In his recent piece “Literary Fame in the Time of the Flame Wars,” VQR contributor Adam Kirsch reflects on the how literary celebrity may be altered in the internet age, focusing on the case of Keith Gessen, founder of the journal n+1, author of debut novel “All The Sad Young Literary Men,” and favored gadfly for numerous literary blogs and gossip sites. Although in his piece Kirsch has some interesting ideas about the compulsions behind artistic creation, which probably deserve expansion in another essay, I thought some of his more intriguing and accessible, if occasionally vague, comments came when discussing the relationship between literary output, recognition, and the accessible, democratic nature of the internet. Here’s a sample:

The Internet has democratized the means of self-expression, but it has not democratized the rewards of self-expression. Now everyone can assert a claim to recognition—in a blog, Tumblog, Facebook status update. But the amount of recognition available in the world is inexorably shrinking, since each passing generation leaves behind more writers with a claim on our memory. That is why the fight for recognition is so fierce and so personal.

…

If that is the case, then the best strategy for writers in the age of the Internet may be to ignore the Internet and look down on it. If print is a luxury, make it a rare and exclusive one; if literature is antidemocratic, revel in its injustice. Make sure that the reward of recognition goes to the most beautiful and difficult writing, not to the loudest and neediest. Above all, do not start a blog, for the non-writers who wish they were writers will only despise you for choosing to meet them on their own ground. As one of the commenters on Gessen’s blog put it: “get off the Internet as soon as you possibly can. Every second you stay online…another 18-28 year old (that coveted demographic!) loses all respect for you.”

In considering the case of Gessen, I would recommend that writers avoid the internet (for few can skip over it entirely, except for someone living off the grid like Carolyn Chute or a member of the established old guard, perhaps no better personified than in the quasi-prophetic voice of Cormac McCarthy, calling from a mountaintop) not because by immersing themselves in the Web they meet their critics on their own ground, becoming caught in the same muck they ostensibly hold themselves above, but because more than anything, such activities are simply a waste of time. And yes, by creating a kind of self-consciousness that stifles authentic creativity, they debase the artistic spirit. They invite invective and bitterness and envy. But battling day after day with anonymous commenters is also anti-literary, unartistic, crude, resistant to intellectual insight, without any purpose beyond self-defeating narcissism. And before one works one’s way out, how many hours are wasted? How much stress and emotional concern and how many thousands of words devoted to, say, a litblog vs. lit mag showdown that concerns no one beyond the immediate participants and their friends?

Perhaps that’s why Kirsch doesn’t name the “one popular website” that has long, in internet time, served as Gessen’s most vocal antagonist (in part, because Gessen used to date one of its former editors; perhaps fortunately, Kirsch neglects those gossipy details). For those who spend only a little time in the literary or media blogospheres, it would be easy to name that site as Gawker. But in his non-utterance of that name, Kirsch may be taking on some of the same advice he dispenses. In this way Kirsch—who in his essay invokes Tennyson, Chekov, and Hegel, to go along with Tumblr, Facebook, and e-mail—dances above the fray, remaining mindful of it, seeing its errors and its passions, but remaining wise enough to not delve into it for long.

Yet here we are—on a blog—debating Adam Kirsch’s remarks on flame wars and skirting the same websites, issues, and voices that writers are, in his view, best advised to ignore. But of course, as Kirsch would likely confirm, the internet has much to offer writers, be they neophytes or well-established. For research purposes, there are boundless reserves of information out there, expert voices on every topic, centuries-old archives of newspapers, the endless joys of surfing Wikipedia, which Andrew Sullivan has rightly called “one of life’s true intellectual pleasures” (on his blog, naturally). There are online communities, sites for every niche subculture, author fan sites, discussion forums, places for artists to critique each others’ work, numerous literary magazines, and a bounty of blogs that contribute with heart, intelligence, and great enthusiasm to the literary conversation.

In the end, I think that discussions like the one that Kirsch has initiated (or hopped aboard) do provide a service to readers, writers, and critics. More than anything, the essay prods us towards some basic questions: What is most important? What will I read and what I will write in the limited time allotted to me? And if you care about literature, I would offer that the answer is not in internet flame wars or insular, endless back-and-forths between blogs and their antagonists, whether they come from print or their electronic brethren. No, it’s in the work. It’s in how books move us and in the fruitful, meaningful conversations they produce. Kirsch seemingly gets that, but it should also be emphasized that the infinitesimal slice of the internet devoted to bookish concerns can be a great crutch in advancing those simple but lofty goals. By ignoring the Web completely, we make ourselves, and our imaginations, poorer.

“Quantum of Solace,” the new Bond flick, has been described variously by reviewers as noisy, tumultuous, violent, angry, devoid of suavity, and packed full of “glum anhedonia.” (This last line belongs to Dana Stevens of Slate, and bravo to her; it’s not often one works the word “anhedonia” into the pages of a major magazine, and rarer still that one does so with such offhanded panache.) But what to make of the title itself? It seems at first like willful obfuscation. There is no verb; we encounter only the blunt edges of those heavy nouns, one scientific and the other quasi-psychological. We imagine the quantum of solace to be an ugly weapon, fat and silvery, possibly nuclear, and probably hand-held. Will Daniel Craig’s Bond get there in time?

The answer, I can report, having seen the film yesterday, is yes—007 does eventually arrive at a quantum of solace, and quickly enough to save not only the globe but also his own inner world. For the titular “solace,” it turns out, is not a pistol, or even a car, but a respite from violence, and the attainment of inner peace. Bond, wracked over the death of his lover, Vesper Lynd, dodges from explosion to explosion, searching for revenge, and then that thing that comes after revenge, which we understand, vaguely, to be a truce. (For a real spy and soldier, which Bond is, there is no such thing as lasting quiet – only the space between wars.) The movie provides little of that, of course. The bullet shells are many; the bedroom scenes are short-lived; Bond is a cocked gun, waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

All of which proves the title, in the end, to be a lovely and well-crafted thing. Consider the other options a writer might have employed: “Modicum of Assuagement”; “Bit of Consolation”; “Dash of Alleviation”; a “Pinch of Abatement”; or, to flip the thing grammatically and contextually on its head, “Relaxation, in Small Pieces.” As Daniel Craig told the BBC earlier this year, there’s something poetic about the idea of a quantum of solace. (The dictionary definition of “quantum”: “The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation.”) When [relationships] go wrong,” Craig explained, “when there’s nothing left, when the spark has gone, when the fire’s gone out, there’s no quantum of solace.”

VQR contributing editor Lawrence Weschler writes for The Believer about the decades-long argument between Robert Irwin and David Hockney:

[F]or some twenty-five years now, whenever I have written about one or the other of these two giants of contemporary art (arguably the two most significant artists to come out of the late-twentieth-century California art milieu), the other one has called effectively to tell me, “Wrong, wrong, wrong.” The two have never met or conversed in person (straddling that Southern California scene like Schoenberg and Stravinsky before them, each seemingly oblivious to the other’s existence though in fact deeply seized by the work); instead they have been carrying on this quite vivid argument for over two decades, through me, as it were.

Weschler wrote about Robert Irwin’s latest work in our spring issue and David Hockney’s return to painting in our current issue.

Via Quiet Bubble)

PEN USA announced today the winners of their 2008 Literary Awards, and VQR contributor Daniel Alarcón won the Fiction Award for his novel Lost City Radio (HarperCollins). We published an excerpt from Lost City Radio in our Winter 2007 issue, “A Circus at the Center of the World.”

Virginia NPR station WVTF interviewed Elliott Woods about his article about the aftermath of the Mosul chow hall bombing. Woods’ “A Few Unforeseen Things” focuses on how the attack affected those left behind, and for Veterans Day, he explains to WVTF’s Sandy Hausman how the modern citizen-soldier concept makes that burden heavier than ever.

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VQR is pleased to announce that the winner of its Young Reviewers Contest is Emily Wilkinson of Pasadena, California, for her review of “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective” by Kate Summerscale.

The judges (Rebecca Skloot, Oscar Villalon, and Ted Genoways) praised Ms. Wilkinson’s review as “astute, incisive, and rich in historical context.” Ms. Wilkinson’s review will be published in the Winter 2009 issue of VQR. In addition, she receives $1,000.00 and a contract for additional reviews worth up to $3,000.00. Ms. Wilkinson is a graduate student at Stanford University where she is finishing her doctoral thesis in Restoration and eighteenth century British literature. She is a writer for the lit blog The Millions and has also written book reviews for the Washington Times.

The other finalists were:

• Giles Harvey (New York, NY)
• Michael Lukas (Berkeley, CA)
• Amanda Redig (Chicago, IL)
• Matthew Shaer (Brooklyn, NY)
• Jacob Silverman (Los Angeles, CA)

The finalists receive a one-year complimentary subscription to VQR and a one-year student or associate membership in the National Book Critics Circle.

Over 120 writers from the U.S. and eight foreign countries submitted entries. Congratulations to Emily and the other finalists and thanks to everyone who entered the contest.