve Almond don't warrant a public response by the person being attacked."

There was nothing ad hominem about what Mark said about Almond's work. As I said in the post, he criticized only Almond's writing. Show me anything in the remarks Almond quotes that comprise an ad hominem attack. I'm astonished by everyone's inability to make this basic distinction.

[Hi]

"Only." OK. I don't think the story Sarvas has posted on "Pindeldyboz" does much to support any claims contrary to mine, but de gustibus, you know.

[John]

I never suggested that self-promoting writers are "de facto inferior"; you read much too much into my comment. It's no stretch to say that Almond is relentlessly self-promoting. Writing is his job, and making sure people know that is one sure way to ensure that continues. So who am I to argue? I was simply pointing out that, given his penchant for doing so, this can be seen as a masterstroke. He guaranteed that more people would be talking about Steve Almond on Friday than were on Thursday. Yes, Sarvas is self-promoting, too. So is Salon. So am I. Again, that isn't a criticism. As for your continued exhortations that Almond is "a pro" when compared to Sarvas, I'd agree only in that Almond got paid.

[Hi]

John,

I guess some of us know that self-promoting writers are de facto inferior--no, make that contemptible--writers. It must be comforting to be so certain. Sarvas of course linked to the Salon piece as a kind of public service. The banner atop TEV quoting the Guardian, et al? Just helpful info.

I really think Almond overwhelmed Sarvas here. His is the work of a professional writer. Sarvas is an amateur. Period. Not to compare Almond to Koufax, but it reminds me of a story I read about Koufax turning up at one of those fantasy camps a few years ago. The resident Hank Aaron, some 45-year-old corporate type who'd bought himself an expensive present, needled 70-year-old Sandy from batter's box: "That all you got?", etc. Koufax uncorked a curveball that must have hit the high eighties and sent the guy scrambling. Same thing.

[Trent]

"this bit of thoroughly cogent literary criticism"

Without specifics, I don't think I could agree with the crit. (I'm not weighing in one side or another.)

[John]

"... a bush leaguer like Mark Sarvas was blindsided and then buried by a pro he'd needled once too often."

I guess that's one way to see it. Another is that Almond saw a chance to yet again self-promote, and Salon saw the chance to get people all over the blogosphere writing about and linking to it. No surprises there. Seems as if everyone played into their hands perfectly.

[Hi]

Why can't you let the piece die?

For the record, I thought the Almond piece was funny, except (and it's a very big 'except') for the sexual innuendo stuff, which just made me cringe. But I don't think I cringed any less to see that Sarvas actually linked to the piece from his blog; or that he got first defensive, and then censorial, in the comments section, before finally just deleting the comments altogether; or that he linked approvingly to Ed Champion's really shockingly immature and self-indiciting response on Return of the Reluctant.

The blogs (sorry to speak generally) propose to offer an alternative to mainstream coverage of books, part of which alternative encompasses a sort of back-and-forth dialogue that mainstream reviews, etc., do not encourage. I don't think Sarvas' gratuitous and ad hominem attacks on Steve Almond don't warrant a public response by the person being attacked. That's sometimes what happens when you attack writers. They respond. Welcome to the big time, Mark. Or is this one of those cases in which a human being (that would be Almond) is casually objectified by a person rushing his opinions into cyberspace (that would be Sarvas) who doesn't really think that anybody, much less the intended target, is paying attention? Why attack Almond, anyway? It's not like he's been awarded a MacArthur, or been nominated for the National Book Award. He's just a guy, a professional writer. I also don't think Sarvas has acquitted himself well by first linking to the piece (that is strange, so strange that it really tends to lend a sense of corroboration to some of the assertions Almond makes that would otherwise simply have hung there, uncomfirmed and uncomfirmable), and then censoring comments people tried to post on his blog. Very thin-skinned, as thin-skinned as, well, mainstream media (Though the mainstream never would have been so foolish as to shine a spotlight on a piece as critical of them as Almond's was of Sarvas) -- but that's a tendency I've sometimes noticed in lit blogs. The justification is tautological: You can't criticize me because what I'm doing is beyond criticism. Or, it's OK on my dinky little blog to speak, repeatedly, of loathing (in a literary sense or otherwise) some minor writer, but it's transgressive in the extreme for that writer to respond in the "pages" of Salon. Sorry, I don't buy it. Almond called Sarvas out -- gave him just enough rope, and he hung himself. The sexual stuff is regrettable, sophomoric, and everything else you said, Dan. But whether or not Mark Sarvas is a great guy who'll lend you his last ten bucks, talk you off the ledge, travel to your kid's bar mitzvah, or whatever other encomia I've read about the guy over the last few days, the fact is that the Almond piece is devastating. Sarvas emerges looking like a self-righteous, self-centered, self-serving amateur who is, yes, jealous of a "real" writer like Almond whose work he holds in little regard. Sorry, that's just how it comes off. The ultimate point is that "Almond's work is off limits"? No, Dan. The ultimate point is that writers use their rhetorical gifts, whether or not you or Mark Sarvas think much of them, to wipe you out when you insult them. They distort things, and change them around, and use nasty insults -- they're writers. What did you think they were? Moralists? Referees? Guardians of Temperate Fairness? No, they're verbose, frequently cruel people who talk and talk and talk and talk, and a bush leaguer like Mark Sarvas was blindsided and then buried by a pro he'd needled once too often. He deserved it.

[CAAF]

A sidenote: Laura Miller is no longer Salon's Books editor, Hillary Frey is. Miller is listed as a senior writer.

Since Almond's piece ran there have been a couple other articles roughly related to blogging on Salon - I'm not sure what this means as far as who approved/commissioned Almond's (squirrel nuts) piece, if perhaps it's part of a larger series meant to explore the fallout from blogging, or a one-off that coincidentally ran near some other blogging-related articles.