Right wing gang bangs, creative direction by Cat Marnell
Coverage check: 01/2021: the best media had to offer in January
I pay rent by sending missives to journalists under the headline ‘For Immediate Release,’ trailing them to publish things in a meticulously choreographed timeline I’ve spent weeks planning. I email again a day later with the infamous ‘follow ups’ that do nothing but aggravate them. That is to say, I’m a PR. No, not the cool kind, I can’t get you Lana Del Rey tickets, pre-release access to the new film by the latest Xavier Dolan wunderkind, or connect you to the world’s bright minds.
Working this way, pre-planning everything from the date information will be seeded out to editors to pushing inclusion of terminology on a particular subject that amounts to nothing, has begun to feel increasingly counterintuitive over the three lockdowns. More so in arts and culture.
I don’t wanna wait for Rob Doyle to publish his next book to get his thoughts on topics like the pointlessness of nihilism or his experiences of going off the rails in European capitals. I don’t see the point of choosing talking points at all. Why confine the people who have a sense of the zeitgeist, or something that may not be on the cultural consciousness just yet, to the three week publicity tour that’s only ever seeking to generate sales? Why not give them free reign to write or talk about whatever they’ve discovered at at any particular moment that has captured their attention, possibly giving birth to ideas that weren’t there before?
Fuck the PR plan and fuck the ‘pitch’; staying attuned to the world around you is underrated. If a PR has a job it is to read, read, read. Who’s writing about what and for what publication? How long is the copy? Has the writer added a personal element, revealing something about themselves through the subject? Who’s the editor and how many young writers have they taken a chance on?
These are questions building upon long-held disappointments with book publicity. How much coverage beyond book reviews has a writer received? Soz, but it’s women like Eimear McBride and Deborah Levy I want to see interviewed, not Hollywood heartthrobs who’s publicist holds complete control over the copy. It’s Natasha Stagg I wanna see in fashion editorials, not the daughter of a politician. With Stagg, it will never be just about the rags. If mags insist on vacuous profiles (weekly playlists, media diets, etc.) that say little about the interviewees, they could at least choose interesting people, whose tastes will bring something new to the masses (I’ve been thinking about Oscar Coop-Phane recently, where the hell is he?).
As far as my email job goals go, the following text I WhatsApped a friend who's terminally offline sums up my ambitions:
‘I should be Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich’s publicist. Guaranteed I’d have her on the cover of Nylon and the Dazed 100 in two years max.”
When I launched Deleted Scenes, I thought of a column to look at what’s in the press, along with things that do not make the cut, but should. This is about writing and the people who write, as well as music, film, cultural production across every field, and all sorts of fucked up feelings. Stick with me, as I try to come up with a way of putting this together once a month. I’m aiming to be more incisive in the future, but as a start, welcome to Coverage Check, your monthly update of the best in the press for January 2021, with some December leftovers.
My (wannabe) mentor Rob Doyle made his debut on Brad Listi’s Otherppl podcast, talking about getting to the heart of the matter with his latest Threshold, psychosexual traumas and getting into psychoanalysis in his 20s, the lifelessness of the ongoing sanitisation of the culture and the threat it poses to literature among a long list of topics. In typical Rob Doyle fashion the conversation flows naturally, but as with most interviews now it’s still a little too safe. Yeah, I wanna hear about Doyle drifting from one city to another, the aggressiveness of his prose and whether Threshold is exhibitionist, but I also wanna go beyond that…I want a Paz de la Huerta-style profile that follows him as he heads into the night and pushes him to unveil something more than what he has shared in his own work.
Another Irish I look up to (lost count of those fuckers tbh), Bryan MacDonald, was interviewed by Niccolo Soldo in the latter’s newsletter, the sublimely titled Fisted by Foucault. MacDonald is one of the few voices that keeps me sane in a world determined to demonise one geopolitical force to further the hegemony of another. He’s edgy but grounded, unafraid but thoughtful and most of all willing to play along. He’s also hot, but what that has to do with anything I don’t know. Give him a fashion column, it’ll be the only one not written to keep the PRs happy.
Critical writing’s finest Christian Lorentzen wrote on the future of literature in the aftermath of the Trump administration for Harper’s, looking at the modernist movement, the peculiarly little presence of influenza in literature of the time (which reminds me, I need to download an e-version of Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider) and what the literary avantgarde might be post-COVID. The criminally overlooked Alec Niedenthal is quoted on how the internet has transformed us all into “more anxious, obsessive, isolated, alienated, more preening” individuals. Whether these fresh voices will land a publishing contract remains to be seen. There’s def plenty of talented writers (the aforementioned Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich being one) waiting to break out (which reminds me I need to ask Expat Press if they can ship me her debut Ruthless Little Things).
On this side of the Atlantic, total babe and man of letters Houman Barekat reviewed Lauren Oyler’s debut Fake Accounts for The Sunday Times. It’s another book I haven’t read yet (if 4th Estate publicists see this, please send me an e-version to review, I’m too broke to buy more books rn!)), but if I trust anyone to do justice to the social media frenzy we’re living in, it’s the woman who penned the Jia Tolentino takedown and broke the LRB website over the summer. Elsewhere, it’s down to young writers to call Barekat’s bluff and actually write a novel that reproduces the experience of being online in prose form.
Bitch stole my column idea!
Speaking of books I haven’t read, I’ve been researching Mishima, gathering biographical information with the aim to write an essay on his work once I get around to one or two of his books. Then the lads at MuubTube kicked off the year with an episode on his biopic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, somewhat rendering my ambition obsolete.
“Did Mishima make a man out of you?”
It’s one of their funniest episodes yet. “I find his work very sexy, even though I’m not into guys,” chuckles Ralph as the duo go through the author’s political inclinations and his lust for strong men, which are interconnected for right wing men even to this day as you’ll find out further down in this column. The lads suggest that Pasolini or Fassbinder would have delivered a much more compelling film on the subject, but their collective power in dissecting films comes through best when they discuss the contradictions in Mishima himself: he’s a fascist immersed in the metropolitan he’s rebelling against. Pasolini and Fassbinder might be dead, but it’s time someone else brought Mishima to the screen and frankly who better than another right wing aesthete preoccupied with beauty? Paging Vincent Gallo.
Side note: I found a note buried somewhere in between fragments of an essay I’m writing on the angry young men movement (yes, yes, it wasn’t a movement, they hated the term, etc.) about the other lad duo of podcasting, the good boys of Twink Revolution, essentially a note to self to tell them they should ask Gallo to come on the show. So here I am doing it.
I downloaded Christopher Chitty’s Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System as soon as I saw that libgen had the ebook. I’m only about a fifth of the way through, but Chitty has tapped into something so potent, we’ll be talking about this book for decades. I’ve been critical of “born this way” forever, opting for a homosocial to homosexual pipeline, seeing homosexuality as a variation of the human experience, so I guess Chitty’s book stood out cos I’m inclined to see sexuality as separate from identity. The fact that I belonged to a group of sex-obsessed teen playboy skaters and BMXers fifteen years ago is part of the issue. Earlier in the week, Ben Miller shared his thoughtful review of Chitty’s book on The Baffler, offering compelling insights: “It was the working-class men who were punished.” Chitty, in his brief life, wrote a book that attempts to seize homosexuality from the forces of capital, seeing the victories scored as the establishment bringing certain marginal figures back into the fold of capitalism and neutralising them as potential forces against it.
Everyone in art’s a fag.
The press around John Lurie this week took me back to 2010 when The New Yorker broke the story about his disappearance as a result of former friend John Perry stalking him. The essay reads like a who’s who of BPD on BPD crimes, along with all the trappings of NYC glamour and grittiness. It only served to send both men further into their respective tailspins, but what stands out is that it feels like the story of a jilted lover (Perry) lashing out at a disinterested ex (Lurie). Who knows, perhaps me and my guys are too boring, but we’ve never told each other we have beautiful cocks.
Finally, apparently all we needed over the current lockdowns was another trade event! Publisher’s Weekly announced the launch of the U.S. Book Show, a publishing fair to be held online in May. I guess everyone like me with emails jobs, sending missives and texting clients to get the sign off on more missives, needs to figure out a way to show we’re doing more than that. Book shows are criminally boring, so here’s my suggestion to the organisers: name Cat Marnell Creative Director of the event, then we can all snort bath salts off ARCs or whatever.
December leftovers
You like my new imprints? Gee, thanks, just bought them!
The publishing industry is not only bringing out pointless events, it’s also set to undergo a major consolidation. Penguin Random House announced it would be acquiring Simon and Schuster, further solidifying its position as the most powerful publisher in the world. These mergers and acquisitions and consequent behemoth market shares will in the long run only hurt the writers creating work that seeks to do something new, not dissimilar to consolidations that have happened in film. But these constrictions on artistic expression may not be terrible for writers. We’ll just need to look elsewhere (as if we weren’t already) if we’re after something that doesn’t read like YA. Lorentzen again:
The Cut covered Lower East Side darlings Claire Banse and Gutes Guterman and their beguiling The Drunken Canal, a solid example of what has been defined in trend forecasting as HOT post-pandemic: hyper-locality. The Dimes Square publication is paid out of pocket and distributed with a DIY guerrilla marketing ethos that mirrors its writing, with articles about usual haunts Clandestino’s and Lucien’s among them. According to The Cut, “it will never, ever run online,” and includes critical essays, fiction and reviews. The magazine and paper renaissance is underway in NYC, with the city’s 20-somethings more industrious than ever. This is a project serious in its intent with immense possibilities. The next issue is dropping in February, anyone who can grab a copy and mail it to London…what the fuck are you waiting for?!
Side note: What part of London is cool enough to pull this off?
The Daily Star said the “Roaring 2020s will be the new “era of vice and indulgence”, describing the unfolding decade as a sex fest waiting to happen (someone text Rachel Rabbit White!). All the trends created throughout the pandemic will be reversed and following time in isolation and abstinence (don’t know who they’re referring to here, but I’ll believe them), in 2024 to be exact, we’ll all come out to play and a new hypersexual day will begin. The memoirs will be deeper, dirrtier, and possibly post-social media as everyone’s attention will be off the screen. Sold.
It seems some took a crash course on the sex fest to come before Christmas, with a right-wing Hungarian MEP resigning after news broke (snitches get stitches, Guardian!) that he attended a gay sex party against Belgian lockdown rules. He was spotted fleeing along a gutter to escape the police (who were quoted with the incredible “We interrupted a gang bang.”), which brings Alexis Bledel in Sin City to mind (life imitates art imitates life imitates art). Perhaps Orban and his party are not homophobic at all. Maybe they’re keen to drive fags underground so that the arts can flourish again through vanguard sex bashes. Perhaps they’re all liars maintaining class solidarity.
Slide in the DMs with your suggestions on books, columns, newsletters, tweets, films and everything in between.
xoxo
PJ
BPD to Vincent Gallo to Stagg to Marnell. LOVE THIS