so so happy I came across your newsletter—this is a really superb diagnosis, and I loved your analysis of how incurious sceney writing & sanctimonious writing can be. I really despise this form of writing, so it felt very cathartic to read your thoughts
the question I always think about, when I read another piece of writing that explicates a scene, dissects a scene, critiques a scene (the critiques tend to be the most annoying, bc the writers often hold themselves above the shallowness and striving of the scene, but often reveal their actual desire to simply belong to the scene, as a beloved and neutered contrarian)…I’m often just like: why does this exist? why is this writer putting all of this energy into writing about a world that is so small and parochial and obsessed with surface over substance? the worst part is that sceney writing KNOWS that all this is shallow, but usually the shallowness is acknowledged or even used to self-flagellate a bit…and then the myopic focus on the scene continues…
This honestly makes me want to take a red pen to some of my old bad scene writing days and see if I can't inject some more curiosity about their disinfection to them. Great writing, totally what I stay on substack for.
Scenes as social objects perfectly describes what I've felt reading them but have never quite been able to articulate. Great piece!
so so happy I came across your newsletter—this is a really superb diagnosis, and I loved your analysis of how incurious sceney writing & sanctimonious writing can be. I really despise this form of writing, so it felt very cathartic to read your thoughts
the question I always think about, when I read another piece of writing that explicates a scene, dissects a scene, critiques a scene (the critiques tend to be the most annoying, bc the writers often hold themselves above the shallowness and striving of the scene, but often reveal their actual desire to simply belong to the scene, as a beloved and neutered contrarian)…I’m often just like: why does this exist? why is this writer putting all of this energy into writing about a world that is so small and parochial and obsessed with surface over substance? the worst part is that sceney writing KNOWS that all this is shallow, but usually the shallowness is acknowledged or even used to self-flagellate a bit…and then the myopic focus on the scene continues…
Loooved this letter and had to stop myself from restacking a line from every other paragraph
This honestly makes me want to take a red pen to some of my old bad scene writing days and see if I can't inject some more curiosity about their disinfection to them. Great writing, totally what I stay on substack for.
One of my favorite essays of yours yet, Eleanor