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You can work a Joni Mitchell [mis]quote into any situation, it turns out88 comments to You can work a Joni Mitchell [mis]quote into any situation, it turns out |
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I just read your piece after reading an article in the LA Times this morning. I loved it. Don’t let the haters get you down. Keep it up, girl!!!
Emily, I loved what you wrote; you are writing about things that are totally relevant and resonate with hundreds of thousands of people. A few hundred disagreeing commentators do not represent them!
I used to write for an online magazine and was blogged about and called very rude names for expressing my opinion – albeit by a tiny fraction of how many people have written against your writing. I actually gave up writing for a while because they shattered my confidence in what I was writing. Seeing how wonderfully you’d written and still how negatively so many people responded has actually inspired me to start writing again.
The negative response you got just shows that such comments are vulgar people’s way of rudely disagreeing with others. These are the type of people who probably just spat at other children in the playground when they were little. Or those who won’t let you cut into your lane even though you are stuck behind a broken down car. Or the ones who snort very disdainfully if you drop something on the floor or if your child starts crying in the restaurant. They look down upon real and common experiences that they themselves may be the only ones missing out on!!
Anyway, long story short – you are doing a fantastic job. The only people who can’t stand it are those who would like to be you!!
Emily,
Anyone that continues to needlessly tear you down at this point in the game is merely conveying their own self-hatred. The magazine piece is your redemption; it’s well-written and unflinchingly introspective. What you said takes guts.
JJC
Portland, OR
Was it the famous publisher who said, “There was never a monument erected to a critic”. For others to be bashing a woman who is exposing her vulnerability while at the same time doing courageous original work is just counterintuitive to me. Especially people who mention appearance etc. These people objectify things like appearance and need a checkup from the neck up.
Emily,
I really enjoyed reading your article in the NYT, and good for you for standing up for yourself. The piece was thoughtful and well crafted. It’s annoying that people are so quick to dismiss any introspective writing as self-indulgent. I am a lifelong diarist myself, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to let anyone read my journals–even my fiance, who has begged me. Your piece really made me think, because your “issue” is just th opposite.
I’ve always struggled with finding the right balance of what to express. I think that REM articulates this idea well in their song Losing My Religion: “Oh no, I’ve said too much; I haven’t said enough.” Have you said too much? I really don’t know. But I admire you for saying something.
Being new to this entire world (reading blogs and comments), the thing that struck me hardest and most quickly is how the medium illustrates the critical human need for validation. At least in Emily’s case the blogger trades something valuable for her validation (personal information about herself). A lot of the comments about her and her writing seem infused with an aggressive, self-centered need for the same validation but offer nothing in return.
It just feels like there’s something really unhealthy about this imbalance that will lead to nothing good.
Eric
Los Angeles
I just read your article in New York magazine. WOW. I was so touched. All that you have been through is just AMAZINg. My heart goes out for you.
Darling: you write well and you have everybody’s attention. Take advantage. Don’t ruin it by being boring (and, I’m really, really sorry, but sex and the city is boring and even a little passé). Have fun again!!!! THat’s your forte. Suerte.
I wish your piece had been published under different circumstances, so it could be judged on its own merits.. IMO it had real insight and real shortcomings, and both the merits and the flaws are fertile ground for cool conversation on blogging, public identity etc.. but presented in this baggage-laden context it may obscure the groundwork for that conversation, more than it illuminates..
Enough about Emily. Let’s talk about me…
(a test, of sorts)
you are so pathetic.
I really liked the article. While on a certain level it IS all about you, it’s really more about what sharing your life online can lead to, and this weird new “branding” aspect of being a blogger/journalist, which I thought was relevant.
I always liked the Joan Didion quote “Writers are always selling somebody out,” which is easy to misuse if you want. You can sell out as many strangers as you want, but if you start selling out yourself or your friends, you’ll inevitably run into problems.
Thanks to blogging, nothing is personal anymore. But I think we were headed down that road anyway due to our decades-old obsession with clinical psychology and introspective yearning for self-actualization.
The baby boomers are/were the most obsessively narcissistic generation to ever ever walk (or drive around) the planet. They have obviously passed along their ME, ME, ME mindset to Gen X-ers.
As someone who has spent half his life talking to clinical psychologists and psychiatrists at least once a month, I can definitely relate to what you say in the article about oversharing. I have a problem keeping anything a secret. I am somewhat socially limited and awkward thanks to 15+ years of emotional enabling.
This whole “controversy” is ridiculous. It was one of the best written pieces the Times Magazine has run in recent memory, on a subject that almost everyone is interested in (apparently, judging from the virulent responses). I hadn’t followed the whole Gawker back story, but it’s interesting, as someone who’s spent many years in the print newspaper and magazine business, how the reaction on the blogosphere mirrors the atmosphere in newsrooms: defensive, insular and laden with Schadenfreude. That’s one of the main reasons newspaper readership have fallen so dramatically, the net notwithstanding. It’s a further irony to me that when an established publication tries to do something about it – by running a narrative piece that’s eloquent, honest and involving – people can’t wait to pile on. I realize the culture of the internet is one that’s supposed to be snarky, but this has been unreal. The point of print or online publications should be to run good writing. The pictures were fine, too. The self-appointed “critics” should knock it off – unless they can write something better.
J Says:
May 28th, 2008 at 11:28 am
“I will never, NEVER understand the need to bash a stranger because of their writing.”
Oh, the irony. LOLerz.
exactly!
people need to simma down.
Dear Emily,
WOW! Sorry to see you getting trashed …I for one enjoyed the article. I don’t quite get how anyone could say it was navel gazing, I saw it more as a cautionary tale of what can happen. I made a very conscious decision when I started my blog, that there were things I simply would never post about … and I’m glad I made that decision.
For what it’s worth, I think that a lot of the venom spewed your way comes from a place of jealousy. It’s also easier for people to say they would have done differently, when they’ve never been in the situation.
I think you should be proud — it took guts, and that’s never a waste.
Good article in The Independant by the way !
Hi Emily,
I thought your article was well-written and it’s sparked loads of discussions over here…
Here’s what I had to say about it…
http://stripedsocksandskinnyjeans.blogspot.com/2008/05/emily-post.html
Take care…
I think youre a great writer, just finished your NYT Magazine article and I think its very well written. Just saying’.
well. i confess it’s very tempting to take voyeuristic and catty pleasure in reading you / about you and in the process looking down on you; you’re a readable writer who comes across as self-absorbed and cold-hearted, which means it’s fun to read your stuff and feels justified (and also fun!) to condemn you. i’m trying to avoid that kind of judgment, though, so i’ve stopped for a minute to try to find a way to relate to you. and found that it’s really pretty easy. a problem i’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that of certain kinds of privilege, and what they do to people. i don’t mean material privilege, though that does allow the idleness necessary for self-obsession. what i mean has to do with personal qualities rather than possessions. my theory is this: when somebody gets a lot of attention and affirmation, esp early on, for attributes like attractiveness, intelligence, athletic ability, etc–as opposed to outward-focused qualities like generosity or empathy–they (inevitably?) get the impression that these qualities are IMPORTANT, and thus the maintenance of them, as well as continued affirmation for them, is important too. my main research subject for this theory is myself, since i, like you, i take it, have had a lot of male attention over the years and also a lot of you’re-so-smart-oh-my-god-type attention, and though i try to resist it, i do care a lot more about my appearance and (recognition of) my intellect than i wish i did. because i’ve always gotten so much attention for these things, it’s as if any lack of attention at any point would mean i was getting WORSE in some way, whereas if i’d never gotten attention for them in the first place i’m not sure i would have thought so much about them. anyway, the point is, i get that it’s tough to focus on other things (or even people!) when you’ve been given the impression that the way to the good things in life is through impressive personal traits. i, at least, find, though, that when i’m able to focus outward a little bit–able to remember that despite what my perspective may suggest, i am not after all the most important person in the universe–not only does that approach feel much truer and more worthwhile, but the good things in life seem to come much easier too.
not that i’m able to do this all of the time, or even most of the time, and though i know how condescending and obvious this sounds i honestly don’t mean it that way. it just seemed worth saying, and i’m sorry that it seems like i’m suggesting that you’ve never thought of any of this on your own (you no doubt have). i also hope it doesn’t sound like i’m trying to claim moral superiority somehow (well, i realize it does sound that way, but i’m actually not, honest!); after all, when it comes to morality, i basically think we’re all fucked (not that it’s not worth trying!), so no high ground here.
in any case, all i’m really trying to say is this: good luck.
I think one of the most compelling things about this tedious yet intriguing article is how devastatingly it shows that there are different talents required for artistic success in different media.
Sprinters aren’t usually very good at the marathon. Being a world-class masturbator doesn’t mean you’re a gifted orgiast. And being a great blogger does not automatically mean you are a stellar print writer – this magazine article being Exhibit A.
There’s also a flipside to that coin, though – seeming interesting and funny day after day in thousands of comments and blog posts requires a rare kind of dedication and talent which Emily clearly possesses.
While the full 10-page article made my eyes glaze over a few times, most of the people who left comments on the New York Times site were far less successful than Emily at winning my interest or sympathy. A good 80% of them come across as crabbed clods and hypocrites who somehow share the insane belief that writers must all be out this very minute saving Iraqi babies from burning buildings. They might be successful doctors, mothers, traffic cops, whatever – but the majority of those NYT commenters just don’t get it.
While it wasn’t on full display in the article, after surfing around I see that Emily obviously possesses an artistic skill set that, say, the average NYT commenter wholly lacks. I don’t know if it’s a generation gap, a new attitude to online expression, an issue of openness to new media, or what, but if I had to choose between supporting this army of sclerotic Jimmy Kimmels or self-obsessed but daring Emily, there’s really no choice at all. The world is online, and whether we like it or not, clever people like Emily are doing interesting things while trying to make that world their own.
Emily – keep blogging, you’re not bad at it. But the next time you sit down to write something intended to be printed on paper, it shouldn’t be just random notes on what happened to you and your boyfriend last year. If you want to expose your feelings, do it in a way that isn’t either merely cute or a call for help. And in the future, if you find you’d rather scurry back and write about someone than spend time with them, realize that this may mean you’ll eventually be a good writer, but it also means that you aren’t really their friend or companion. Pick and choose. You’ll be fine. I hope to read more from you again soon.
P.S. “Project Run-gay” would have been the better joke, whether or not your boyfriend said it. That’s the sort of thoughtful filtering you need to make more often in the future if you want to be a writer and not a diarist. I’m serious.
i swear!
this is so great
to hear so many minds shimmering…
a great Universe
Emily,
Just met you in the NYT. A very well written piece. Your journey seems to me to have been less about narcissism than boundaries. Like most young adults you were trying to establish your sense of self within the context of your desire to be a writer. Since you established no boundaries, you presumed you did not need to recognize the boundaries of others. That’s like declaring your little 20 acres an open range and expecting all the fenced in ranches nearby to welcome your cows.
You’ve grown, though, and hopefully learned that boundaries are what keep us unique. They enable us to come together with a lover, child, friend, parent, etc. but remain ourselves. Once you have established your boundaries, you can have wonderful relationships with all these people and not feel that your self is being consumed.
As for your writing, the NYT piece shows that you no longer need to throw everything out there in hopes that some of it sticks. You can be your own editor. Remember, the best film directors are noted not only for what gets on the screen but for what they had the good sense to leave on the cutting room floor.
Oh, and call your mother. She will learn to respect your boundaries, but you must maintain them – it is your job.
Look forward to future pieces.
A different Emilie’s mom
I read the NYT article and just listened to Madeline Brand. I thought she was quite mean spirted in her interview. I remember being in my twenties (a time of life I am happy never to repeat) and revealing far too much about myself to anyone who wouldl listen. Happily for me the internet was in its nasceny and I did not have the chance to blog this for anyone to read and evaluate. I appreciate you exploring this difficult turf. As you are being given opportunities to appear on the radio and television, I would suggest you meet with a media consultant to help you in your on air deliver of ideas. This is a skill that requires careful practice and comes easily to few. With a bit of training, the next time you find yourself across the table from the Jimmy Kimmels or Madeline Brands of the world, you will be able to be as lucent on air as you are in print. All the best to you.
Em
Blogs vs Newspapers/Magazines
I used to only read newspapers/magazines. Yesterday I started reading all sorts of blogs, and I think that blog content, generally, is a much better window into the human condition.
Some of that has to do with the democratic nature of the distribution process, but mostly it’s because you can clearly see the pattern of attraction between author/content and reader expressed as links, comments, recommends, etc. If you zoom in on this detail it might look self-referential and indulgent at first – ‘a’ links to ‘b’ links to ‘c’ and back again – but if you zoom out to see the biggest picture possible, the pattern itself becomes an illuminating story about what attracts us, and therefore, fundamentally, what we want.
So, thanks Emily and the NYT for Sunday’s article.
Eric
Los Angeles
nat Says:
May 28th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
“Darling: you write well and you have everybody’s attention. Take advantage. Don’t ruin it by being boring (and, I’m really, really sorry, but sex and the city is boring and even a little passé). Have fun again!!!! THat’s your forte. Suerte.”
Nat, you sound like Zsa Zsa Gabor giving advice to Truman Capote. Yer right about Sex in the City, tho…snoozerz.
As one of the many hungry nyc writers who ought to be in a jealous fury over the space given to you by the times…
Congratulations. The comments you’ve received – both the positive and negative – matter little indeed when compared to the fundamental accomplishment of getting your piece published, much less as a magazine cover story. Maybe it is a terrible article that didn’t deserve this or that level of attention, but I don’t see that as being your problem. Eliciting any strong reaction from a piece (even disgust and hatred) is highly preferable to ambivalence – under the assumption that the initial writing was honest. Screw ‘em…and best of luck.
Some may have thought that your article in The NYT was not Times worthy; but it was. It was thoughtful and very well written. It held me spell bound as I so wanted to find out how the story ends. I was glad to realize that it doesn’t. The number of comments and internet traffic generated by your posts suggests that you have a voice that forces people to listen whether its writing about ur personal life or discouraging others from what you consider your mistakes. I am hoping that ur life as a writer is only just beginning for it would be a waste to stop now.
News from another planet
Dear Emily,
I thought you might be interested in the reaction to your New York Times article from a middle-aged European male, unfamiliar with the blogosphere and a total stranger to New York gossip.
I was only drawn to read it because of an article in today’s London Observer, and because I’m thinking about Web 2.0 as part of my work; I haven’t followed any of the subsequent controversy.
I thought your article was very well written. Blogging seems to have provided you with a good literary apprenticeship (although I suppose you do read ‘real books’ sometimes!). Concentrating on the intimate side of life is obviously a perfectly legitimate form of literary expression. It read to me like like a sort of ‘Education Sentimentale’ or ‘Illusions Perdues’ for our times. Even if blogging stems from a more or less real time reaction to events and personal experiences, the process of selection and giving form to them necessarily involved in writing (especially writing crafted to communicate clearly with your audience) is not unrelated to the creation of fiction.
I particularly liked your simile, “I still felt unmoored in the way you can only feel after a breakup, as if you’re the last living speaker of some dying language.” It seemed very accurate to me. Any ‘community of practice’ creates its own semiotics, and a long-term intimate relationship does so in a way which touches us deeply: its ending means the death of that ‘language’.
On a personal note, you came across to me as very charming. if I were 20 years younger, twice as rich, and your side of the Atlantic, I would love to invite you out for dinner!
All best wishes.
P.S. I hope I’ve posted this in the right place: as I said, I’m not used to blogs!
Yes, have a look at the two novels I mentioned, if you don’t know them already: they could give you some ideas. It is normal for a good writer of fiction to put a lot of himself into his writing, but that form might leave you less directly exposed. Of course, you might miss the interactive nature of the Web. But read Mikhail Bakhtin on ‘dialogism’ in literature: the idea is not completely new!
I’ve read your article at NYTimes – NICE enough to make me visit your blog.
You are very, very talented, Emily.
Unsolicited advice: I think you need to get out of New York for a bit, breathe fresh air where nobody knows you or cares about you or your story.
Read, look at paintings, eat good food, take walks, be curious, write in a notebook or on your computer with no ambition and no motive, talk and be with friends and family who want nothing of you but you, if only for a little bit this summer.
The one’s who have a true voice, protect that voice, but, most importantly, know when they need to do so, and will do anything to protect it, even if that means walking away and going silent for a bit.
Amidst this cacaphony of comments I take the time to tell you this because, as I said, you have an incredible talent with so much to offer, and I’m afraid for you, that all of this is going to swallow up your potential and capacity to truly reflect and synthesize these strange and confusing times and the people who are coming of age in these times.
Don’t listen to the vultures who tell you you need to “capitalize now.” You’re still so young and this life, both creatively and in the living, is a marathon not a sprint; this is one of the wonderful things about being a writer (as opposed to an athlete) you can keep getting better until the day you die.
So don’t burn out or fade away, take the time and protect yourself. Discover metaphor…metaphor.
Metaphor is the true power of an artist, but it seems the lesson, practice and power of metaphor have been lost on our generation for the sake of attention and fame, the “tell all.”
You’ve done your time with the tell all. I read you and know you have so much more to offer the world then this.
Take back what is yours: your voice.
With no irony I know that your voice is your life. Don’t give it up for anyone or anything.
Best,
L
Dear Emily,
You have made me a member of the blogosphere: this is my third contribution. But the subject interests me. Writing, even writing about yourself, is necessarily artifice, in the sense that it it involves selecting from and giving form to your experience. So there is a distance between Emily the author (the ‘I’ in the world in which writing takes place, the composer of the text) and Emily the narrator (the ‘I’ in the world that is written about, a character in the text).
I used the word ‘distance’ rather than ‘difference’, because there is a dynamic relationship between the two. The ‘I’ you created in writing, when you first started blogging, probably felt like a deeper, clearer expression of yourself, than the ‘I’ in your everyday social world. (Does it still?) And through the Internet it was able to enter a social world of its own, take on life, and become an essential part of your process of self construction. You were telling yourself, in conversation with others, ‘the ongoing story’ of your life.
It is out of others’ voices that we construct our own. As Bakhtin said, before either you or the Internet were born, “I live in a world of others’ words. And my entire life is an orientation in this world, a reaction to others’ words…” The Internet only makes this process more visible (at the same time as creating new ways, new possibilities, for it to occur). So I am very grateful that you decided not to try to ‘revise history’, but leave a record of your story. However, perhaps you should consider it like a work of art, rather than as identical to the person you see in the mirror each morning.
All best wishes.
I just read your article in the New York Times after having read an article in a danish newspaper linking to it. The article in the danish newspaper is about why women are being critized and punished much more than men, when they write about them selves and their private lives.
Anyway, I found the article in the Times very reflective and interesting. In my opinion it’s not at all “just” about you, but about important changes in our society and how theese changes effect our consciousness and our perception of ourselves and the world. Olso it is interesting to me, who just felt my first adrealin rush (and depression) in a small scale just by getting a facebook profile (and scared the hell out of my boyfriend by making af profile in his name, just for fun, which only existed two minutes… He feels that his virginity has been destroyed..!) Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience in a relevant and wellwritten way.
Oh man. I finally managed to make it through the video of Jimmy Kimmel kicking your ass. It’s like an improvised version of The Jackdaw And His Borrowed Feathers. “Think about your life.” Ha!
Dear Emily,
I hope you have time to actually read all these postings. But I was interested that, at the beginning of your article, you describe how, when you first came to New York after graduating from college, blogging created “some kind of community” which made the giant city you now lived in “seem the smaller and more manageable”. The need for community is essential for the social animals which human beings are. In the past, most people lived in geographically situated groups which were small enough to be socially cohesive, in which they could still feel personally implicated. Nowadays, the majority of us are crowded into vast impersonal conurbations. However the technology which created the modern urban world has also given us tools to make new communities, but ones which are no longer geographically based.
Because the word ‘gossip’ tends to have a pejorative meaning, it is interesting to recall that as early as 1923, Malinowski proposed the idea that what he called ‘phatic communion’, the exchange of words to create social contact rather than convey information, constituted the original, primitive form of human language. Dunbar (1996) also believed that the essential functions of language for evolutionary purposes were phatic ones, with ‘gossip’, language of purely social content exchanged for social purposes, being the equivalent of the grooming that higher primates do to one another as an essential part of forming and maintaining their social bonds, which are necessary in order to deal with the challenges in their environment. He concluded that “Language thus seems ideally suited in various ways to being a cheap and ultra-efficient form of grooming…In a nutshell, I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip”.
Thought it might interest you.
All best wishes.