LOTR and some ~personal news~

what's still good: lord of the rings! what's still bad: the media business

*The original version of this post first appeared on Patreon on February 17, 2022.

If you haven’t heard it yet, here’s the very first episode of Art for the End Times, starring the fabulous Talia Lavin. We had a blast talking about LOTR, why it still has such a key cultural impact, and what it means to love something that the far right also likes (if for different reasons than your own).

Some personal news: I've managed to secure a part-time job!!! which means that (hopefully) I'm going to stop waking up at night fretting about money. This new job seems like it's going to be really interesting and it's blessedly NOT in media, so I won't get eaten up by constant exposure to the acidic contempt that the entire media ecosystem has for people who actually create things. 

You hear stories about how bad things are in journalism, in book publishing etc, but it's genuinely astonishing how shitty it really is. When I was a magazine editor I was aware of how hard it was for freelancers, and I tried my best to make the experience as pleasant as possible for them, ensure they got paid quickly, etc—but I still didn't really know how bad things were, not until I tried freelancing on my own. Writers simply don't get paid. Talia is actually one of the few writers I know who is doing okay, thanks in part to a popular Substack (and you should check it out here, it's great). But other writers—even people who are much better at pitching than I am, and who would, on paper, appear to be very successful—are seriously struggling to get by. This recent tweet by the writer Nicole Kornher-Stace sums it up neatly: "just did my taxes. had 2 books come out in 2021. 1 small-press, 1 big 5 pub. nice reviews. showing up on year's best/award nom lists. $7k 2021 income." This is simply not a viable industry for people who don't already have a considerable degree of independent wealth. I am still going to give media the ol' college try, but with only half my time—the other half is going to have to be spent outside of this toxic bubble, it's the only way I can imagine surviving both financially and emotionally.

So! I'm going to keep cooking up fun posts, but if there are particular types of recommendations you would like to see in future (mystery novels, sci fi, contemporary lit fic, whatever) just let me know in the comments. Otherwise I will continue to post HEY YOU LIKE BOOKS? I GOT YER BOOKS RIGHT HERE like some kind of deranged librarian in a trenchcoat.