Pretty Hate Machine
By amy ross. Filed in books, writing |Tags: authors, Dave Eggers, Donna Tartt, fame, hate, Marissa Pessl
Dave Eggers, Wyndham Lewis and Hate.
I have to share this link because it references many delightful things, from early twentieth century avant garde art to Bloomsbury bashing to a book called The Jews: Are they Human? (Though I mean really, being human is so overrated…) But my favorite part of the post was the author’s little google-powered (un)popularity test. Basically, she entered a bunch of authors’ names into google as part of the phrase “I hate _____” and compared how many hits each entry got. This is thought-provoking list:
Mary Karr: 0
Donna Tartt: 0
Ben Kunkel: 0
Marisha Pessl: 1
Ayelet Waldman: 1
Jonathan Franzen: 2
Michael Chabon: 2
Richard Powers: 2
Joan Didion: 4
Elizabeth Wurtzel: 89
Zadie Smith: 102
Jonathan Safran Foer: 120
Rick Moody: 374
David Sedaris: 774
Dave Eggers: 3880
Maria Bustillo’s point is that Dave Eggers is greatly despised by random people on the internet. But of course, what it mostly seems to indicate (as Mark Athitakis points out) is that Dave Eggers is more famous and actively talked-about than many other contemporary writers. Which is what intrigues me — can fame be measured in the number of people willing to publicly loathe you? It makes some sense — Donna Tartt (to pick a name from the list at random) is pretty famous, and probably has at least a few haters out there. But would anyone come out on a website and say specifically, in writing, that they hate her? They might be tempted, but then feel bad… how sad it would be for her to google herself one morning and be confronted with their pocket of vitriol. So people keep mum.
But someone like Eggers — you figure, if he googles himself (and surely he does three times daily), he will see a LOT of sites before he finds this one, and most of them will be saying very positive things. So even if he does eventually stumble across such a post, he can probably take the blow to his ego.
So in that sense, it’s sort of telling — at what point do you become famous enough not simply to have haters, but to have haters who believe that you are sufficiently famous that there can be no harm in bashing you on the internet? I’m not sure, but I’ve just decided that this is the level of fame I am going to shoot for. This is my new ambition.
(As it happens, there’s already one site containing the words “I hate George Ross” online, but of course, it’s not referring to me. Should I claim it anyway? Only 3880 to go until I’m more famous than Dave Eggers.)
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 2:56 am |
it’s SO odd to find the Awl making reference to Roger Fry, and I can’t figure out if I’m like step off bitches, go back to talking about lady gaga or if I think it’s righteous that they’ve heard of wyndham lewis is.
love that MP is on this list. the reason she only has one hit is because I’ve never publicly denounced her. but sois rassuré(e), one day I will bring that 1 to 2!!
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 10:00 am |
Ha! I didn’t know anything about Awl when I stumbled on the link, and I immediately went to check out their other stuff because it seemed interesting and erudite. Have to say, I was a little disappointed when I skimmed their other selections…
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 2:56 am |
extra “is” after wyndham lewis. sorry.
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 3:11 am |
ok sorry to spam your comments, but I’ve just read the whole post and in addition to being awkwardly written and inappropriately flip it is also reidiculous. Dave Eggers is just like Wyndham Lewis because there are people who don’t like him? There’s about as much similarity between Dave Eggers and salmon as there is between him and Lewis. Plenty of people hate salmon. Myself included. But it is apparently a pretty talented fish, being able to swim upstream in order to spawn. Just like Wyndham Lewis.
Basically the post should have been about Dave Eggers, and leave the poor Bloomsbury group out of it.
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 9:58 am |
Says the bloombury expert! I agree that the comparison was *strained* shall we say, but I appreciated the history lesson. I know so much more about France in that era than England, so a lot of that was news to me.
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 3:12 am |
GOD I can’t type today.
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 7:21 am |
I hate George Ross. :P
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 10:00 am |
I pretty much asked for that. :)
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 10:53 am |
(I love George Ross!)
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 7:26 am |
no, but really, I do think it’s an interesting point that you bring up–where is that point where you are “big” enough for it to be acceptable for otherwise civilized people to publicly declare their hatred of you? stirring up emotions of any kind is better than none, right?
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 10:03 am |
I totally agree. Even in venues like amazon comments, I get so much more excited about books that have virulently negative comments as well as positive, as compared to the ones with 16 five star reviews all obviously left by friends, family, and colleagues. Controversy is how you know people are engaging with your work! Which is more valuable to me than flattery.
But as we know, there are plenty of authors who don’t share this feeling…
Tuesday, March 9th 2010 at 10:54 am |
well, and I like to think I could see it from that angle when someone says how horrible my book is…
I want to say I hope I’ll get a chance to see, but…yeah, that’s a hard thing to hope for, I guess, even if you can understand it on a rational level.