A few years ago, I guess more than a "few", it was prepandemic, I actively tried to form a writers' group, recruiting through Ok Cupid. We actually met once, there were 4 or 5 of us, to get to know each other, at a café. It didn't get beyond that. The platform was chosen experimentally as the means, but I guess there's a metaphor to extend here. It's a bit like dating. You need to find persons who are both "into the scene" and whose writing you appreciate, and who appreciate yours. Or at least the potential thereof, or the attitude. But it's harder than dating, the drive to write being less urgent than the one for more basic companionship, and being a group it's as complicated as polyamory.
It has seemed to me, too, that groups do good to the artistic endeavours of their members, literary and otherwise. Beside the Brat Pack (I confess Less Than Zero has been long on my list but no more than that), Oulipo and the Bloomsbury Group come to mind. But I think their vitality came not from each being an extraordinary creator on one's own, but from being a passionate audience, a reader, to each other. Which is why the "coveted circles" and "perfect friend group" you allude to seem a fata morgana to me, and the triad of talent, money+connections and beauty unnecessary.
The 13th chapter of John William's wonderful Stoner begins thus, and continues the theme:
> In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.
When you have passionate peers, you make your own scene. Whatever it is: basketball, grunge music, poetry, some video game. Gwern's The Melancholy of Subculture Society is apropos https://gwern.net/subculture . If you do what you do with ambition and not just to pass the time, surely you'd get better, and if you do so for a while, you'd even get very good. If you do it out of respect, dare we say love, to each other, you don't even need talent, you'd figure how to do it with time and persistence. It's great if you can get paid to do what you love, but until then, you could make do with the time you have left when you're done with work.
Connection is important, but I think connection to such peers is more important than a connection to the past, i.e. the establishment. Of course, if you're some son of, people would pay attention before you've even done anything. I'm not sure it's so enviable. Many sons and daughters of didn't fare so well in life, and perhaps when you are forty you'd be grateful nobody knows about the novels you wrote in your twenties. It elicits indignation when a less than mediocre piece of work gets much acclaim (I was thinking about one such today), but as Augusto Monterroso said, posterity always does justice, and anyway there are greater injustices in the world and we would meet greater personal misfortunes in our lifetime. For a while the group of nobodies stands on the stage alone, their own sole audience. if they take their activity seriously, divert each other's attention from other distractions, then eventually, amen, they will create something that would fascinate the outside world. Let the impresarios come searching for you in the alleys when you have something rather than kowtow at their doors when you don't.
If there's any comfort, I think enduring work generally doesn't spring out of environments like this. Aside from Ellis, none of the "Brat Pack" writers are discussed or even thought about much thirty years on—when was the last time you cracked open Tama Janowitz, Jill Eisenstadt, Mark Lindquist, or frankly even Jay McInerney? Donna Tartt wasn't published until years later, and the same with Jonathan Lethem (who dropped out of Bennington).
When you look at other famous literary circles, the numbers are even worse. I've never read anything by any member of the Algonquin Round Table except Dorothy Parker; same with the Bloomsbury Group beyond Virginia Woolf. I'm sure they enjoyed their parties, but a solid work ethic seems like a more likely contributor to literary longevity.
I feel like there’s two different things being described here:
1) a group of writers who hang out together
2) a group of writers who don’t hang out but whose work is stylistically similar.
I think number 2 is much more common than number 1, but there is this desire to conflate the two and create a “scene” where writers are all hanging out and producing great work. I don’t think this happens as much as people might think, and the friendships and relationships are probably overblown.
I get the desire for this sort of thing, but I think having a stable 9-5 and then writing on the side is actually the ideal creative scenario.
Yeah, even the Literary Brat Pack was a made-up thing, probably fueled by the public's knowledge that such circles are incredibly rare and projected desire that they can actually exist.
Jokes aside, I spent most my 20s seeking out this kind of group, with occasional and brief success, with more emphasis on the hedonistic aspects of it than that of cultural relevancy.
These days I take comfort in knowing all my other writing heroes were also loners, not part of any literary brat pack: Flannery, Faulkner, Melville, McCarthy. Maybe freedom from a literary “crowd” is what you need for truly transcendent writing with a true sense of gravity reaching beyond its time and place. That’s what I like to tell myself, at least.
Still, I do miss those late nights drunk and high with writers who were told they’d be the next Shakespeare by their professor relating your problems to a poem by Keats, and those hungover mornings and afternoons after driving to far off and unknown towns. Trying to emulate the Beats in your youth is always fun no matter how many times older people remind you it’s been done before.
That's a good point about needing independence from a group to say something truly new and lasting. Or least have a group built around yourself or your ideas, as opposed to trying to fit in somewhere else.
I’ll also posit that we live in a lonelier age than the 20th century, and while in crowds and tight groups can be fodder for good escapism, the works that will be the most resonant are the ones that convey our sense of isolation and longing.
Writing is a very solitary experience that demands an audience other than oneself. Lucky is the man who gets that. My latest piece is a long narrative poem on my substack: schecter.substack.com. I would be pleased if you took a look. I do not know otherwise how to contact you whom I follow.
Great essay! Could see myself in all that you were describing. I've also tried really hard to create and find writing circles across multiple cities and there's only been limited success. It's pretty much like how you described it. I found that none of the "cool" kids are writing anymore. To put it a bit reductively, all the ones with that sort of rebellious energy are creating startups or trying to be influencers. Perhaps they might have gone down the literary route in the past. Literature's cultural cachet is fast declining and they all know it's not the meal ticket anymore and its certainly not getting you into any circles either, especially if you're not in NYC.
Thanks! And I can't speak much for other places, but it does seem like NYC is the one of the few (only?) places left in the US where there's still some social value in writing. Or at least acting like you're writing.
Was there *ever* cachet to literature? That we call Ellis's cohort the "Brat Pack" seems telling - the name's clearly riffing off filmdom's "Brat Pack" of the 80s, itself a callback to the '50s Rat Pack. "Mark Leyner is totally, like, a literary Emilio Estevez, maaan (who himself is totally, like, this generation's Sinatra, maaan!)"
Even back when literary scenes of the type Chris describes were a thing, I can't escape the feeling that what they really wanted was to be rock bands. :P
You went to law school?! I have been curious about your occupation since you talk so much about writing but arent a professional writer. It didnt occur to me that you were passionate!
I tried a writers group ages ago but found that I don't like poetry and listening to people read their poems was awful. And people wouldnt consistently bring work to critique. So I stopped going.
I actually did join a playwriting group but because of my job I can't make the meetings.
Glad I dispelled that mystery, haha. Yeah, being a lawyer isn't bad, especially since I've found a gig that's not the stereotypical time-consuming lawyerly job. It's nice to not have to worry about paying the bills, but I do think about the experiences I've missed out on in my roundabout path. Every road has its pros and cons.
A few years ago, I guess more than a "few", it was prepandemic, I actively tried to form a writers' group, recruiting through Ok Cupid. We actually met once, there were 4 or 5 of us, to get to know each other, at a café. It didn't get beyond that. The platform was chosen experimentally as the means, but I guess there's a metaphor to extend here. It's a bit like dating. You need to find persons who are both "into the scene" and whose writing you appreciate, and who appreciate yours. Or at least the potential thereof, or the attitude. But it's harder than dating, the drive to write being less urgent than the one for more basic companionship, and being a group it's as complicated as polyamory.
It has seemed to me, too, that groups do good to the artistic endeavours of their members, literary and otherwise. Beside the Brat Pack (I confess Less Than Zero has been long on my list but no more than that), Oulipo and the Bloomsbury Group come to mind. But I think their vitality came not from each being an extraordinary creator on one's own, but from being a passionate audience, a reader, to each other. Which is why the "coveted circles" and "perfect friend group" you allude to seem a fata morgana to me, and the triad of talent, money+connections and beauty unnecessary.
The 13th chapter of John William's wonderful Stoner begins thus, and continues the theme:
> In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.
When you have passionate peers, you make your own scene. Whatever it is: basketball, grunge music, poetry, some video game. Gwern's The Melancholy of Subculture Society is apropos https://gwern.net/subculture . If you do what you do with ambition and not just to pass the time, surely you'd get better, and if you do so for a while, you'd even get very good. If you do it out of respect, dare we say love, to each other, you don't even need talent, you'd figure how to do it with time and persistence. It's great if you can get paid to do what you love, but until then, you could make do with the time you have left when you're done with work.
Connection is important, but I think connection to such peers is more important than a connection to the past, i.e. the establishment. Of course, if you're some son of, people would pay attention before you've even done anything. I'm not sure it's so enviable. Many sons and daughters of didn't fare so well in life, and perhaps when you are forty you'd be grateful nobody knows about the novels you wrote in your twenties. It elicits indignation when a less than mediocre piece of work gets much acclaim (I was thinking about one such today), but as Augusto Monterroso said, posterity always does justice, and anyway there are greater injustices in the world and we would meet greater personal misfortunes in our lifetime. For a while the group of nobodies stands on the stage alone, their own sole audience. if they take their activity seriously, divert each other's attention from other distractions, then eventually, amen, they will create something that would fascinate the outside world. Let the impresarios come searching for you in the alleys when you have something rather than kowtow at their doors when you don't.
If there's any comfort, I think enduring work generally doesn't spring out of environments like this. Aside from Ellis, none of the "Brat Pack" writers are discussed or even thought about much thirty years on—when was the last time you cracked open Tama Janowitz, Jill Eisenstadt, Mark Lindquist, or frankly even Jay McInerney? Donna Tartt wasn't published until years later, and the same with Jonathan Lethem (who dropped out of Bennington).
When you look at other famous literary circles, the numbers are even worse. I've never read anything by any member of the Algonquin Round Table except Dorothy Parker; same with the Bloomsbury Group beyond Virginia Woolf. I'm sure they enjoyed their parties, but a solid work ethic seems like a more likely contributor to literary longevity.
Those parties must've been fun, though!
Hey, at least Tama Janowitz got to hang out with Spider-Man ;)
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Spectacular_Spider-Man_Vol_1_144
I feel like there’s two different things being described here:
1) a group of writers who hang out together
2) a group of writers who don’t hang out but whose work is stylistically similar.
I think number 2 is much more common than number 1, but there is this desire to conflate the two and create a “scene” where writers are all hanging out and producing great work. I don’t think this happens as much as people might think, and the friendships and relationships are probably overblown.
I get the desire for this sort of thing, but I think having a stable 9-5 and then writing on the side is actually the ideal creative scenario.
Yeah, even the Literary Brat Pack was a made-up thing, probably fueled by the public's knowledge that such circles are incredibly rare and projected desire that they can actually exist.
This is the real male loneliness epidemic!
Jokes aside, I spent most my 20s seeking out this kind of group, with occasional and brief success, with more emphasis on the hedonistic aspects of it than that of cultural relevancy.
These days I take comfort in knowing all my other writing heroes were also loners, not part of any literary brat pack: Flannery, Faulkner, Melville, McCarthy. Maybe freedom from a literary “crowd” is what you need for truly transcendent writing with a true sense of gravity reaching beyond its time and place. That’s what I like to tell myself, at least.
Still, I do miss those late nights drunk and high with writers who were told they’d be the next Shakespeare by their professor relating your problems to a poem by Keats, and those hungover mornings and afternoons after driving to far off and unknown towns. Trying to emulate the Beats in your youth is always fun no matter how many times older people remind you it’s been done before.
That's a good point about needing independence from a group to say something truly new and lasting. Or least have a group built around yourself or your ideas, as opposed to trying to fit in somewhere else.
I’ll also posit that we live in a lonelier age than the 20th century, and while in crowds and tight groups can be fodder for good escapism, the works that will be the most resonant are the ones that convey our sense of isolation and longing.
Writing is a very solitary experience that demands an audience other than oneself. Lucky is the man who gets that. My latest piece is a long narrative poem on my substack: schecter.substack.com. I would be pleased if you took a look. I do not know otherwise how to contact you whom I follow.
Great essay! Could see myself in all that you were describing. I've also tried really hard to create and find writing circles across multiple cities and there's only been limited success. It's pretty much like how you described it. I found that none of the "cool" kids are writing anymore. To put it a bit reductively, all the ones with that sort of rebellious energy are creating startups or trying to be influencers. Perhaps they might have gone down the literary route in the past. Literature's cultural cachet is fast declining and they all know it's not the meal ticket anymore and its certainly not getting you into any circles either, especially if you're not in NYC.
Thanks! And I can't speak much for other places, but it does seem like NYC is the one of the few (only?) places left in the US where there's still some social value in writing. Or at least acting like you're writing.
Was there *ever* cachet to literature? That we call Ellis's cohort the "Brat Pack" seems telling - the name's clearly riffing off filmdom's "Brat Pack" of the 80s, itself a callback to the '50s Rat Pack. "Mark Leyner is totally, like, a literary Emilio Estevez, maaan (who himself is totally, like, this generation's Sinatra, maaan!)"
Even back when literary scenes of the type Chris describes were a thing, I can't escape the feeling that what they really wanted was to be rock bands. :P
Writers = People who are too nerdy and/or ugly to be any other kind of artists lol
You went to law school?! I have been curious about your occupation since you talk so much about writing but arent a professional writer. It didnt occur to me that you were passionate!
I tried a writers group ages ago but found that I don't like poetry and listening to people read their poems was awful. And people wouldnt consistently bring work to critique. So I stopped going.
I actually did join a playwriting group but because of my job I can't make the meetings.
Glad I dispelled that mystery, haha. Yeah, being a lawyer isn't bad, especially since I've found a gig that's not the stereotypical time-consuming lawyerly job. It's nice to not have to worry about paying the bills, but I do think about the experiences I've missed out on in my roundabout path. Every road has its pros and cons.
Is your job like Suits? :3
(it's the only lawyer show I know).
Nah. Even for a big law litigator, Suits is nonsense. But my job is a universe away in comparison.
I love this piece, I feel very similarly. I’m glad I’ve found your Substack.
"We all dream of finding our own Lost Generation."
Who is this "we" that keeps coming up here?
Anybody who wants friends they look up to and all get each other
I dunno, I don't have this need for a type of friend, or friends that fit a specific role. They just are.