{"id":1008,"date":"2012-04-02T16:22:39","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T20:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2012-04-02T16:23:33","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T20:23:33","slug":"how-dare-they","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/how-dare-they\/","title":{"rendered":"HOW DARE THEY"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1008\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fhow-dare-they%2F&amp;text=HOW%20DARE%20THEY&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fhow-dare-they%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><div id=\"fb_share_1\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" share_url=\"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/how-dare-they\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\">Share<\/a><\/div><div><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div><p>There&#8217;s a recent <em>New York Times<\/em> piece some friends and I were discussing on Twitter this morning. It&#8217;s about teenagers self-publishing their work, usually financed by their parents. Now, there are a lot of newspapers in the world, but the <em>Times<\/em> stands alone in its ability to draw me in and then enrage me. And man, did it ever with this article. But not how I think it wanted to.<\/p>\n<p>Read it <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/04\/01\/us\/young-writers-find-a-devoted-publisher-thanks-mom-and-dad.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><\/span>. Right from the start, I know how the article wants me to feel about this. &#8220;Young Writers Dazzle Publisher (Mom and Dad)&#8221;. This article wants me to hate these entitled fucks before I&#8217;ve even met them! How do I know the article wants me to feel this way? Because you can still see the original (or at least alternate) headline in the URL:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/NYTIMES.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-1010\" title=\"NYTIMES\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/NYTIMES.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"582\" height=\"33\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/NYTIMES.jpg 831w, https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/NYTIMES-300x16.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Clearly, &#8220;Young Writers Dazzle Publisher&#8221; works better. After all, it&#8217;s a phrase you&#8217;ve seen in the <em>Times<\/em> on countless occasions &#8212; in this context, of course, it&#8217;s meant to provoke rage on purpose. Even if they hadn&#8217;t added &#8220;(Mom and Dad),&#8221; you&#8217;d have gotten to paragraph three and wanted to murder the precocious boy-human known as Ben Heckmann, and his parents, who are probably wiping their assess with hundred-dollar bills.<\/p>\n<p>How is this different from the <em>New York Post<\/em>, by the way, which passes judgment on its subjects with the regularity of time itself? \u00a0It&#8217;s all in the headline. If this story had appeared in the <em>Post<\/em>, the headline would&#8217;ve been something like<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">HIGH A-CHEEVERS OR SPOILED BRATS?<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s not how the <em>Times<\/em> plays it, baby. The <em>Times<\/em> plays it arch, all the way. Give it a headline that <em>could<\/em> read as completely innocuous, but was 99% likely sneered through a rolled-up copy of <em>N+1<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>So we get the headline, we get examples of some kids who are writing novels and having them published by their parents. We&#8217;re already supposed to be irritated with all this. And then we&#8217;re given the Expert Testimony.<\/p>\n<p>Expert #1: Tom Robbins, who is described as a &#8220;novelist&#8221; (I&#8217;m just kidding; I read him, too, when I was 20), says,<\/p>\n<h5>\u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u00a0Kiddie architects, juvenile dentists, 11-year-old rocket scientists?\u00a0Any parent who thinks that the crafting of engrossing, meaningful, publishable fiction requires less talent and experience than designing a house, extracting a wisdom tooth, or supervising a lunar probe is, frankly, delusional.\u201d [&#8230;]\u00a0\u201cThere are no prodigies in literature,\u201d Mr. Robbins said. \u201cLiterature requires experience, in a way that mathematics and music do not.\u201d<\/h5>\n<p>That&#8217;s a real statement, or rather, an actual set of words that have the appearance of forming a coherent statement. Because I have no idea what he&#8217;s talking about. But we&#8217;ll get to that in a minute.<\/p>\n<p>Expert #2:\u00a0Garth Stein, author of the bestseller <em>The Art of Racing in the Rain<\/em>,<\/p>\n<h5>said he saw how publishing could be great fun for children, but cautioned that \u201cpart of writing is living and exploring the world and interacting with the world.\u201d<\/h5>\n<p>Good point. The kids in the <em>Times<\/em> piece range from 12-16. Everyone knows you don&#8217;t begin experiencing or living or interacting with the world until you&#8217;re, what? 18? 20? Before then, you&#8217;re just a potato in Keds. (Yeah, heads up, youths: Grownups <em>all<\/em> think you&#8217;re still wearing Keds.)<\/p>\n<p>Expert #3: &#8220;Alan Rinzler, a publishing industry veteran who now works with writers as an editorial consultant.&#8221; I&#8217;ll just paraphrase what he says:<\/p>\n<h5>You should spend even more and hire me!<\/h5>\n<p>So that&#8217;s the article. And I&#8217;m sure plenty of people are outraged at these precocious jerks and their overindulgent parents. And I&#8217;m sure those same people will agree with the implication that having your parents publish you will dissuade you from doing the Hard Work of being a writer. (That&#8217;s the assertion in the Gawker headline.) But consider, if you will, the toxic levels of batshittery in Tom Robbins&#8217; comments. And why are they batshit? Because they presume that a person is literally incapable of writing a good story until they&#8217;ve lived a certain number of years. How many years? Tom Robbins doesn&#8217;t say. But I&#8217;m willing to bet it&#8217;s as many years as Tom Robbins was when he wrote <em>Even Cowgirls Get the Blues<\/em>. And even though Robbins&#8217; criteria would fail a 9th grade logical syllogism test, it&#8217;s the same criteria Gawker and others are using to judge this &#8220;story.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>By the way, is this an epidemic? Are there as many kids writing and self-publishing novels as there are having unprotected sex? Because that would be something. In reality, it seems like this is a handful of super-driven kids with supportive parents. Which is terrible, I guess? I know <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5898086\/getting-published-is-easy-have-your-parents-do-it-for-you\" target=\"_blank\">Gawker<\/a><\/span> sure thought so.<\/p>\n<p>I guess I&#8217;m crazy, because I actually loved the thought of a 14- or 16-year-old kid creating a book and putting it out there for other people to read. That&#8217;s something I never would&#8217;ve thought to do at that age. And if I had thought of it, I surely wouldn&#8217;t have had the balls to do it. But we should be damning such behavior, shouldn&#8217;t we? Let&#8217;s not encourage young writers. Let&#8217;s make sure they know the most important thing about a work of fiction isn&#8217;t how it&#8217;s written or how it makes the reader feel, it&#8217;s how it came to be published. Let&#8217;s make sure they know there&#8217;s only ONE way to do things in this world. Let&#8217;s make sure they know they&#8217;re not to put their work out in the world when they feel ready to do so, only when WE feel ready.\u00a0Whoever &#8220;we&#8221; is, and whenever &#8220;when&#8221; means.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, I realize I&#8217;d have popped a blood vessel if the article had instead been about a trend in traditional publishers signing teen and tween authors. But I now realize I&#8217;d have been wrong to do so. And for THAT, I thank Tom Robbins, the <em>New York Times<\/em>, and Gawker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div id=\"tweetbutton1008\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fhow-dare-they%2F&amp;text=HOW%20DARE%20THEY&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattdebenham.com%2Fblog%2Fhow-dare-they%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div><p>The Times writes yet another &#8220;can you believe parents &#038; kids are doing this?!&#8221; article. Gawker writes yet another &#8220;can you believe parents &#038; kids are doing this?!&#8221; post based on the Times piece. But there&#8217;s something different about this one&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1015,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions\/1015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mattdebenham.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}