Hell yeah, this sucks! (Newsletter)

Fucked couple of weeks in both global and literary/arts news. Hope you and your people are doing okay. Strange time to create when you can see, all around you, the faulty bastions of society crumbling under the weight of real mass desire leading into the all too familiar knee jerk, play-it-as-it-lays-as-long-as-we’re-still-the-ones-laying-it tyranny that destroys so much without leaving much behind besides a dead number to call, but, hey, whatever. I’m just the intern. Anyway, here’s some stuff to look at.

Sybil Journal just put out their first print book: Our friends at Sybil just released their first piece of print matter and it’s a beautiful start, using it as an opportunity to put out a debut collection of stories by their own editor DM Rice. Cannot wait to get my hands on it.  

We have a new arts editor! Billie McKelvie is now our arts editor. Be sure to check out her work and give her a follow if you’re on social media! Welcome to the Cult, Billie!

Here’s some good poems by Jenkin Benson. Jenkin Benson has three poems up at Bruiser that you should check out. Incredible attention to sound, space, and image. Each syllable feels like such a cherished thing. It’s worth your time.
City Fishes Magazine has a new issue out: Issue no. 2: Scumlord Edition dropped like a week ago featuring a poem from our editor-in-chief Jake Hargrove. I think some are sprinkled about the city if you’re in New York but you can also just DM them to get your hands on one. Rumor has it that each issue comes with a special prize inside…

Let’s get this out of the way because I’m about to go off. Buy a shirt. Weird week. Even a weirder time to self-promote. But yeah we got new shirts and they’re pretty nice. The design is by our guy Frazer Robertson and we think it’s awesome. Magazines are still available as well. 

Alright here we go. The Gettysburg Review just closed… for no apparent reason really. The Gettysburg Review will be closing its doors after putting out its final issue in December. Apparently the decision to get rid of the well-regarded journal––which has been around since 19-fucking-88 and features countless important writers, has won a bunch of awards, and served as a place to send your best story and pray for its acceptance every night––came as a complete shock to the editors. The reason was basically a cold-hearted business decision by the college’s administration. I don’t know what else you’re supposed to say about that. We’re culturally slouching toward the abyss and people controlling higher education with no understanding of higher education’s goals have slipped out of the sparkling glass towers of STEM research institutes and popped up in places like Gettysburg College. So, I don’t know, batten down the hatches. I doubt this will be the last story we hear like this. 

Here’s some more dumb shit someone did: Most Overrated Classics (According to Book Riot) These kinds of lists are stupid to begin with, but this list is incredibly stupid. I would venture to say that Jeffrey Davis has no discernment as a reader, let alone a critic. Doing away with Kerouac takes away the context for the flashpoint work that helped influence the American counterculture. Davis clearly has not read past page 100 of Huckleberry Finn. If he had, he would see it might be one of the most anti-racist books ever written by an American, particularly for the 19th century. Does it have racist language? Yes. But that does not mean it is a racist text espousing racist viewpoints. What’s the big critical takeaway of Lolita? Ew, it’s about a pedophile! Yeah, no shit. 

All these points are an attempt to convert literature from something that is uncomfortable and challenges the sentiments of the day into basically a paper form of Netflix. I feel dumb to even point this out or give it any attention but this isn’t just some harmless thing. Look, here’s another assault on the American literary world and it’s not being done by some dude in a Trump hat who doesn’t want his daughter to learn about slavery or some guy in a suit saying, Wait, why are we paying for this magazine? It’s coming from someone who considers themselves a good literary citizen and a discerning appreciator of the arts, yet they mislead young or uninformed readers about touchstones of the American literary tradition as an act of improving the canon or some shit. You want to know why over 4000 books have been banned in America since 2021? You want to know why things like The Gettysburg Review can seemingly close overnight? It’s because not enough people know why they should give a shit. And if the aesthetic currency of the day is gradually being reserved exclusively for those who are more interested in the destruction of the past than challenging the present, one eventually has to grow curious about who is actually in control of the centers of influence and prestige. To try and retroactively exclude hundreds of writers throughout history only takes away from the influences for today’s landmark literature. Jeffrey Davis needs to do better.

Salman Rushdie Gives A Warning: A personal hero of our Managing Editor Matt Gillick, Salman Rushdie is a champion of free speech and open dialogue without fear of violence, persecution, or prosecution. Iran put a fatwa on him where he had to go into hiding for ten years just because he wrote a book. He was almost killed in a stabbing last year at a library event in New York, and lost an eye. He thinks conservatives in America are slithering toward fascism. It’s clear several groups are now espousing principles previously seen in Nazi Germany, even if they don’t know it. 

But Matt takes issue with singling out a political party like the GOP because pigeonholing them all into one bucket makes them an enemy. And when you monolithize a group as an enemy, those with the present moral high ground will attempt to snuff them out. This often leads to shortcuts undermining the notion that hate speech is beaten with better ideas. Too often places of discourse are now a social playground of virtue signals and animus-laden condemnation of marginalized people. 

And when condemning people of different beliefs or ideas as wholly wrong and immoral and then taking it one step further by deeming them morally inferior (Republicans, bad), that only makes those harboring kernels of bad ideas into more extreme versions of those ideas. For example, not allowing (mostly) idiotic speakers from giving guest lectures at universities tribalizes everyone and cuts off the idea of open dialogue. Criticism is welcome, but the approach should be asking why some people feel or believe a certain way, approaching them with facts and openness, hopefully giving way to love, which is the only way to fight hate. One of the best examples of this approach actually comes from James Baldwin’s revelations after meeting Elijah Muhammed (founder of the Nation of Islam, a racist group), brilliantly laid out in his short masterpiece The Fire Next Time. Read it. He does a better job at explaining this than Matt.

It would be weird not to talk about it: A little over a week ago Hamas launched a massive military campaign into Israel, killing thousands. Israel, expectedly, and with the blessing and support of the United States, has retaliated and has also killed thousands. Killing will be what we hear about––if we choose to listen––for some time. And choosing to listen right now is not an easy decision to make. The pressure to publicly pick the correct side while willfully ignoring the harm your chosen side has committed by the logic that, well, it isn’t as bad as the atrocity committed against them, is troublesome to say the least. 

Recalling the atmosphere that surrounded the American public sphere after 9/11 and relating to how we are responding to this present challenge, David Klion has written a piece I think everyone should read at n+1.  It is difficult not to be taken in by the energy of the discourse or to be pushed into a state of indifference. He writes, “There’s a pervasive censoriousness right now—conservatives denouncing liberals, liberals denouncing leftists, leftists denouncing other leftists—that’s immediately familiar from the days and weeks after 9/11. Somehow, the upshot of all the denunciations and condemnations is the right’s unchallenged hold over the discourse, and, more importantly, the ultimate facts on the ground.” The facts on the ground remain important and their preservation is something we must do our best to keep in mind in all of this. Because these facts are people. And they are dying.