>Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 00:51:55 -0400 (EDT)
>From: dan <visel@fas.harvard.edu>
>To: pavement@lists.uts.EDU.AU
>Subject: [Pavement] Dave Eggers vs. indie cred
>
>So Dave Eggers, the author of _A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius_
>and the editor of McSweeney's (www.mcsweeneys.net) gave a reading here
>about a month ago, and myself and some others of the godawful campus
>literary magazine interviewed him (via email). And I asked him what he
>thought about the accusations that he'd sold out, and he sent us this rant.
>There was more of the interview too (email me if you'd like it), but as the
>issue of selling out and indie cred is of perennial concern on a pavement
>mailing list, I thought I'd send this. And Eggers has been mentioned here,
>no? Anyway, here's what he has to say on the matter, take it as you will.
>Reminds me oddly of a Huckelberry rant.
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>First, a primer: When I got your questions, I was provoked. You expressed
>many of the feelings I used to have, when I was in high school and college,
>about some of the people I admired at the time, people who at some point
>disappointed me in some way, or made moves I could not understand. So I
>took a few passages from your questions--those pertaining to or hinting at
>"selling out"--and I used them as a launching pad for a rant I've wanted to
>write for a while now, and more so than ever since my own book has become
successful. And the rant was timely, because shortly after getting your
>questions, I was scheduled to speak at Yale, and so, assuming that their
>minds might be in a similar spot as yours, I read this, the below, to them,
>in slightly less polished form. The rant is directed to myself, age 20, as
>much as it is to you, so remember that if you ever want to take much
>offense.
>
>You actually asked me the question: "Are you taking any steps to keep shit
>real?" I want you always to look back on this time as being a time when
>those words came out of your mouth.
>
>Now, there was a time when such a question--albeit probably without the
>colloquial spin--would have originated from my own brain. Since I was
>thirteen, sitting in my orange-carpeted bedroom in ostensibly cutting-edge
>Lake Forest, Illinois, subscribing to the Village Voice and reading the
>earliest issues of Spin, I thought I had my ear to the railroad tracks of
>avant garde America. (Laurie Anderson, for example, had grown up only miles
>apparatus, the degree of selloutitude exemplified by any given
>artist--musical, visual, theatrical, whatever. I was vigilant and merciless
>and knew it was my job to be so.
>
>I bought R.E.M.'s first EP, Chronic Town, when it came out and thought I
>had found God. I loved Murmur, Reckoning, but then watched, with greater
>and greater dismay, as this obscure little band's audience grew, grew
>beyond obsessed people like myself, grew to encompass casual fans, people
>who had heard a song on the radio and picked up Green and listened for the
>hits. Old people liked them, and stupid people, and my moron neighbor who
>had sex with truck drivers. I wanted these phony R.E.M.-lovers dead.
>
>But it was the band's fault, too. They played on Letterman. They switched
>record labels. Even their album covers seemed progressively more
>commercial. And when everyone I knew began liking them, I stopped. Had they
>changed, had their commitment to making art with integrity changed? I
>didn't care, because for me, any sort of popularity had an inverse
>relationship with what you term the keeping "real" of "shit." When the
>Smiths became slightly popular they were sellouts. Bob Dylan appeared on
>MTV and of course was a sellout. Recently, just at dinner tonight, after a
>huge, sold-out reading by David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell (both sellouts), I
>was sitting next to an acquaintance, a very smart acquaintance married to
>the singer-songwriter of a very well-known band. I mentioned that I had
>seen the Flaming Lips the night before. She rolled her eyes. "Oh I really
>liked them on 90210," she sneered, assuming that this would put me and the
>band in our respective places.
>
>However.
>
>Was she aware that The Flaming Lips had composed an album requiring the
>simultaneous playing of four separate discs, on four separate CD players?
>Was she aware that the band had once, for a show at Lincoln Center, handed
>out to audience members something like 100 portable tape players, with 100
>different tapes, and had them all played at the same time, creating a
>symphonic sort of effect, one which completely devastated everyone in
>attendance? I went on and on to her about the band's accomplishments, their
>experiments. Was she convinced that they were more than their one
>appearance with Jason Priestly? She was.
>
>Now, at that concert the night before, Wayne Coyne, the lead singer, had
>himself addressed this issue, and to great effect. After playing much of
>their new album, the band paused and he spoke to the audience. I will
>paraphrase what he said:
>
>"Hi. Well, some people get all bitter when some song of theirs gets
>popular, and they refuse to play it. But we're not like that. We're happy
>that people like this song. So here it goes."
>
>Then they played the song. (You know the song.) "She Don't Use Jelly" is
>the song, and it is a silly song, and it was their most popular song. But
>to highlight their enthusiasm for playing the song, the band released, from
>the stage and from the balconies, about 200 balloons. (Some of the
>balloons, it should be noted, were released by two grown men in bunny
>suits.) Then while playing the song, Wayne sang with a puppet on his hand,
>who also sang into the microphone. It was fun. It was good.
>
>But was it a sellout? Probably. By some standards, yes. Can a good band
>play their hit song? Should we hate them for this? Probably, probably.
>First 90210, now they go playing the song every stupid night. Everyone
>knows that 90210 is not cutting edge, and that a cutting edge alternarock
>band should not appear on such a show. That rule is clearly stated in the
>obligatory engrained computer-chip sellout manual that we were all given
>when we hit adolescence.
>
>But this sellout manual serves only the lazy and small. Those who bestow
>sellouthood upon their former heroes are driven to do so by, first and
>foremost, the unshakable need to reduce. The average one of us--a taker-in
>of various and constant media, is absolutely overwhelmed--as he or she
>should be--with the sheer volume of artistic output in every conceivable
>medium given to the world every day--it is simply too much to begin to
>process or comprehend--and so we are forced to try to sort, to reduce. We
>designate, we label, we diminish, we create hierarchies and categories.
>
>Through largely received wisdom, we rule out Tom Waits's new album because
>it's the same old same old, and we save $15. U2 has lost it, Radiohead is
>too popular. Country music is bad, Puff Daddy is bad, the last Wallace book
>was bad because that one reviewer said so. We decide that TV is bad unless
>it's the Sopranos. We liked Rick Moody and Jonathan Lethem and Jeffrey
>Eugenides until they allowed their books to become movies. And on and on.
>The point is that we do this and to a certain extent we must do this. We
>must create categories, and to an extent, hierarchies.
>
>But you know what is easiest of all? When we dismiss.
>
>Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off. Thus, in the
>overcrowded pantheon of alternarock bands, at a certain juncture, it became
>necessary for a certain brand of person to write off The Flaming Lips,
>despite the fact that everyone knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their
>music was superb and groundbreaking and real. We could write them off
>because they shared a few minutes with Jason Priestley and that terrifying
>Tori Spelling person. Or we could write them off because too many magazines
>have talked about them. Or because it looked like the bassist was wearing
>too much gel in his hair.
>
>One less thing to think about. Now, how to kill off the rest of our heroes,
>to better make room for new ones?
>
>We liked Guided by Voices until they let Ric Ocasek produce their latest
>album, and everyone knows Ocasek is a sellout, having written those mushy
>Cars songs in the late 80s, and then--gasp!--produced Weezer's album, and
>of course Weezer's no good, because that Sweater song was on the radio,
>right, and dorky teenage girls were singing it and we cannot have that and
>so Weezer is bad and Ocasek is bad and Guided by Voices are bad, even if
>Spike Jonze did direct that one Weezer video, and we like Spike Jonze,
>don't we?
>
>Ooh. No. We don't. We don't him anymore because he's married to Sofia
>Coppola, and she is not cool. Not cool. So bad in Godfather 3, such
>nepotism. So let's check off Spike Jonze -- leaving room in our brains
>for--who?
>
>It's exhausting.
>
>The only thing worse than this sort of activity is when people, students
>and teachers alike, run around college campuses calling each other racists
>and anti-Semites. It's born of boredom, lassitude. Too cowardly to address
>problems of substance where such problems actually are, we claw at those
>close to us. We point to our neighbor, in the khakis and sweater, and cry
>foul. It's ridiculous. We find enemies among our peers because we know them
>better, and their proximity and familiarity means we don't have to get off
>the couch to dismantle them.
>
>And now, I am also a sellout. Here are my sins, many of which you may know
>about already:
>
>First, I was a sellout because Might magazine took ads Then I was a sellout
>because our pages were color, and not stapled together at the Kinko's Then
>I was a sellout because I went to work for Esquire Now I'm a sellout
>because my book has sold many copies And because I have done many
>interviews And because I have let people take my picture And because my
>goddamn picture has been in just about every fucking magazine and newspaper
>printed in America
>
>And now, as far as McSweeney's is concerned, the Advocate interviewer wants
>to know if we're losing also our edge, if the magazine is selling out,
>hitting the mainstream, if we're still committed to publishing unknowns,
>and pieces killed by other magazines.
>
>And the fact is, I don't give a fuck. When we did the last issue, this was
>my thought process: I saw a box. So I decided we'd do a box. We were given
>stories by some of our favorite writers--George Saunders, Rick Moody (who
>is uncool, uncool!), Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, others--and so we
>published them. Did I wonder if people would think we were selling out,
>that we were not fulfilling the mission they had assumed we had committed
>ourselves to?
>
>No. I did not. Nor will I ever. We just don't care. We care about doing
>what we want to do creatively. We want to be interested in it. We want it
>to challenge us. We want it to be difficult. We want to reinvent the stupid
>thing every time. Would I ever think, before I did something, of how those
>with sellout monitors would respond to this or that move? I would not. The
>second I sense a thought like that trickling into my brain, I will put my
>head under the tires of a bus.
>
>You want to know how big a sellout I am?
>
>A few months ago I wrote an article for Time magazine and was paid $12,000
>for it I am about to write something, 1,000 words, 3 pages or so, for
>something called Forbes ASAP, and for that I will be paid $6,000 For two
>years, until five months ago, I was on the payroll of ESPN magazine, as a
>consultant and sometime contributor. I was paid handsomely for doing very
>little. Same with my stint at Esquire. One year I spent there, with little
>to no duties. I wore khakis every day. Another Might editor and I, for
>almost a year, contributed to Details magazine, under pseudonyms, and were
>paid $2000 each for what never amounted to more than 10 minutes
>work--honestly never more than that People from Hollywood want to make my
>book into a movie, and I am probably going to let them do so, and they will
>likely pay me a great deal of money for the privilege.
>
>
>Do I care about this money? I do. Will I keep this money? Very little of
>it. Within the year I will have given away almost a million dollars to
>about 100 charities and individuals, benefiting everything from hospice
>care to an artist who makes sculptures from Burger King bags. And the rest
>will be going into publishing books through McSweeney's. Would I have been
>able to publish McSweeney's if I had not worked at Esquire? Probably not.
>Where is the $6000 from Forbes going? To a guy named Joe Polevy, who wants
>to write a book about the effects of radiator noise on children in New
>England.
>
>Now, what if I were keeping all the money? What if I were buying property
>in St. Kitt's or blew it all on live-in prostitutes? What if, for example,
>I was, a few nights ago, sitting at a table in SoHo with a bunch of
>Hollywood slash celebrity acquaintances, one of whom I went to high school
>with, and one of whom was Puff Daddy? Would that make me a sellout? Would
>that mean I was a force of evil?
>
>What if a few nights before that I was at the home of Julian Schnabel, at a
>party featuring Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, and at which Schnabel said we
>should get together to talk about him possibly directing my movie? And what
>if I said sure, let's?
>
>Would all that make me a sellout? Would I be uncool? Would it have been
>more cool to not go to this party, or to not have written that book, or
>done that interview, or to have refused millions from Hollywood?
>
>The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans,
>getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when
>it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along
>with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this
>afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you
>will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about
>all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to
>Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that
>person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends
>will say.
>
>No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered,
>cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the
>wrong message.
>
>There is a point in one's life when one cares about selling out and not
>selling out. One worries whether or not wearing a certain shirt means that
>they are behind the curve or ahead of it, or that having certain music in
>one's collection means that they are impressive, or unimpressive.
>
>Thankfully, for some, this all passes. I am here to tell you that I have, a
>few years ago, found my way out of that thicket of comparison and
>relentless suspicion and judgment. And it is a nice feeling. Because, in
>the end, no one will ever give a shit who has kept shit "real" except the
>two or three people, sitting in their apartments, bitter and
>self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about such things.
>The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to
>me. It's fashion, and I don't like fashion, because fashion does not
>matter.
>
>What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce
>things that are true and will stand. What matters is that the Flaming
>Lips's new album is ravishing and I've listened to it a thousand times
>already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to
>save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any
>narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn
>90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up
>and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What
>matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you
>want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be
>critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it
>all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke
>with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you
>have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and
>do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work
>to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and
>accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.
>
>I say yes, and Wayne Coyne says yes, and if that makes us the enemy, then
>good, good, good. We are evil people because we want to live and do things.
>We are on the wrong side because we should be home, calculating which move
>would be the least damaging to our downtown reputations. But I say yes
>because I am curious. I want to see things. I say yes when my high school
>friend tells me to come out because he's hanging with Puffy. A real story,
>that. I say yes when Hollywood says they'll give me enough money to publish
>a hundred different books, or send twenty kids through college. Saying no
>is so fucking boring.
>
>And if anyone wants to hurt me for that, or dismiss me for that, for saying
>yes, I say Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers, finally, finally, finally.