A lot of fiction and nonfiction writers have agents who “represent” them – primarily to publishing houses, but also to the public. Or they have publicists who do this. But for many writers (and almost all poets), it boils down to the creators themselves publicizing themselves. They have to arrange book tours, interviews, readings, comp copies, reviews, and a “social media presence.” To the extent that they want publicity, that is.
Now, if you’ve read this blog more than a couple of times, chances are you at least credit the possibility that industrialized, capitalist society is headed for a fall of some sort within a generation or so, due to the unfolding – and accelerating – climate catastrophe that is encompassing the globe. And you are probably interested in literature, writing, or art in one form or another, possibly as a maker. So, in light of that possibility (some of us would say probability), does it make sense to publicize yourself? Do you curate your image? And if so, why? This is an honest question in intent, but a rhetorical question in effect: we all want attention, however small or brief. There is a fine line between publicity and publication. Someone once wrote that he’d never met a poet who thought they got enough recognition; that comment certainly squares with my experience (of both self and colleagues). And of course, if you do this sort of thing for a living, you have to keep doing it to live. And to support a family, if you have one. Twenty years from now, you or your family may be walking north on a dusty highway, carrying everything you have (including whatever water you have), accompanied by thousands of other people; but meanwhile, the rent comes due at the first of the month. Book sales, ad sales, class fees, tenure: one way or another, all of these plums require notoriety, for the writer. And yet. It is all starting to seem a bit unreal to this writer (who is, it should be said, tenured, on the far side of 50, and without dependents). To curate, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, meant to design and arrange exhibits and displays; nowadays, everything is “curated,” including the self. And that takes work – in the scientific meaning of the word. All the plane flights, car rides, electricity expended, all that CO2 foisted onto the atmosphere, all the consequent heat built up in the atmosphere and the oceans, to cultivate an image and have one’s name bruited about as – what? – an “ecopoet”? And the image is just that – a concatenation of carbon-fueled pixels that will wink out when the internet does. Yet we spend so much time and energy (personal and fossil-fueled) trying to get one more review, one more reading, a mention in an article, a few more books sold. But if things keep going in the direction they’re going, then the publishing/publicity apparatus, the university, and social media – all will be much smaller-scale and attenuated in the near- to middle-term, compared to now. In the long-term, and maybe middle-term, there is less to strive towards. Given this state of affairs, there arises the possibility of turning the energy of publicizing and curating back into writing, reading, and discussing. If one’s life becomes less publicity-focused, more locally-focused, perhaps cultivating an image will become less important and maybe cultivating drought-resistant, edible foods, more important. We will see what the inherent value of art is when it ceases to have an exchange value (esp. at one remove) – not to mention when a lot of us have to spend a lot more time doing things for ourselves that we now take for granted that other people will do. In the process, we might (might) see a literature that is more honest, truly “edgy” (as opposed to modish), less curated and posed. And who knows but what that in itself might not help us survive a little longer or a little better.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |