Grist for the Mill

Dear Desperate Writers,

Do you ever feel like you woke up as the cockroach in Kafka's The Metamorphosis, that suddenly you and your culture are utterly alienated from one another?  Art Auntie recently became aware of the publication guidelines for Grist Magazine in this substack piece, and she had to rush right over to see if her eyes deceived her. She rather hoped so. But no: the guidelines were as stated:

"Grist is committed to diversity, inclusivity, cultural interchange, and respect for all individuals. In the case of all submitted and/or accepted work, if an author behaves or speaks publicly—or is revealed or accused to have behaved or spoken, even in private—in ways that contradict these expressed values of the journal, then we reserve the right to disqualify an author’s submission, release the author from any contract, and/or remove their work from our archives."

Hmm, Art Auntie thought to herself, gripping her aching head, are those the bells of tyranny I hear ringing in my brain just now?

It's not difficult to imagine this playbook. We've heard it before. Art Auntie wanted to give the editors her full support, her undivided assistance, to assist them in their endeavor. She modestly suggests a few clarifications to their writers' guidelines, below:  

Grist is committed to diversity, inclusivity, cultural interchange, and respect for all individuals. In the case of all submitted and/or accepted work, if an author behaves or speaks publicly—or is revealed or accused to have behaved or spoken, even in private—in ways that contradict these expressed values of the journal, then we reserve the right to disqualify an author’s submission, release the author from any contract, and/or remove their work from our archives, and/or troll them on X, giving them the opportunity to confess, grovel and never be forgiven. In order to promote Grist's inclusive values, all writing accepted for publication is put through the AI software known as ReCompose, which will automatically replace any potentially disrespectful words with emojis of little hearts: ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

In lieu of payment, as a symbol of Grist's commitment to respect for all individuals, authors accepted for publication will receive the J'ACCUSE implant device, which records public or private behavior in a livestreamed loop to the Grist website, where readers can upvote whether or not writers should be accused of behaviors or speech that contradict Grist values. If you are accused, J'ACCUSE will squirt a dollop of disinfectant into your mouth while simultaneously your publication will be erased; email exchanges with Grist editors will be purged, and Grist editors will deny ever having met you, let alone done Jell-O shots with you at AWP that one time.

If a writer's work is accepted for publication, Grist now offers the WIN-WIN option: publishing only the writer's name at the top of a blank page. This counts as a publication credit, while ensuring that we cover everyone's ass the publication upholds Grist's commitment to diversity, inclusivity, cultural interchange, and respect in perpetuity. Stay on the right side of history with WIN-WIN!

Going forward, all who wish to submit to Grist will be required to attend our month-long retreat, CAMP RESPECT, to ensure that they are writing literature in a way that aligns with Grist's values. Participants will engage in scavenger hunts, struggle sessions, hot yoga, even hotter book burning/marshmallow roasting, roundtables with Grist editors on what to wear to a public shaming, and inclusivity hikes (those who don't share their granola bars will be left on the mountaintop). Fee: $2000. Should they still wish to write for the magazine (or to write at all) after graduating from Camp Respect, a list of admissible topics will be provided for a reasonable fee through ADMISSIBLE. Grist will only accept work submitted through ADMISSIBLE.

Unless you opt out,* submitting your work for consideration to Grist magazine means you consent to having our in-house detectives investigate your social media posts since the internet was invented to see if your jokes are merely "not that funny" or are actually acts of violence against groups on our list of Protected Identity Groups (PIGS).

If you have not received a response to your submission after six months, consider yourself cancelled.

*You cannot opt out.

~          ~          ~

I came across a beautiful essay,  On Censorship, by Salman Rushdie, written in 2012. It’s well worth reading.

I offer rather a long quote:

"Consider, if you will, the air. Here it is, all around us, plentiful, freely available, and broadly breathable. And yes, I know, it’s not perfectly clean or perfectly pure, but here it nevertheless is, plenty of it, enough for all of us and lots to spare. When breathable air is available so freely and in such quantity, it would be redundant to demand that breathable air be freely provided to all, in sufficient quantity for the needs of all. What you have, you can easily take for granted, and ignore. There’s just no need to make a fuss about it. You breathe the freely available, broadly breathable air, and you get on with your day. The air is not a subject. It is not something that most of us want to discuss.

Imagine, now, that somewhere up there you might find a giant set of faucets, and that the air we breathe flows from those faucets, hot air and cold air and tepid air from some celestial mixer-unit. And imagine that an entity up there, not known to us, or perhaps even known to us, begins on a certain day to turn off the faucets one by one, so that slowly we begin to notice that the available air, still breathable, still free, is thinning. The time comes when we find that we are breathing more heavily, perhaps even gasping for air. By this time, many of us would have begun to protest, to condemn the reduction in the air supply, and to argue loudly for the right to freely available, broadly breathable air. Scarcity, you could say, creates demand.

Liberty is the air we breathe, and we live in a part of the world where, imperfect as the supply is, it is, nevertheless, freely available, at least to those of us who aren’t black youngsters wearing hoodies in Miami, and broadly breathable, unless, of course, we’re women in red states trying to make free choices about our own bodies. Imperfectly free, imperfectly breathable, but when it is breathable and free we don’t need to make a song and dance about it. We take it for granted and get on with our day. And at night, as we fall asleep, we assume we will be free tomorrow, because we were free today.

The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free."

—Salman Rushdie

Art Auntie tries to be optimistic. Writers in different eras and different countries have always faced oppression and censorship, ebbing and rising like the tide. Although this particular era of oppression and groupthink is new to her, it's certainly nothing new in the world.

Of course, Grist is a small literary magazine, without any particular power. Even so, such guidelines should strike fear into the heart of any writer who knows history, and who values the ability to write, think and speak freely (in public and in private). For whom are they taking on the role of policing the acceptable boundaries of thought for their contributors, and why?

Salman Rushdie has paid a great price for his work: first, the loss of his personal freedom, as he had to live in hiding, and then last year, his eye, as he was stabbed by a fundamentalist in an assassination attempt (the subject of his new book, "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.")

In eras such as ours, one weighs one's own character against those of writers who boldly resist, no matter the price. To write is an act of creation. It is always easier to destroy than create. Let us imagine that we are confident of our freedom to create. Let us write from that place of confidence and conjure it into being through the sheer force of our rebellious words.

~          ~          ~

Desperate Writer welcomes Antônio Xerxenesky, a Brazilian writer whose work I got to know when we were both Fellows at Iowa’s International Writing Program. Antônio Xerxenesky was born in 1984 in Porto Alegre and moved to São Paulo. He is a writer, translator, teacher and editor, and the author of the novels "Uma tristeza infinita" (2021, winner of the São Paulo Prize), "As perguntas" (2017) and "F" (2014, shortlisted for the São Paulo Prize). He has a PhD in Literary Theory from USP and has translated dozens of books from Spanish and English, including George Orwell's "1984", Herman Melville's "Bartleby", Fernanda Melchor's "Hurricane Season" and Mario Levrero's "The Luminous Novel". He currently works as an editor at Companhia das Letras, overseeing the Penguin-Companhia imprint.

How did you become a reader, and then a writer?

My story is boring as hell, as it usually is with most middle-class Brazilian writers; my mother was a former Literature student who owned a huge library at home; as a shy and skinny kid, I found solace in books, jumping from YA to literature as a teen through the stories of Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar, who was idolized in Brazil. I became entranced and tried to digest the entire world literature before my twenties. I remember trying to read Ulysses at 18. I basically overdosed as a reader, and this cat’s hairball of texts was regurgitated as my own writing. I began writing short stories when I was 18, and when I was 20, compiled them and sent them anonymously to a City Hall contest. I won, and so I published my first book when I was merely 21. It is a truly awful book, but I learned so much from the experience. Years later, when I started teaching creative writing, my first advice to young writers was: don’t be in a rush to publish. Think before you do. Make sure you won’t feel embarrassed by your own book a few years later.

Tell us about how you came to your career in publishing, and whether it has changed you as a writer. 

This story actually takes place right after my disastrous first book which I mentioned above. I decided I wanted to write a novel and prove that I had some talent at writing. This was 2006-7 in Brazil, before social media was a thing, the internet was a slow place you visited once a day, and there were no small independent publishers in the South of Brazil, where I lived (right now there are dozens of small presses all around the country). It seemed impossible getting released by big publishers, since I knew no one who could recommend me, and I felt that my new novel would be stuck in a manuscript limbo stash. So I found other young writers in the same situation as me. We met at a creative writing workshop and came up with a plan of creating our own independent publisher. We had no idea how to do it and absolutely zero experience. So we went ahead and did it anyway. Não Editora was born. My book came out and got some good reviews, and they reprinted it at a huge publishing house (the one who published Harry Potter), and I got myself a contract for my forthcoming books. I remained as an editor, discovering new talents and so on, but as I grew up, I noticed I needed money that such a small enterprise would never offer me. I started working as a translator, a critic, a teacher… But life led me back to publishing. I currently work as senior editor at Companhia das Letras (Penguin Random House Brazil) and it is quite a thrill. I am very fond of discovering new authors and offering them a path, even though, as it is on most countries, only very, very few can live solely as a writer.

Has working in publishing changed me as a writer? Yes, definitely. It gave me a keen eye for fresh writing and also lethal lasers aimed at detecting clichés and bad prose. These are powerful tools for any writer.

As a publisher, do you have any advice for other Desperate Writers, especially emerging writers?

YES!

First, don’t be so eager to publish; make sure that the book you are submitting is the best one you could’ve written in such a context. Even if you fail, you must know you did your best.

Second, don’t count on writing as your main source of income. A few writers “make it”, but this depends on so much stuff – from charisma to marketing… And most importantly, luck. You can never count on luck. And everyone runs out of it, sometimes.

Third, read your fellow writers. Understand what is going on right now in fiction in the country you’re living in. You are not an isolated speck of dust, you are part of a large ecosystem.

What are your preoccupations as a writer? Are there certain themes you keep returning to?

My first three novels were an attempt to give a literary twist to popular genres, which I adore: Western, horror and noir. Then, I felt like this project had run its course, and I wrote something quite different, like a novel of ideas, which still carried some nods to my previous life as a genre dissident. But now, after four novels, looking back I can see some themes that are always there, no matter how different the books are.

-->They all deal with a crisis of lack of meaning in the modern world and failed attempts to answer that crisis.  

What is your writing community like? How did growing up in your part of the world shape the way you write?

When I started out as a writer, the Brazilian literary scene had a single face: white, middle-class, mostly male. Most writers wrote serious highbrow realist fiction. It’s crazy how things have changed in so little time. I made many friends who were quite angry at Brazilian literature back then, and as I believe it is on most countries, there were rivalries and gossiping, but also friendship and support.

Writing here in Brazil shares a few of the dramas of Latin America in general: foreigners expect that we write something which is “very Brazilian”, that amounts to a number of stereotypes involving slums and soccer, the same way one expects Latin Americans to write about flying hogs or some magical realist nonsense. But in fact, there was always room to write whatever you wanted. Brazilian literature is going through a great phase, with different styles and a feeling that there is room for everyone. I wish the rest of the world was more open to what is being created down here.

Tell us about your latest book and its origins.

I went to a Literary residency at Switzerland in 2017, where I tried writing a story about siblings in 1930s São Paulo. It didn’t work out, but I fell in love with that Swiss village I was in. So I began to imagine all the themes that were interesting me back then, psychiatry, the so-called epidemics of depression, the return of fascist ideals (Bolsonaro would be elected the next year). I came out with a plan to write this crazy novel of ideas, very inspired by Robert Musil, that took place in 1950s Switzerland, right after the war, and at the turning point on how mental illnesses were treated. And, in a strange way, I managed to write about life in Brazil in the 2020s in a fake historical novel which took place decades earlier in this country which had nothing to do with Brazil. Critics understood what I was doing, and the novel received the highest paying award, the São Paulo Prize for best novel in 2022.

“Uma tristeza infinita” (“An infinite sadness”) came out 2023 in France and will soon be released in the UK through Charco Press, as well as in Russia. It is my first novel to be translated into English, so I am quite thrilled with reaching a new readership.

 Thank you. I cannot wait to read An Infinite Sadness. We will certainly publish an update in Desperate Writer when it is available in English.