{"id":4093,"date":"2012-06-04T10:26:12","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T18:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4093"},"modified":"2013-06-18T12:52:45","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T20:52:45","slug":"hype-and-anti-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/04\/hype-and-anti-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"Hype and Anti-Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hype and Anti-Hype<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been lost in a fog of hype for months now\u2014what with promoting my Nested Scrolls<\/a><\/em> autobio this winter, putting out Flurb <\/a><\/em>#13 and converting it into an ebook, and recently spending all my time getting my Transreal Books <\/a>line going.<\/p>\n

Not to mention tweeting <\/a>and blogging. And layering on link tags all over the place.<\/p>\n


\n[Terry Bisson<\/em>]<\/p>\n

I even put out some hype for someone other than myself this week, a book review of Terry Bisson\u2019s great alternate history memoir, Any Day Now<\/em>. The review <\/a>is in this interesting new online literary journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/em>\u2014meant to be a kind of left-coast mirror of the august New York Review of Books<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On the subject of hype, I\u2019ve heard media figures say that they get into trouble when they start believing their own hype. I mean I\u2019ve heard rappers say that, anyway. What is the nature of the danger, exactly?<\/p>\n

Maybe, if I believe the hype, I don\u2019t feel a need to even try to write, as I think I\u2019m already so great. Maybe, if I believe my hype, then I\u2019m not willing to put in the work it takes to write because I\u2019m too \u201cimportant\u201d\u009d for the thousand-miles-on-foot slog of writing a novel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Or maybe, if I believe the hype, I do still want <\/em>to write, but I become blocked\u2014because nothing I actually do write lives up to the hype? That is, maybe if I believe the hype, when I try and get to work, I freak out over the very real disparity between the contingent and mortal quality of what I actually do write vis-a-vis the much higher quality that my hype ascribes to my oeuvre.<\/p>\n

Or, yet again, maybe I am still able to write but, believing the hype, I get lazy and begin neglecting the necessary but painful work of outlining, revision, scientific theorizing, and pre-visualization\u2014this happens to older writers sometimes.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps, if I believe my hype, I lose my sense of humor and become pompous and self-referential. \u201cFatuous,\u201d\u009d to use an apt word that I\u2019ve heard Bruce Sterling use (when arguing with me about some revisions to one of our many collaborative short stories). Fatuosity is another danger for established writers.<\/p>\n


\n[Two mayflies in conjugation]<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hoping soon to get away from the hype and back to my actual work. Giving the finger to consensus reality. Turning my back on received ideas\u2014even if they come from me.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve already kvetched <\/a>in these posts, one thing that\u2019s holding me back from writing at this point is that I don\u2019t feel like working on my new novel, The Big Aha <\/em>, until I find a path for publishing my last one, Turing & Burroughs<\/em>. If I don\u2019t get something set up by the end of June, I\u2019ll probably publish Turing & Burroughs<\/em> via my own line of Transreal Books, just to get it off my back. It\u2019ll be a bit of a blow to my self-esteem to join the ranks of the self-published novelists. But that seems to be the way the wind\u2019s blowing. I heard the other day that the august house of Houghton-Mifflin is bankrupt. Leaving more and more writers scrabbling in the gutter with the literary lepers\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bringing us to the theme of anti-hype. Somewhere (although I can’t find the exact location) Thomas Pynchon writes that a certain kind of seeker (mystic, writer, or artist) needs an \u201cunwiltable hard-on\u201d\u009d of ambition. (Let\u2019s suppose this can apply to female seekers as well, the \u201chard-on\u201d\u009d being, after all, metaphorical—a psychic dildo, if you will.)<\/p>\n

In a similar vein, there\u2019s a saying attributed to Rabbi Hillel, \u201cIf I am not for myself, who will be?\u201d\u009d (Hillel complicates matters by adding on, \u201cIf I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?\u201d\u009d)<\/p>\n

To some extent, I like to think that, if nobody hates what I\u2019m doing, then I\u2019m not going far enough. But if everybody <\/em> hates what I\u2019m doing\u2014gosh, maybe I\u2019m on a wrong path. But so far, there\u2019s always been a few loyal friends or fans who approve of what I\u2019m doing. So I continue on, largely unchanged.<\/p>\n

And there’s always the bitter SubGenius motto: “F*ck them if they can’t take a joke.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What about the strategy of trying to bend your work to be a better fit for the market? That tends not to work. You get into playing catch-up ball, to use *ack* a sports metaphor, and your style suffers. Or your style stays the same, but nobody believes your claim that you’ve written a steampunk or urban fantasy or whatever kind of book.<\/p>\n

I once heard someone ask William Burroughs why he didn\u2019t \u201cjust\u201d\u009d write a bestseller to make some money. The old master said that something like the following:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not possible. People may think they can sit down and write a bestseller, but you can\u2019t do it. A bestseller is written up to the level of a man\u2019s ability. You can\u2019t write down to the reading public.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[Rudy at the Met]<\/p>\n

Whatever else it is, writing is pleasant, addictive, and a path to self-knowledge. It\u2019s just nice to have an excuse for doing it. I always seem to find some kind of project to work on, even if it\u2019s not a novel. So what am <\/em>I writing these days? Well, I\u2019m polishing up my Journals, 1990-2012<\/em>, getting them into a format that I can publish via, ta-da, Transreal Books. Ebook and paperback, probably. <\/p>\n

So for now I\u2019m puttering around, getting those the half million or so words wrestled into a reasonable shape. It\u2019s passing the time in any case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hype and Anti-Hype I\u2019ve been lost in a fog of hype for months now\u2014what with promoting my Nested Scrolls autobio this winter, putting out Flurb #13 and converting it into an ebook, and recently spending all my time getting my Transreal Books line going. Not to mention tweeting and blogging. And layering on link tags […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-the-big-aha"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4093"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4718,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4093\/revisions\/4718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}