Letters to the Editor
softdog
Published Letters: 186 Editor's Choice: 8
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The archetypal petty critic who resents the artist who are the reason he exists
[Read the article: I dated Cindy Sherman ...]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I realize this film could not have been made without Cindy Sherman's participation and consent. Maybe she saw it as a long form experiment in ceding partial control of her image to someone else. It also sounds like titantically poor judgement from a combination of romance gone sour and pure ego.
Who knows. It's somewhat depressing, but it seems her experiment worked because this guy gives a much worse impression of himself than her.
I mean in just this short interview he comes off as a resentful asshole with a sense of wounded entitlement who pretty much resents Cindy's fame even as he continues to cash in on it.
I can't think of a more passive agressive act against an ex who is more famous than you.
This film has caused a lot of problems for me and for people in the art world who may have something to do with the film and are worried about what the effect is going to be. I've been excommunicated, basically, from that whole level of the art world.
Awwww. Too fucking bad. You made the film of your own free will, just as Cindy took part by her own choice. And the only reason you got to do it at all is because your ex is successful.
I think Paul could have without being such a titantic, brazen leech, but then if he had a sense of proportion he might not have done it.
It's obvious the man realizes his entire career is built around reacting to work done by other people. Instead of accepting or enjoying this position, he seems angry and perhaps ashamed and willing to blame it on the people he used.
Poor little Paul, with his career as a successful art critic and interviewer, suffering from living in comfort with luxury and fame because he doesn't own it himself.
For centuries women have gotten used to being the second fiddle.
I know. I know what it's like to be second fiddle, and I acknowledge my inferiority to the greater body...
Most women of famous men don't write tell all books, and they do, their grievence is usually about things the exes actually did, rather than their mere possessen of more success and status.
I think the deal here is: Good manners never go out of style. If you have a partner, take care of your partner, you know?...we were trading stories about getting shafted, you know?...Be careful of who you invite. And be conscientious, because it can really bite you in the ass.
Or don't partner up with an ungrateful little pussy with a camera and a wounded craving for borrowed fame.
Again, it's depressing to see a great artist is so lacking in boundaries and taste in men. No wonder his thearpist dumped him, Cindy clearly needs help and she's a more worthy case than this jerk.
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Another publishing insider trying to seem deep to push her book.
[Read the article: You are not your bookcase]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dudes, Megan Hustad is a former book editor who has worked at Random House, Basic Books, and the Counterpoint Press who is using this essay to promote her own self help book.
This is why the essay bugs me - the agenda is so obvious yet never admitted, which makes the whole thing rather disingenuous.
How many times can Salon publish cutesy essays about nothing by publishing industry types with rather uneventful cushy New York lives? Does Megan say anything which wasn't covered better by an episode of Seinfeld and Friends?
Her entire career relies on certain cultural boundaries and a certain type of insider privilege. That she doesn't mention this, or reflect upon it, in her essay is why it is so utterly weak.
There's a vast nation of young people ripping it up and writing about it. Hell, the Gawker writers have more insight and nuance.
The young publishing professional might have status anxiety about picking up a self-help book - less obsessed hipsters who don't live in New York, not so much.
Thus it is not "People who are out of touch with reality may not understand this article. But its core message speaks to more than just the myspace/facebook generation." It is people understand it all too well - the same game navel gazing by media elites in Salon, now spanning several generations. How nice of Joan Walsh to welcome the next wave.
Defining oneself by what one consumes is a condition which everyone experiences, and not just in this current era. And there is plenty of amusing things to be said about it.
But his essay attempt to conflates the personal and zeitgeist seems lazy and tries to look down on people at the same time.
It's similar to Camille Paglia, who promotes herself as an intellectual rebel for embracing topics traditionally beneath her while emphasizing how they remain beneath her.
"Of course one could say that the pretentious and literary like their dysfunction, and so their reluctance to pick up anything that's not them, even if it might help, shouldn't worry anyone." It might also be a smaller segment of prentenious and literary fully buy into this crap because they are making their careers from it.
"But there's also the possibility that over-identification with our preferred products weakens our political instincts." Including not being able to distinguish between the universal and one's own rarified social position.
I'm don't think authenticity is necessary all the time. But this essay seems phony. Plenty of great youth cultural angst is out there, but this ain't it.
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Don't be a snob - buy my stuff.
[Read the article: You are not your bookcase]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To put it in a shorter way: I'm put off by a rambling article centers on not being ashamed to pick up self-help books, by someone who just happens to be selling a self-help.