I’ve resisted doing A Take on this one because for all people wanna pretend this is a deep movie, it’s a comic book movie by the guy who doesn’t do Hangover movies anymore because the kids are too sensitive or whatever. It rehashes a trope I have seen a bazillion times before: dude is failed by the system and so driven to violence.

Real quickly, why I don’t love it: mentally ill people are far more often the recipients of violence, not aggressors. You wouldn’t have much of a movie if it just stops with Mr. The Joker getting beaten up and just, I don’t know, doing that until he dies, but that’s the actual story.

It ends up serving a few functions:

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Marx is first a historian and economist, and the scale on which both those social sciences operate are systemic and on greater time scales than human beings live. There’s nothing wrong with that level of analysis. However, ethics is on a personal time scale. As Fuck Theory points out in a recent Patreon post, mass murder across time isn’t an atrocity to you if you don’t believe one murder is unethical. Without a personal ethics, Marxism’s theory of class struggle, even as it theorizes the eventual “win” of the proletariat, can be used by the ruling class to extend their rule. All things die. Humanity itself will someday die. Given enough time, sure, the proletariat will win. Do we have that time? And you may scoff at the idea capitalists may believe in Marxism, but friends, they sure as hell act as if they share class interests. Capitalists are flawless in their class solidarity.

It takes a system of ethics to say we ought to apply Marxism for the benefit of the proletariat over the ruling class, and ethics are personal. Ethics are acted out in the smallest of interactions. And unlike the Republican or Democratic party, where their machine keeps chugging along if there’s a rapist or a fraudster what have you in charge, we actually do have to be better. This is a Utopian project. What’s the goddamn point if we have a (potentially bloody!) revolution only to replicate class hierarchies? Marxism can help us describe history, determine how to forge a new society. But ethics will be what describes what a just society even is, and I think that’s where a lot of schisms in the modern left lie, not just on big scales, but on the local organizing and interpersonal scales as well. Continue reading →

Read an interview with Leigh Bardugo. I don’t read her work, but I was struck by this quote:

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I am super not a fan of death of the author. I suppose it’s fine as it is– sure, a work can be assessed on its merits without looking into the author’s intent– but rarely do its enthusiasts treat it as one tool of many they’re taking out of a box, and rarely do they put it back.

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A co-worker recently asked me if I was left-handed. I told the truth (right handed, but left eye dominant so I use my left hand a lot– I have some congenitally weak muscles in my right eye). She said that explained it.

“Explains what?”

“You write. You’re right-brained.” Continue reading →

This is rather unformed. Please recognize this is a jumping off point from which I’ll do more reading. It’s a question, not an answer.

I see, frequently, people on the left advocate for (and use, actually) a “fair game” approach to targeting enemies of the left. By way of explaining what I mean, let me back up to where I got the term: Scientology. Continue reading →

My agent, Erik Hane, and his business partner Laura did, in fact, win the Digital Book World Award for best podcast this evening.

Print Run Podcast is one of my favorite shows in any medium. I don’t think I was there from the very beginning— I started May or June of 2016, I think? But damn near close. It’s a really great resource for aspiring writers to get up to speed on the issues in the industry. They deserve your support.

Congrats to them. This is only the beginning.

My agent and good friend Erik Hane has started a new agency with Laura Zats called Headwater Literary Management. You may know them from Print Run Podcast, which is award nominated (and may be award winning before the day is out!). Erik is better qualified to say what he is looking for and how he sees his career than I am. If I may say so, I see him as a gifted structural editor with an interest in applying his leftism to who he signs and how he builds their careers. His integrity– the continuity between the ethical views he cultivates on his list and how he applies those ethics to his work– is impressive. I am a better writer for having worked with him.

Now, let me gracefully and without calculation pivot from my friend and agent’s amazing accomplishment to that traditional author blog post we all love: how I got my agent.

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Neil Gaiman has a cute story about talking to someone else being recognized at a dinner, who wasn’t sure what he was doing there. To which Neil Gaiman replied, “But you were the first man on the moon. Surely that counts for something?” Armstrong replied he just went where he was sent.

Here’s the thing: Neil Armstrong was right. Continue reading →