New York City ILXOR)RS - Is this city becoming 100% exclusive to the elite?

I have absolutely never seen an Ivy League requirement on a job posting, ever. Are you sure you're not imagining things?

P.S. I went to an Ivy for grad school and up until last year my copywriting job paid less than ten dollars an hour, in NYC, so I wouldn't count on that particular "elite" making much of a difference.

That and the fact that it's getting expensive as hell.

What I received today:

Position: Copywriter -Web
Location: Manhattan
Status: Freelance
Estimated Duration: Days
Starts: ASAP
Rate: $30-35 per hour

Job Description:
Our client is a direct marketing firm that specializes in credit card statement inserts. They are searching for a freelance copywriter. You MUST be an Ivy League Grad and Journalism students with ad agency experience are highly favored. Search Engine Optimization writing experience is a plus.

This is the third "Ivy League" requirement I've seen this week, and every week they show up more and more often. I'm stuck commuting to Jersey now, making more than what most of those jobs offered.

Competition's tough in New York, but it's getting crazy now. Time to find a new line of work.

I'm surprised: that's a crap way of pool-narrowing, and I can't imagine it'd get you any better a set of candidates. I can think of plenty of ways it'd get you worse ones, actually. Besides which that rate isn't even so great.

hahahaha "ivy league grad" in these instances means some poor fool who will take peanuts

"listen we can't afford competitive rates but we know you'll love working in this environment surrounded by other elite folks just like you"

$35 -- that's about a fiver isn't it?

haha -- for a moment, i thought that this was an ad for either a law firm or an investment bank/hedge fund. (yes, both industries ARE that credentials-snobbish in NYC.)

xpost - But see that's just gonna net them post-grad Brown kids with no experience and probably not the most professional approach to the job -- if it's just a few-days freelance thing, why not offer the same rate to someone who's done it before? (Answer: the job is worth way more than that, and they're hoping for someone who won't notice.)

then again, on a pre-law school job interview i WAS asked (in all seriousness) if my VERY non-ivy league undergrad school was an Ivy League school.

xpost -- I can understand the actual hiring of lawyers being snobbish a whole lot more than sourcing out week-long contract jobs to freelance writers: anyone on earth* can testify to high-level education being no indicator of the ability to write English.

(* and anyone who's ever proofread high-paid betters)

not that snobbery should be any more effective, compared to merit, with hiring lawyers -- just saying it seems less pointedly stupid

Even these crappy freelance writing gigs are getting all Ivy League snob. Which is my conclusion ... if things are getting this bad, then is NYC basically becoming exclusive to those already at the top? It's starting to feel like you can't "make it here" anymore - you have to be already made, and if you aren't, the door is shut forever.

I don't believe in nothin no more. I'm going to law school.

adding pointedly half-assed accents of prestigiousness to a job in order to recruit young, doe-eyed talent to come break their balls at your badly-run outfit is as old as the labor market

cf "hey everybody come work at google, who cares if you wind up pulling 110-hour weeks, we have free food and t-shirts and we're fucking GOOGLE, have you seen our home page?"

it's not altogether different than the schtick the Ivies pull on high school kids really

used to work for the federal government and the armed services, too!

Well, it's this great economy, isn't it? Cost of living is up in all areas and average income is less than it was 6 years ago.

(I get that for hiring, Tom, but for a one-off freelance gig it's just dumb.)

that's a good point, but it might be a bait-and-switch to net a fulltimer who'll be willing to kill themselves for the "opportunity"

IT IS TRUE! FACT: EAST NEW YORK NOW 85% POPULATED BY IVY LEAGUE OR SEVEN SISTERS GRADUATES. QUEENSBORO PROJECTS OVERRUN W/PHD CANDIDATES. FAR ROCKAWAY SIGHT OF VIGOROUS ACADEMIC ONE-UPS-MANSHIP.

CONEY ISLAND, FUTURE HOME OF THE WORLD'S FIRST ALL-TIMBER SUPERCOLLIDER

Staten Island, America's #1 source of top biotech talent

Ah, feed yr Ivy League grads to the Newtown Creek Blob That Will Eat You All.

So basically you're saying that now would be a good time for me to try to break into freelance writing?

NEWTOWN CREEK BLOB RELOCATES TO PHILADELPHIA. REASON: UNEMPLOYABLE DUE TO INFERIOR STATE-SCHOOL BACHELORS DEGREE.

DAN PERRY SET TO DOMINATE WRITING FIELD FOR NEW CENTURY.

I'm just going to keep riding on the Boston College/Boston University mixups.

U BETTER HOPE THEY MIX IT UP WITH HARVARD. DIAGNOSIS: BURGER KING NITE MANAGER.

haha btw HEY IVY LEAGUERS MY SCHOOL IS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN YOURS take that

- EL TOMBOTO, MASTER OF SCIENCE

I'm sure that $30/hour on an irregular freelance basis is REALLY tempting Dan right now.

It's more than I make singing!

I LIVE IN NYC AND I DID NOT ATTEND COLLEGE. PLZ DO NOT ALERT AUTHORITIES.

Hey, my mum is an Ivy League grad. I'll reccomend it to her - it's certainly more than she makes as a priest!

Well actually it probably isn't, but it's a better hourly rate.

Hey, there's a burger king near my house! $$$$

I am not selling candy for no basketball team, I am selling this candy for myself so I can put money in my pocket and stay out of trouble

FREE WHOPPERS W/CHEESE.

gainful employment at the tendercrisp bacon cheddar ranch.

GIVING ORDERS TO SEXY TEENS.

xpost
Oh it SOUNDS like a lot, but once you figure you won't be billing 40 hours a week every week of the year, and you won't get an accountant so great as to make self-employment taxes not exist, you're probably coming home with the same $45k as a nice office job. Which -- don't get me wrong -- is great, except then you have to buy health insurance, and you're pretty much where you started.

those kids and homeless dudes make some insane money. I saw a homeless guy roll up this huge wad of bills in this money clip, tip his crumpled top hat to some ladies, and then strolled away cane in hand.

NEWTOWN CREEK BLOB RELOCATES TO PHILADELPHIA. REASON: UNEMPLOYABLE DUE TO INFERIOR STATE-SCHOOL BACHELORS DEGREE.

the newtown creek blob will have the last laugh, then ...

... on the other hand, there are plenty of credentials-snobs in philly too (it's the place that gave the world Wharton, after all. and the Main Line is, if anything, even MORE snooty than Westchester. and then there are all of the snooty Manhattanites who are beginning to infest the place b/c that $1M Rittenhouse Square/Society Hill townhouse is a "bargain" compared to the comparable property in Manhattan or Brooklyn Heights.)

YES BUT THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK WITH CREDIT CARD COMPANIES. SOMETIMES PERKS COME IN THE FORM OF PIECE OF MIND.

they DO say that membership has its privileges, you know ...

mr. butch* had a vespa! that other people bought for him!

*famous boston homeless dude, he dead RIP.

is Boston credentials-snobby? I've never had that impression (other than a general preference for people who went to school in Boston) but then I have also never had a real full-time job here.

AMEX BLACK CARD ENSURES SUPERIOR EXPERIENCE. IVY LEAGUE GRADS ONLY NEED APPLY.

MR BUTCH: LIFE OF THE PARTY!

he needed weed.

ALSO A PENN GRAD. WHAT YOU THINK THEY GAVE HIM THAT VESPA FOR NO REASON?

stonecutters.jpg

ahem pardon me that's the CENTURION Card you are referring to. it comes with a space-travel hookup (seriously)

Philly was the hip place to move after North Brooklyn got really expensive (despite Queens being a perfectly cheap and decent option).

Are people this school-name obsessed in other countries? or is it some kind-of American phenomenon?

OXBRIDGE
SORBONNE/LES GRANDES ECOLES
HEIDELBERG
JAGIELLONIAN

so, uh, yes other countries are school-name obsessed too.

Does it seem like to you, that New York is becoming a place only habitable for the exclusive top .1% in this country

Go to Barnes & Noble or Borders, check out the HOT NEW WRITERS shelf. Count the Ivies. (also works for HOT NEW DIRECTORS, HOT NEW ARTISTS and pretty much any other culture enterprise)

so when's the world gonna see an ivy-pedigreed HOT NEW RAPPER?!?

Go to Barnes & Noble or Borders, check out the HOT NEW WRITERS shelf. Count the Ivies. (also works for HOT NEW DIRECTORS, HOT NEW ARTISTS and pretty much any other culture enterprise)

I have no evidence to back this up, but I call bullshit on the Borders/B&N claim.

so when's the world gonna see an ivy-pedigreed HOT NEW RAPPER?!?

-- Eisbaer, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 6:12 PM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Fugees, yo.

hot new writers shelf = payola

yep.

skipping reading the responses because I'm at work but, my guess, all these "ivy league" requests are from the same groups of crappy employment agencies.

Anyway, it's really cheap to live in Queens.

so? It still holds true. The point is that Ivy Leaguers are ridiculously over-represented in 'arts and culture' - whether it's because they actually are a better class of writers and artists (etc.) or if it's just because of the name on their BA is the bigger question.

that was an xpost

Traditionally anything cultural is done by people from top schools, regardless of quality or merit ... most writing staffs are all Ivy Leaguers, etc. There was an article about the Granta a BEST YOUNG AMERICAN WRITERS EVER 2007 issue, and 22 of the 25 writers were from the 8 Ivy League schools.

That's the cultural stuff - now even the shitty jobs are getting like that, too. it's downright nutty i tells ya

They run hollywood too.

MC PAUL BARMAN

defend the indefensible: THE IVY LEAGUE

PETE NICE

intellect, money, and connections -- ain't it a bitch for the dumb, poor and lonely.

ivy leaguers are more likely to be represented in politics, arts and culture because ivy leaguers (of the non-scholarship, non-loan-needing variety) are more likely to be able to pay rent and feed themselves (DADDYCA$$$H) while doing nothing that contributes to the overall GDP

Two reasons I'm suspicious of that with writers:

1) I don't know about undergrad work, but the MFA programs turning out noted debuts are kinda skewed away from Ivies -- Brown and Columbia, maybe, but more Iowa and Irvine

2) There is a giant gulf between which books get taken seriously and which books get read, and I don't think we should be surprised if people with Ivy League backgrounds are somewhat more likely to get taken seriously in lit magazines with an Ivy-type style -- everyone else is still publishing, and still writing ones that sell

i decided the answer to this question was "yes" after i got successively priced out of every single neighborhood i knew and loved.

no doubt dan selzer's right, though.

MC PAUL BARMAN

... who also makes me get almost trife-esque.

1) I don't know about undergrad work, but the MFA programs turning out noted debuts are kinda skewed away from Ivies -- Brown and Columbia, maybe, but more Iowa and Irvine

this^^^

this also extends to GWU, Georgetown, and other schools where it is expected that you will arrive with three suitcases full of money every fall

(Where do those MFAs get their undergrad degrees?)

let's not forget NYU ...

All kinds of different places.

basically 90% of private universities (and some public ones, esp. if you're in-state *COUGH*CHAPEL HILL*COUGH*) expect you to arrive with a suitcase full of money. You can't really complain about legacy policies when you're the one benefiting from Moron Fratboy III paying full price, though.

I mean milo if you want to go ahead and grab some data to back up your claim go right ahead, but I think you're a little off.

I can only go by the number of ArtForum (etc.) profiles I read and movies and the book shelves. Pretty sure the data you're looking for doesn't exist.

well then maybe you shouldn't be making outlandish claims!

(Where do those MFAs get their undergrad degrees?)

the top 20 liberal arts colleges.

5 Ivy-Grads out of 16 B/N's Hot New Authors here

Out of curiosity, where are the rest from?

and the Ivies actually graduate maybe 1% of all undergrads in a given year, right?

Are people this school-name obsessed in other countries? or is it some kind-of American phenomenon?

-- uhrrrrrrr10, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 7:01 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

here in england we're very laid-back about that sort of thing.

jokes, bruv.

Slate agrees with Tombot, almost word for word (sixth paragraph)

Ha, wait, which category does Redel fall into?

I didn't count the others (and there are three or four who didn't attend college in the U.S., but I remember Wesleyan , UC Irvine, Stanford and University of Ohio.

x-p

Redel's BA is from an Ivy, and I can never remember if NYU (MFA) is or not.

Ha, wait, which category does Redel fall into?

I'm not sure if you're alluding to the fact that she's not a particularly new author or that she attended two ivies...

NYU is not an Ivy.

wesleyan and stanford are practically ivies -- they definitely fall w/n TOMBOT's three-suitcases-of-money category.

5 out of 16 hardly seems like a lot.

NYU's not an Ivy, but her website bio says her MFA is from Columbia.

oh, I thought I read NYU. Oops.

5 out of 16 hardly seems like a lot.

NYU is not an Ivy.

no it isn't, but see the three-suitbags-of-money category.

also, NYU Law, Stern Business, NYU Film, and Wagner Public Policy are at the tippy-top of their respective categories.

your numbers keep going down milo.

um, they, do, Que?

I don't know if Dan Selzer was being facetious or not, but yeah - where do the Iowa Workshop and Irvine MFA programs (and other top creative-writing MFAs) draw from? Are there are a lot of Daniel Boone State U grads there?

(genuinely don't know if those are more democratic or not)

I don't believe I referenced any numbers, but I did say "ridiculously over-represented."

And I consider 3000% to be ridiculously over-represented, yeah.

no it isn't, but see the three-suitbags-of-money category.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the notion that an expensive liberal arts degree gives someone a leg-up in the writing or art worlds.

*shrug*

i don't think 30% is ridiculously over represented.

xp: not to mention society connections

xp: not to mention society connections

Or a room at the Chelsea.

NYU costs like, 50k / year to attend. The kids who attend there are notorious . The smaller lib arts schools that cost boatloads of money and attract the old money crowd (Wesleyan, etc.) should count, too.

None of this should stop people from working hard for their art, maaaan ... just that these kids happen to be able to dedicate a little more time to it, kno wwhutimean. My ex went to Vassar and has never paid rent or bills in her life -- hopefully she still hasn't been published yet. ; ] ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;; ] ] ];t]; t]; ]4;]t;4] a;]4y[a;]h5[h;]ah;];]

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with the notion that an expensive liberal arts degree gives someone a leg-up in the writing or art worlds.

As might having a scholarship to one.

I wasn't really referring to anything -- I was just curious about Redel because I studied with her.

I'm getting skeezed out here, though: reversed "suitbags of money" anti-Ivy rhetoric seems about as stupid as its opposite, really.

And apart from all that, I'd like to throw out the often-stated obvious here: let's not forget that the successes of people who attend good schools tends to have a good deal to do with social and professional networks. (And also, for lots of them, with having to be successful-type people to get there in the first place.)

xposts -- I can't tell you where MFA candidates come from -- it's probably good schools, sure -- but I can say that this is one area where that's not so much a result of any selection process on the part of the schools. MFA selection is based on the writing you're sending in, as picked by writers who'd probably be damned eager to get anyone apart from the usual batch of well-educated types, and the bulk of the programs provide enough funding that a good writer isn't going to be kept out of them by the cost; hell, the bulk of them will be giving you a stipend.

wow nabisco when did you turn republican

After you work at Duke for like 4 years, they pay up to 75% of whatever Duke's tuition is for 2 of your kids to go to any school in the country. Moron Fratboy III be putting kids through school nationwide.

OK, Mr. Que, but if we expand it to the Three Bags of Cash rule, we're probably talking 60-75% - do you think that more that a supermajority of the worthy novelists/artists/directors in America can be found at a small section of privileged schools and, consequently, drawn from the upper-middle class?

That's just one B&N selection, of course, but anecdotally I think it holds true for other arts and throughout the 'writing world.'

MFA selection is based on the writing you're sending in,

This is 100% correct. Most MFA programs don't give a crap where your undergrad is from

I have no idea which of those neutral statements of fact you're bitching at, Tom!

let's not forget that the successes of people who attend good schools tends to have a good deal to do with social and professional networks. (And also, for lots of them, with having to be successful-type people to get there in the first place.)

oh pat on the fucking back to them for mixing with their own kind!

being a "successful-type person" means what here?

After you work at Duke for like 4 years, they pay up to 75% of whatever Duke's tuition is for 2 of your kids to go to any school in the country. Moron Fratboy III be putting kids through school nationwide.

-- Kerm, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 3:09 PM (Tuesday, July 31, 2007 3:09 PM) Bookmark Link

That's quite a bit of money, too! Duke's tuition is outrageous.

why did that bold...??? oh if only I had an elite liberal arts degree. ;_;

also, I'm not a fan of the Three Bags of Cash idea. All I know is, if the writing is good enough, you'll get published. Sure knowing people helps and sure people with Bags of Cash may know more people who can hook them up, but really, what's the big deal? Milo, do you really think there are tons of artists out there who need to be heard but aren't because they are poor?

All I know is, if the writing is good enough, you'll get published.

in meritocratic england this is true; but i do wonder if belonging to the same social networks as, say, people in publishing and magazines helps, and if those hard early years are a little less hard if you can rely on the occasional suitcase o' cash while the commissions are short.

The artists who are often in the spotlight do belong to the elite school crowd, mostly because they have all the connections in the media (those connections being their former roommates, friends of the family, etc.). Literary journals are exclusively made up of people from Columbia, Yale, etc., (which I know as a fact after talking to these people in bars ... one phrase I took home with me, "we like to keep things in the family").

So, the artists who get the most exposure are people who belong to this elite group. There are plenty from every other strata who get published, but it takes some time to dig em up, and a lot of the times they'll never "make it" like their privleged "colleagues" "."

Regardless. It's still stupid to require an Ivy League degree for a shitty 5-day freelance copy gig

pat on the back to anyone who's not so retarded that he can't tell the difference between straightforward statements and praise

xpost - successful person means that only an elite within these schools really conforms to the hyper-rich martini-swilling-parents stereotype that's being advanced here, and another segment of the population inevitably consists of the kids of middle or upper-middle class or mildly doing-well people who have mortgaged the house to send them to a good school because hey, she did really well in high school, got a good scholarship, will work really hard, etc. -- there's a vast space below "suitcases of money" consisting of suburban people who aren't hurting financially if they put together loans and scholarships to cover everything, but aren't sending their kids out rolling in it

xpost -- with writing its the connections and the knowledge of the industry that are helping people out here; my guess would be that writers outside of these realms and class categories wouldn't think to apply to MFA programs in the first place, which is kind of a shame

Literary journals are exclusively made up of people from Columbia, Yale, etc

Bullshit!

if it makes you feel better, Jesse, the only BU grad I know is currently at a 3-bags law school.

ll I know is, if the writing is good enough, you'll get published.

Milo, do you really think there are tons of artists out there who need to be heard but aren't because they are poor?

milo, if someone turned in a dazzling manuscript to an editor, do you really think the editor would reject it if the person didn't have the right "connections"???

After you work at Duke for like 4 years, they pay up to 75% of whatever Duke's tuition is for 2 of your kids to go to any school in the country. Moron Fratboy III be putting kids through school nationwide.

This is true of lots of private universities. Lots of my coworkers will be retiring once their kid(s) graduate.

p.s. uhhr is describing some fantasy world with regard to some MFA-writer mafia, or at least if it exists they've been carefully avoiding inviting me to the party -- it surely makes a difference when people know one another and studied together and think of one another when they need writing done, but the idea of a "family" deliberately excluding others is nonsense (and I would encourage any writer who feels that way to actively get in touch with this supposed closed-off world and try to contribute to it)

I will also restate that people's (and maybe uhhhr's) idea of "making it" in lit has no connection to actually making it, and that being the smarty-pants Ivy writer who gets serious notice within the literary elite does not actually constitute "making it" compared to the non-Ivy people out there writing books people actually read and pay money for

We are in total agreement that an Ivy requirement on a freelance gig is silly to the end of the universe

milo, if someone turned in a dazzling manuscript to an editor, do you really think the editor would reject it if the person didn't have the right "connections"???

-- Mr. Que, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 8:21 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

editors do not read from slushpile. ever ever ever.

nabisco, you're right about the fact that not all kids at elite schools are super-rich, but there are disadvantages beyond not being able to afford tuition/barely affording tuition. For instance, it's a lot harder to get a fancy internship in school when you're parents can't afford to completely pay all your living expenses, because internships are almost always unpaid and even if you work a second, paying job (while taking classes on top of that), you might still take a hard enough cut in your income that you can't really do without money from your parents to cover living costs. Ironically, this is especially true if you're on federal work-study, which forces you to take on-campus jobs that are considerably lower paying in most circumstances.

(to Que: it is actually very possible that the editor's assistant would never get around to reading the dazzling work because she was busy reading a stack of submissions from well-known agents with proper cover letters saying "this writer came from this well-respected program," while the dazzling work came along from nowhere and has coffee stains on it and is sitting in a pile with a million unsolicited crackpot novels, all of which suck balls like all get-out)

"Nabisco, this short story. . .it touched my heart. We'll be publishing it in the fall issue of the Chicago Review. . .thank you for submitting it my son. . .never forget your family, we're always looking out for you. . ."

http://newserver.wunh.org/pics/djotw/Bruce%20Pingree_marlonbrando_godfather.png

Do I think that connections can get someone's manuscript onto the right desk - hell yes.

What's your explanation for the number of Ivy grads getting published, then? Are they simply better writers? Is privilege completely irrelevant to the equation?

(and jessie, yes, totally -- I just get miffed when people are like "Ivy kids are all rich assholes who get everything," because there's invariably a large chunk of the student population at these places that have put some work into getting there, and aren't so rich it makes any huge difference, and so on.) (I'm trying to find a way to describe the income level I'm talking about -- a guy making $120k a year is doing well for himself and needs no sympathy, but this is still a guy who's taking on a bunch of debt to be able to send a kid to any top private school, and that kid is not showing up with "suitcases of money," she is leaving with tens of thousands of dollars in federal loans in her name, in addition to whatever the family's taken on. And that's a decent number of students at these places.)

i think it is a little irrevelvant, milo yeah. i bet there are like 5 out of the 16 that grew up in either CA or NY. . .what does that prove?

yeah, my comparison was a little naive. i'd still like to think though that if someone turned in a dazzling manuscript to an editor agent, the agent would be all excited, etc.

and agreed that slushpiles are 99.99999% crap, etc

I work on peer review for a handful of journals (though in the physical sciences, not humanities) and I can say with certainty that an author's professional reputation and connections are enough to get preferential treatment from managing editors and editors-in-chief. Scientific editors and reviewers, though, I'm not so sure.

if it makes you feel better, Jesse, the only BU grad I know is currently at a 3-bags law school.

I don't really mean to hate on BU/whine about my situation too much. I like the school and I pay very little to go here, thanks to Moron Fratboy III.

(an editor friend of mine says she'll recommend me to an agent...)

What's your explanation for the number of Ivy grads getting published, then? Are they simply better writers? Is privilege completely irrelevant to the equation?

Wow, that is a masterful straw-man set up.

Milo, if you think about it for even 3 seconds you'll be able to think of a whole lot of social and cultural reasons writers are coming from these places, none of which have much to do with anyone selectively publishing only them.

We should really also avoid acting like publishing a book is some kind of massive next-level life success. In lots of cases the advance will pay down your student loans and you'll never publish a novel again.

Well, I guess I'm talking more about the Manhattan world. How many state school kids do you think work for the Paris Review, N+1 (if that still even exists), the Hudson Review, etc? Answer: 0, and there really aren't smaller journals in the NYC area. The quote in question comes from an editor at the HR, if anyone even still reads that.

Anyway, my own personal issue has nothing to do with creative writing, I'm happy to plug away at my weird shit and post it wherever... maybe i'll apply for an MFA program :] - but, do you think Jonathan Safran Foer or Zadie Smith got where they are today because of raw talent and passion? have you ever read the crap they've written?

god i miss the days of image bombing threads

RIP

have you ever read the crap they've written?

This is actually where any discussion about who doesn't deserve to be on some literary list should start (and end): the writing.

http://www.shockingdvds.com/images/13%20illuminati%20bllodlinds.jpg

SAFRAN FOER ILLUMINATI MAFIA

Ha, those are weird examples, since they're both people who didn't go through the traditional new-writer mill: Foer never did an MFA and basically launched from undergrad workshops; Smith got a contract based on like the first 75 pages of White Teeth (though I think she knew some people who knew who to get those pages in front of)

They're also bad examples because the obvious reason they got that initial hype is that their writing was very energetic and buzz-courting, and both of their debuts backed that up by entertaining a pretty decent number of people -- White Teeth especially

And of the two, I object strongly to your calling Smith's work crap, especially since I finally got around to reading On Beauty

i think it is a little irrevelvant, milo yeah. i bet there are like 5 out of the 16 that grew up in either CA or NY. . .what does that prove?

Milo, if you think about it for even 3 seconds you'll be able to think of a whole lot of social and cultural reasons writers are coming from these places, none of which have much to do with anyone selectively publishing only them.

Nepotism is infamous in the New York City publishing, literary, creative ,etc., worlds. To think that it's talent alone people shoot to fame is naive. Plenty of REGULAR FOLK who are extremely talented make it, too, but it doesn't hurt to think twice when you see a Princeton grad with a father with powerful New York publishing connections get their early 20-something novel published with a humungous media blitz behind it.

i can't believe some disingenuously composed craigslist ad sparked this much debate

the publishing disparity is a symptom of the role played by privilege (social and economic) in one's ability to make a life in the arts.

I don't think anyone has said we live in an actual functioning meritocracy, not least with regarding to the arts.

GEE DUBYA.

'nuff said.

haha, debating stupid shit on the internet while bored at work can take many forms. I personally don't care about the Ivy League / creative thing, I just wanted to bitch about the tough job market in New York.

none of this changes the fact that Chris Onstad is a vastly better writer than most people on the shelves who aren't dead

where exactly do you think there is a great, thriving accessible publishing world available?

the publishing disparity is a symptom of the role played by privilege (social and economic) in one's ability to make a life

Fair enough, fair enough. But it's a greater truth in the arts, by a wide margin. A degree (science, engineering, business, maybe even liberal arts) from a decent enough state school will (hypothetically) get you a job to take care of your family, etc.. It's like the modern version of a union card for your factory job, at least until we're all completely and horribly fucked by globalization and everything (perhaps Tombot would like to argue that we already are?).

But a degree in creative writing or fine art or (god help you) film from the same state school quite likely isn't worth the paper it's printed on because it's not going to get your foot in the door anywhere or a dollar of funding.

i mean, in the rest of the country new york seems like the ideal place to go for publishing jobs

publishing is a pink-collar industry, bros

haha milo we aren't even close to being as horribly fucked by globalization etc. as we're going to be

It would be way more fun if we could talk about the literary elite of, like, 40/50/60 years ago, where there was this absolute obvious elite and then ... scrappy newspaper guys who somehow slid in. Ha, today's MFA mills might just be a simmering middle-classification of it all.

xpost - In New York the rest of the country seems like the ideal place to go to get the hell away from publishing jobs

Unfortunately it's hard to pay the bills with "hell away".

milo i'm not sure what kind of fantasy land you want to live in where privilege and class mean nothing but i wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors.

Foer never did an MFA and basically launched from undergrad workshops

With Joyce Carol Oates, one should note.

xp lie back and think of England, eh?

Which is to say that recognizing the inevitability of class and privilege does not mean you have to accept it gladly.

Palahniuk went to the University of Oregon, but as a journalist he kinda fits the old-school scrappy-newspaperman archetype. His sales could probably dwarf a few dozen Ivy one-novelists put together.

There are a few movements around the country for literature coming outside the literary-academic complex, but -- sadly -- they have yet to come up with much writing that isn't infinitely horrible.

Privilege and class should mean a lot to the arts because art is almost exclusively an act of privilege. My state school BA hasn't opened a slew of doors for me but I didn't expect it to. I expected to learn some art, yo.

I'm not bent out of shape about any failed meritocracy because that's how I stay optimistic and cope with not being awesome at everything.

My professor taught us to never admit to having an education in the art world anyway, suggesting the folk/outsider shortcut around all these elitist barriers. I have a southern accent anyway so score.

Then opposition to and frustration with class favoritism opens up multiple alternate routes and I just pick one and ride the wave in.

a lot of "hot" stuff in literary journals may be "good writing" but most of it is TOTALLY FUCKING BORING
IVY LEAGUE OR WHATEVER YOU FUCKING BORE ME TO HELL MOST OF THE TIME
recently i did an interview with a well-known non-fiction writer with ivy-league background and family connections (and totally open about it) and he was a giant and repetitive blowhard but seemed to think everyone hung on his every word. which maybe people do. but whatever, it would seem that half the battle is thinking/believing you are the hottest shit and then making other people (the right ones) believe that too - being raised in a certain privileged class and going to an ivy league school obviously enforces that self-importance (which, in some cases, isn't always a bad thing! i'm all about believing in oneself, but believing in one's inflated ego - and creating a society based on this - is another thing). somewhere in the whole mess lies talent.

art is almost exclusively an act of privilege

NO
art is everywhere and is for everyone

not everyone is privleged enough to have the time/money to work on art all day tho.

rrrobyn - Yeah I know but come on... I almost went ahead and clarified "prestigious art-world art" but I didn't think it was really necessary. Nobody's complaining that only the elite get to make pretty cross-stitched alphabet samplers.

rofl

THOSE GOSHDARN IVY KIDS
AND THEIR SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT

http://i.nuseek.com/images/template/Large-Square/0012_female_student.jpg

who says it has to be done all day?
i don't know, i just think if more people realized that art (incl writing, incl most forms of creating) wasn't just for "artists" then the (western) world might not be so class-divided - or at least would be more up in arms about the class divisions and the sham of modern democracy
xposts

"pretigious art world art" can suck it
xpost

p.s. i am canadian
p.p.s. it is very hot today and making me pissy but this is something that gets under my skin anyway
also, i hate most people but i love the world
(i think nabisco's love/fear/pirates venn diagram re: the ocean might work for that ^ too)

if you're working all day for peanuts you're probably not going to have the energy/time to work on much of anything at the end of the day

xpost

phillipe is standing on it

if you're working all day for peanuts you're probably not going to have the energy/time to work on much of anything at the end of the day

Unfortunately true.

this is why only superhumans get to be artists

that's why you write/paint in the morning or get a job where you work at night

i am sick of that argument too
xpost re: working all day
i have been there, absolutely, and i understand being tired and overworked and depressed and busy with family, the minutie of keeping daily life together, etc but sometimes art/expression doesn't need to take a lot of time and is actually helpful to living life in general, to even seeing the meaning in the minutia and above all recognizing one's contribution/connection to this freakin society

and what i mean by "art" is more creation/contribution than necessarily formal artistic expression

i have been there too. it sucks dick when what you want to do IS time consuming tho

realize that "prestigious art people" also have to work all day/night too. (gotta network after dark) In fact, I'd say as a rule of thumb, if you want to be "successful" at anything, you have to be prepared to work 60 hour weeks, at least into your 50s.

you cant always bend your preferred forms of expression into the time constraints you have.
i have a friend that quite literally went mad trying.

xpost

that is true - the key being that you sure as hell better enjoy that work!
xpost

she's in halifax doing much better now tho

this is sort of off the current tangent, but i just want to point out: i am a lazy college drop out with no artistic or creative skills, yet i can manage living in new york city.

Most people who don't give a shit about art think "art" is only for rich people and artists... and think their four-year-old could make that anyway. Those people don't care that they aren't invited to a party they're not interested in attending. Flooding the market would just devalue everything. American class stratification makes things interesting.

i am half playing devil's advocate on this fairly depressing thread mainly just to say that things are fucked up and need to change at a fundamental base level re: how the world is being run
not to get all conspiracy theory, but it's in the best interest of those "in power" for most people to not be creatively enlightened

xpost - i am glad, thermo re: your friend

Flooding the market would just devalue everything.

that's funny the exact same thing happened when they invented blogs

I'm not ambitious enough to want to make a living at art, but it does make me sad not to be able to have the time or (frankly) the motivation anymore to sit in a cafe writing free-associative poetry or in my bedroom fooling around with musical equipment as I used to in high school and college.

things would be more interesting if a lot of people weren't close-minded douches
xpost
i want all the markets to flood

FLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDD

xxpost: soon, we die

i guess i'm kind of disappointed that i haven't followed this thread at all.

i don't really kno where u guys are at now. i like art? anyway, i just had to click cuz it's obv Popular Thread of the Day.

THIS THREAD SHOULD BE CALLED THE WHINING WHINERS THREAD FYI

OR MAYBE: REASON FOR NOT TO FUK

why is it about artists whining that they can't art?

craft fairs are a great argument for limiting creative pursuits to people with degrees in the field.

ARTISTS CANT GET IT UP STUIDES SHAOW

onstad went to stanford

It was the government's fault; it was the fault of the government.

it was the people's fault; it was the fault of the people

geez u guys are really pushing the envelope 2day

WE ARE IVY LEAGUE GRADUATES SO...

I LEARNED TO PUSH ENVELOEPS WIHT A SILVER SPOON

AT HARVARD

I have my maid push envelopes for me.

touche. i can't believe ther was a whole art/time/privilege argument and i missed it.

rrrobyn the more i read that last statment the more i want it on a magnet on my fridge.

I just spend lunch thinking over some of the obvious reasons successful writers come from elite schools, as if that observation required a great deal of explanation:

1. Top schools tend to have higher-level writing instruction. If you're 19 and doing a 10-person fiction workshop with Joyce Carol Oates, you are possibly more likely to be inspired to keep moving in that direction than you might be if you're 19 and in an underfunded lit program with random professors at a giant state school.

2. There's an assumption here that non-MFA-educated writers should have the same likelihood of being talented as MFA-educated writers, which is not a sound assumption. Many of these programs fund their students; you don't pay; they are offering you money to go there. So a school like Iowa is sorting through thousands of aspiring writers, picking the ones they find most talented, and giving them two uninterrupted years to develop their writing -- unless they had the most wrongheaded admissions panel imaginable, it just stands to reason that a program like that will turn out a higher percentage of successful writers than a randomly selected group! (An effect which is, yes, reinforced by agents and publishers -- sensibly -- paying attention to these programs when looking for talented writers.)

3. Rrrobyn is kind of onto something with self-confidence, at least in my personal experience: most of the people I know who actually completed bad books of literary fiction at the ages of like 19 or 20 are east-coast upper-middle-class Ivy/NYU/Vassar types. This seems entirely cultural, and it's an important start to writing something worthwhile. (The other big group of people I know who seem to sit down and complete books in their youth are auto-didacts, and the books they complete tend not to fit into any category of fiction, and wind up in weird self-publishing programs -- though I would genuinely be interested in any publisher that could find a way to deal with the random things people write along these lines, even if the prose is something pretty clunky.)

4. There is still an issue here where OF COURSE lots of academy-bred writers are going to seem like they've "made it" if your standard of "making it" revolves around academy-bred lit magazines and high-lit coverage! But the readership and money-making of these academy-celebrated writers is nothing compared to the readership and money-making of certain people from somewhere outside that realm. These best-seller guys still go to good schools, sure -- Dan Brown went to Exeter and Amherst, Mitch Albom went to Brandeis* -- but they're not moving up through some literary pipeline; a lot of guys like this are working journalists who spend years learning how to write solid, accessible prose, and then eventually they write books about their dogs or something and people buy copy after copy.

(* = wikipedia says Albom went to Columbia, too, which I'm assuming was for journalism school)

NABISCO WE ARE SHOUTING HERE ABOUT ENVELOPES OK

damn nabisco.

I LEARNED TO PUSH ENVELOEPS WIHT A SILVER SPOON

-- rrrobyn, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 9:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

I have my maid push envelopes for me.

-- milo z, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 9:04 PM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

2good.

That sounds like some kind of apologia, but it's not meant to -- just saying there are some neutral or understandable systemic reasons things work out that, apart from just a privileged elite getting stuff it wants.

it is a complex system this system

I WAS NOT BORN RICH BUT I TOOK SPECIAL ENTITLEMENT NITE CLASSES WHILE WORKING THREE JOBS AND MAJORING IN COMMUNICATIONS AT OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY. THEN I JUST TOLD EVERYONE I GOT A SEMIOTICS DEGREE FROM BROWN. NOW I LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY.

AMERICAN DREAM!

WRITERS CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT WRITING AND THE ACT OF WRITING. YOU GUYS SUCK.

COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE COMPLEX

COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE DEFENSIVE CAT

The reasons why are obvious, yeah - kinda like the reasons rich kids have higher SAT scores than poor kids - but you seem to be taking a rather laissez-faire (or value neutral) attitude toward 1 and 2 and the role upbringing and class play.

1. and 2. explain why the book racks are filled with 3 Sacks grads, but it doesn't offer up an argument that they are genuinely the cream of the crop in American writing, or that a more egalitarian attitude in publishing or in school admissions (or, you know, society in general) wouldn't improve the quality of literary fiction.

COMPLEX SYSTEMS ARE THE SMALL CAT

cause "literay fiction" is for sissies and not even the vanguard of writing, fool

milo if you are so fired up about undiscovered heroes of Southwestern Missouri State why don't you become a literary agent for the underprivileged and let this board know when your client's books are coming out so we can evaluate their merits.

I ENJOY LITERARY FICTION A GREAT DEAL BUT STILL HARBOR THE SINK SUSPICION YOU MAIGHT BE CORRECT. WAHT SHOULD I DO. PS I LIVE IN NYC.

nabisco, OTM, as they say. I wish I had some creative writing instruction beyond, "uhhh this is too weird".

this anecdote is out of left-field, but the thread is in meltdown anyway and i get a chuckle sometimes thinking about it:

setting: 4 or 5 years ago at a party in brooklyn
bevy of girls from Columbia, super obnoxious guy (someone's boyfriend), assorted partygoers

douchey guy: so are you an Ivy Leaguer too?
super shy girl: yes, but i work with XXXX, i didn't go to school with her, i went to Cornell.
douchey guy: oh yeah, i guess technically that's an Ivy.
super shy girl: no, it's not "technically" an Ivy, it's ACTUALLY AN IVY!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

DONT YOU MEAN: UHRRRRRRR10, THIS IS TOO WIERD?

LOLLOLOLOLOLOLOLL

also: EWWWWW. i think i would have spit up in their area of party.

"UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

--Michiko Kakutani

SPORTS WRITER OR GRAFFITI ARTIST

cause "literay fiction" is for sissies and not even the vanguard of writing, fool

-- sexyDancer, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 5:14 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

sexyDancer, dancing for money, what do you feel the vanguard of writing is now?

a classic pwn my friends still talk about to this day

uh xpost

You must have your numbers mixed up, Milo -- what role does class play in #2? It's saying that when some people in Iowa are giving out stipends to bring in good writers, it stands to reason that they'll get a higher concentration of good writers than in a randomly selected slush pile. (Unless you're talking about some class bias in the choices for admission.)

PS like I said, that's not an apologia, just a straight description -- and even if I were making grand judgments about it, I don't think any of those things are particularly grand moral issues.

xpost: my own poems, of course.
(secret: I am IVY GRAD AND LIVE IN NYC)

Cornell, the forgotten Ivy.

Mr. Que, I am a community college dropout.

nabisco, Iowa (and Irvine, and the Ivies) are still drawing (by a vast majority) from privileged classes. That Iowa (in particular) foots bills does not mean that they've suddenly begun to mine a broad cross-section of the class strata.

VANGUARDS:

SCI-FI BLOWJOB POSTCARD FICTION
CAT-RELATED INTERNET MEMES
PHOTOBLOGGIN

ok srsly the thing that is really so anoying abt all of you is the equating middle class college educatedness w/being marginalized. u r not the under class. u r not an african aids baby.

wait, no, still a community college student if I wanted to be. So I'm just a state university dropout.

poems? poetry has gone the way of, like, vase painting, maaan. I thought you were going to say experimental sports blog writer.

either you slingin crack-rock or you got a wicked jump shot

-- uhrrrrrrr10,
anyone else reading this as "ultrahurl"?

Cornell, the forgotten Ivy.

milo do it dude, become an agent, fuck some shit up

subvert the paradimes

poems r coming back!
they're short and you can write em at lunch.
INTL FAME AWAITS

"UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

--Michiko Kakutani

-- Mr. Que, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 9:18 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

=P

http://www.personism.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/lunchpoems.jpg

oh jesus fuck i've been surmounted

THIS THREAD IS POEM THAT I AM WRITING SO I CAN LIVE IN NYC.

the vanguard of american letters is, more or less, the entire true crime shelf and poppy z brite.

I'll be writing number twenty tomorrow

what about writing success vs musical or acting success?

the latter two seem much more populated by the completely uneducated, full stop -- in fact, education, or OPTIONS, could even be seen as a hindrance to success in these fields, since if you want a family that's what you're going to fall back on -- option -- instead of keepin on trying to tour with that three piece power trio, going to another audition, etc

writing you can do more in your own time, "really bear down on it" for three weeks in montauk

I'm not sure how that relates to this, Milo -- no matter how broad or narrow their applicant base, there's a sorting mechanism in there that makes it a little silly to ask why published writers are more likely to come from these places! Which was the original question, no?

The question of whether MFA programs should be more actively "mining" talent, as opposed to basically filtering and educating it, is a whole other issue.

Is this city becoming 100% exclusive to the elite? fyi.

You gotta have the hunger. You gotta hustle.

you have to really want it. it's all about who wants it badly enough.

secret: except at "top" level, writing pays shit. The rich can afford it.

I mean, Milo, you seem to be confusing "this is why these people get published" with "this is why I can say with absolute certainty that these are the best writers available." Nobody can say the latter about anything. Nobody knows, and nobody can get through every drawer in the country to be sure there's no manuscript out there better than the one you're putting on an editor's desk. I'm quite sure there's plenty of great writing out there that no one's bothered sending to anyone ever, plenty of great writers who aren't even aware of MFA programs, etc.

gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry gotta hustle stay hungry

xpost that's a SECRET?

its about fucking yr way to the top of the poem.

Mom's spaghetti on your sweater, et ceter'

All this chitter-chattering with you people is keeping me from making ART!

its abt finding a reason for fuk.

*WAVES* HI!!!!!!!! I LIVE IN SUNNY SOCAL. LOTS OF FOLKS HERE DRIV NICE CARS

its all about the art, maaan. pass me my bong and unemployment check

HI HOW R U !!!!!!

that's way harsh

PRETTY GOOD BEIN SEEN IN MY SUPREME

PASS ME BONG AND STUDENT LOAN CHECK LOL

this thread: reasons to embrace anarchy

this thread is borderline scary

I knew it had nothing to do with art.

another secret: you should only write SERIOUS WRITING if its something u luv to do - and if you can't get your novel about President Bush falling in love with one of his young male interns published (an excructiating, real story told to me by some freakazoid in a bar), just put it on a friggin blog.

or just rip out all the copies of the New York Press and stuff it in there - not like anyone reads that anyway.

yeah, this thred has been totally corrutped from its original purpsoe

THAT AND SEXY BLACK FACE BANDANAZ

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2129738,00.html

by the way i know an ivy-leage girl who snagged a great job in publishing due to her ivy league connections, took a year off doing a crazy, weird job, decided to write a book about it and... well things fell into place let's say

I don't think anyone actually asked why published writers are more apt to come from 3 Sacks schools.

Is your belief that, if most MFAs - even Iowans - wind up coming from a narrow strand of schools (which, in turn, draw from a narrow spectrum of socioeconomic status), that it's still functionally a meritocracy? That these are the best (potential) writers available?

I mean, Milo, you seem to be confusing "this is why these people get published" with "this is why I can say with absolute certainty that these are the best writers available."

But if those two statements do not, in fact, have a damned thing to do with each other ('people getting published' and 'best writers available' being separate circles on the Venn diagram), then the meritocracy doesn't exist, right?

Nobody can say the latter about anything. Nobody knows, and nobody can get through every drawer in the country to be sure there's no manuscript out there better than the one you're putting on an editor's desk.

The reality that I see is that published authors are concentrated among certain alma maters (and at the next level, MFA candidates at the top schools are concentrated among certain undergrad programs), which in turn draw primarily from the upper-middle and upper-class. Being a dirty pinko, I read that as a function of economic privilege rather than writing ability.

Others seem to feel that it's an adequate reflection of the talent pool. Which is fair play, I shouldn't expect everyone to follow my 'eat the rich' politics, but I think it's hard to evade the confluence of wealth and 'making it' in the arts.

fuck you tracer hand

I don't have student loans so what do I care lol?

newsflash milo - meritocracy does not exist

EVEN IN SPORTS

by the way i know an ivy-leage girl who snagged a great job in publishing due to her ivy league connections, took a year off doing a crazy, weird job, decided to write a book about it and... well things fell into place let's say

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 9:40 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

u know anne hathaway?

DIRTY PINKO

I KNOW SOME PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO WHINE ON THE INTERNET

by the way "great job in publishing" means barely above the poverty line for new york for two years, juggling an editor's schedule and booking their appointments, and looking cute

CATSUPPPPPPPPPPPPPP DUDE LOVES COMPUTERS AND HE WILL PRICE OUT SCHLUBS LIKE ME

and she needed an ivy league education to land that

milo are you a member of the ULA???

you need a master's degree just to run the photocopy machine at a newspaper these days

anna hathaway was a pot smoking vassar freakazoid who never shaved her legs

I NEED A GIRLFRIEND SO I CAN RENT A HUGE PLACE GUISE

btw my good friend knows lauren weisberger... i still don't really kno if that's who u mean, but he like knew her well at some point. i went to school with anne h! i remember talking to her at some party once thinking her skin was nice.

don't diss VAssar thanks

xpost: haha, more secrets

because i mean milo, the ULA says basically what you say? and all their fiction SUCKS

http://www.literaryrevolution.com/

WHAO SITE HURTS EYES

i remember talking to her at some party once thinking her skin was nice.

silenceofthelambs.wav

that is entirely possible but part of me seriously doubts it's all worse than the average B&N HOT NEW WRITER item. Maybe it is.

http://www.literaryrevolution.com/sitebuilder/images/jimmy_hostage-600x450.jpg

xpost -- ha, Tracer, I was just going to say your story was obviously made-up, due to "great job in publishing"

WTF, Milo, I said no such thing with regard to MFAs! And to be honest I just don't have much time or care for doing a whole Marxist analysis of aspiring writers of literary fiction, because finding out in the end that writing literary fiction is tied to the upper classes is just not enough of a shocker to make it worthwhile. Half the stuff you're arguing about here has way less to do with the complexities of schooling and more to do with the whole notion of literature and literary fiction being pretty class-correlated to begin with. (Which is possibly why you haven't said much about the books lots of people actually read coming from places that have nothing to do with MFA programs or anything like them.)

Just to go over my original point again, very simply: people often ask why writers from elite MFA programs tend to do well with getting published. And one very simple reason is that they were ALREADY chosen from a large pool of applicants as being particularly good. Why do you think I'm claiming that's some kind of all-consuming meritocracy? It means they were picked as some of the best of the people sending in money and wanting to study, that's all.

Nobody around is claiming to have the kind of omniscience to actually find the absolute unequivocal best writers available -- people pick from what's available, who's submitting, who's applying, etc. And part of my point here is that I'd like to see people who imagine they're somehow shut out from this circle making sure they're submitting, applying, and actually letting someone know that.

writing with words and letters is so 20th century man. get with teh times its all about transmitting thoughts through THOUGHTWAVES

that should read "sending in fiction," and was not a freudian slip

I WILL NOW COMMUNICATE EXCLUSIVELY THOUGH MINDWAVES. JACK INTO THE THOUGTH MAINFRAME TO JOIN MAAAN

you should write that down

sell it

give it away free

rrrobyn ur killing me 2day

I TRIED TO SEDUCE A GIRL BY PLAYING GOODBYE HORSES THIS WEEKEND IN THE BUILDING WHERE THE GUY WHO WROTE IT LIVES LOL :(((

GOODBYE HORSES POOR CHOICE FOR SEDUCTION :(

ok, but Nabisco, still - no one was questioning the 'complexities of schooling' or disagreeing with what you're saying about 3 Sacks programs now (ie they're well-funded, and learn from good people).

You don't seem at all interested in the issues other than those, which everyone else seemed to take for granted.

Why do you think I'm claiming that's some kind of all-consuming meritocracy? It means they were picked as some of the best of the people sending in money and wanting to study, that's all.

WILD HORSES YES
GOODBYE HORSES NO

the books lots of people actually read coming from places that have nothing to do with MFA programs or anything like them.

well yes there's that

;]
[;
;]
[;
;]
[;
;]
[;
;]
[;

xp: IT'S A LITTLE GAY
(cuttyhorse nonwithstanding)

SUNDAYS WILD HORSES - MAYBE

i wrote a song called Wild Horses. i feel a lot of ppl have tho.

my brains are dripping through my nose. I thought this thread was going to bitch about Bloomberg and Chuck Schmuck : < ohewll next time.

and the one thing that bothers me about your statements, nabisco:
"because finding out in the end that writing literary fiction is tied to the upper classes is just not enough of a shocker to make it worthwhile."

No one said it was a shocker - but do you think that fact is just value-neutral? That was kinda the genesis of the disagreement between Que and I. He didn't see it as particularly relevant, I did.

Patti Smith's Horses might be better

Horse girls are weird anyway.

MILY THE WORLD IS AN UNFAIR PLACE....... ENVISION SUCCESS!!!!!!

the problem is having to compete w/horses

horses, sexy.

we have just lost cabin pressure

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/5/5/4/2/event_921826.jpeg

the problem is having to compete w/whores

oh right! me, always getting those 2 mixed up.

jeez

writing with words and letters is so 20th century man. get with teh times its all about transmitting thoughts through THOUGHTWAVES

this is OTM.

Milo: I would be a lot more bothered by that fact if it seemed more involuntary. Or if I felt like the art forms/styles more associated with the lower classes were somehow "less" than the art forms/styles more associated with the upper classes. Or if the boundaries betwen class-associated tastes were more rigid and absolutist and impermeable, and people were standing on the opposite side of this one knowing class was the thing keeping them from getting in.

But as it stands, there are plenty of great varieties of writing and art whose appreciation skews to different parts of the class spectrum, of which the one we're talking about here is kinda the least profitable, the least world-changing, and the least-noticed of them all. And I can't say I've really met anyone who wants a piece of that literary elite and feels like class background is what's holding him back -- in many cases, the role of the class background here is to keep lots of people not interested in it in the first place.

milo and otis, just send your writing out. that wussy park slope writer jonathan lethem was a college dropout who started sending his shit out at age 24. half a year later, you have people pretending to enjoy his books.

the dream is sealed. do it. you onlu havee yourself to worry about.

jonathan lethem is so nice. he's chair of cinema club something or other at work and my one interaction with him left me smilng ear to ear ;)

Pretty soon I won't be able to find a job outside the service industry, even as an experienced copywriter... just becuase of lack of "pedigree" (despite my family being one of the first Dutch families of Brooklyn, blah blah blah).

lol @ at your bad fortune, douchebag!

And like I said earlier, two things

(a) I would like to see publishers drop their distinctions between literary and genre fiction and dig into the various odd and interesting things Americans write that don't adhere to either of those categories (though self-publishing programs were allegedly going to make them do this, and that hasn't quite worked out)

(b) I still feel like your argument here is vaguely mean to the many, many people of various backgrounds reading and/or writing the kinds of mass-market books that form the bulk of actual publishing. It's focusing on writers with literary cachet as a kind of privileged elite, only half of which is true: they're an elite by reputation, but there's not all that much privilege in it, and meanwhile people are making more money and printing more books and being involved in more people's lives writing "genre" fiction and abuse memoirs and remembrances of dead people/dogs and other things more widely read by the public

They're not even an elite by reputation, really -- more people have heard of mass-market writers than will ever hear of literary wunderkinds of any stripe

literary wunderkinds are chattering class fodder

guys, guys - the issue here is whether bloomberg is ever going to fund a bus system to serve those of us who can't afford to live near a subway stop.

abuse memoirs and remembrances of dead people/dogs and other things

lolz

You'd get a bike but nowhere to put your 3 bags.

Ha, I don't mean to sound snarky! People get abused, love dogs, have loved ones die, and enjoy thrillers. Books are awesome at helping people deal with, think about, or briefly escape their lives. Just because we talk a lot about smartypantsed literary writers doesn't mean other people aren't writing things that are important to lots of people!

[People get abused, love dogs, have loved ones die, and enjoy thrillers.

lolz u cant help it

BTW, I can think of at several people I know from my so-so state school who graduated within a year or two of me on either side (and I only graduated in 2002) who are already making successful journalism careers for themselves. One is a staffer at New Republic. Two are at the Star Ledger (not NYC, admittedly). One is a writer for the New York Observer. I could probably think of others if I tried.

If anything, I think the people at my school were more likely to be willing to take the crappy dues paying jobs and put in the hours necessary to advance up the ladder. I can also think of a couple of top-tier private school graduates I know who got their first magazine assistant jobs easily through connections but so far haven't moved much from there. One of them is already going back to school for a journalism degree, which most journalists will tell you is a waste of time and money.

Finally, I'm not surprised there are no top novelists coming out of my school. All the people in my creative writing classes were shit, and the general population of the school seemed pretty oblivious to literature. The literary magazines struggled to recruit enough staffers (in spite of the huge size of the school) and rarely put out anything good.

milo and otis, just send your writing out.

Or if I felt like the art forms/styles more associated with the lower classes were somehow "less" than the art forms/styles more associated with the upper classes.

But nothing I've said implies a superiority for particular kinds of fiction or anything - that I want a broader voice to be part of the literary world doesn't mean I only read that stuff or think it's superior. (in fact, I basically don't read it at all, unless people who graduated from Iowa 35-50 years ago count)

Also, for that matter, I was able to land an internship at a fairly good NYC publication right out of school and once there was able to hustle a few paid assignments. I left that career, but had I stayed I think my shot would have been as good as any Ivy Leaguer (excluding the advantages conferred by having mom and dad pay your rent - and even there I have anecdotal evidence suggesting that may not help that much).

(b) I still feel like your argument here is vaguely mean to the many, many people of various backgrounds reading and/or writing the kinds of mass-market books that form the bulk of actual publishing.

The type of fiction and art and movies we're talking about form a big chunk of what people talk about when they talk about art. (just as an aside here, I suspect that if you looked at Americans under 35-40 in the most recent Whitney Biennial, we'd have similar college breakdowns) That means the national dialogue is, in large part, based entirely on the works and desires of the privileged - I don't think that's healthy.

I am 100% in favor of exciting genre fiction and DIY design and crafting and all the other expressions of art and artistry that aren't part of the Art World or Publishing World or whatever - I subscribe to Readymade and not ArtForum, but that doesn't mean I don't want the barriers to the art world or the publishing world to be broken down. I'm not content to accept that upper-class pursuits must always be upper-class pursuits and the rest of us must content ourselves with the margins.

fuck this "creative writing" spoonfeeding shit.

in a weird way britain *was* more meritocratic when d. h. lawrence came up...

http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/images/obligatory_1.jpg

I do see Milo's point wrt art world. The fact is that todays top MFA programs ARE acting as feeder systems for major galleries. I mean art dealers are actually going to Yale and Bard and places like that and cherry-picking artists right out of grad programs. They go to Hunter too, but Hunter might be the cheap exception. And there's no money for people who want to go to art school who can't afford it.

I think it's easy as Americans to just get so mired in our American market way of doing things that we say "What's the big deal? A bunch of rich fuxors can go waste their money on glorified pastimes." But art isn't treated that way in other countries, and art schools aren't only for the rich (and maybe some financially oblivious poor people who don't think twice about getting themselves into lifelong debt).

you forgot to talk about hipsters

xpost

it's backwards because the rich don't do patronage now.

I'm not content to accept that upper-class pursuits must always be upper-class pursuits and the rest of us must content ourselves with the margins.

Upper class creative pursuits (writing is a notable exception) tend to stay upper class pursuits because they're costly pursuits!

it's backwards because the rich don't do patronage now.

art market to thread

But art isn't treated that way in other countries, and art schools aren't only for the rich.

they certainly are in europe. we probably have more generous state subsidies for art tho.

I do see Milo's point wrt art hipster world. The fact is that todays top MFA programs NYU individualized majors ARE acting as feeder systems for major galleries loft spaces.

fixed

thx sanskrit

i grew up in princeton and i can say with certainty that 90% of its students are total assholes

take THAT, ivy league

I went to a state school but I wanna RACE YACHTS!

CRAZY HORSES!!!!!

http://www.orientaloutpost.com/usa/n4227.jpg

http://playbud.com/images/ker_ken.jpg

how many of you own strokes cds?

cds lol

I had to sell my Strokes cd because I got fired :(

regarding the original post, I would apply to those jobs anyway if you really want them. 1) They might be impressed by your ballsiness. 2) They might actually be trying to attract ballsy non-ivy-leaguers who will bristle at their requirement and apply in a fit of rage 3) if they really mean it they're probably some idiot start-up that you don't want to work for anyway (which is probably true anyway even if #1 or #2 is true)

Hi guys!

Just wanted to remind everyone that:

1) A Cornell ILR degree is worth more than a Brown semiotics major
2) iirc, Milo has never been (very far) East of the Mississippi or West of the Colorado
3) This thread was started by nude spock, or someone indistinguishable from him

Can't say more; gotta keep it in the family

don't forget:

4) milo just spent nearly 4 large on unnecessary eye surgery instead of donating to the hopeless third party of his choice.

(sorry dude, couldn't resist)

how many of you own strokes cds?

-- hstencil, Wednesday, August 1, 2007 12:27 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

how many of you shill for interpol?

nyu isn't a ivy, matador is a major, and i work at neither.

isn't! sheesh i can't write. musta not gone to an ivy.

you could at least put unnecessary in quotes

i would've learned that at an ivy, milo. or maybe to use "elective"

I had to sell my Strokes cd because I got fired :(

there IS a silver lining in every raincloud!

now I just have to sell the rest of my stuff to finance the (unnecessary) gender-reassignment.

If anyone understands gabbneb's (incorrect, FWIW) point, lemme know. I guess my lack of time in the northeast (or northwest, for that matter) has skewed my view of the ratio of Ivy League Art Stars to the actual population?

i just looked it up and i guess they're on interscope now
i can't keep up with this shit

i think i understand what he's trying to say, but i don't wanna speak for him.

xpost - sanskrit capitol won the bidding war, then got dissolved.

Clearly I'm horribly provincial, but this is a weird thread to make that argument.

yeah it woulda been more effective on the one where you were like "i know nobody who was affected by 9/11, i could care less."

because that was clearly what I said, right?

i'm paraphrasing.

not terribly well

what can i say? i didn't go to an ivy.

I've never even had an ivy plant.

well you're CLEARLY on the outs, then.

zzzzzzzz

you know... there was a time when this shit got me down because i'm just a party school state univ. grad ... but honestly, on the other end of the stack about 10-15 years into my career (or whatever this monkey fest is called)... i can tell you that uh... it's bullshit.

don't analyze job postings. "we want superman" = "we're not desperate for employees", "we don't pay shit and want something for nothing", etc etc. you actually don't want to work for a company like that from that angle.

seriously... the BEST candidates already have jobs. the BEST candidates never have to job hunt and barely do their entire lives.

folks that i went to school with have their dream jobs and are doing insane shit. (and they were high most of the time!)

work hard, chase the shit that makes you bat happy at all costs, and don't stop to worry so much. (that focus is in the wrong direction.)
m.

very late to this thread but fwiw it would be silly to argue with the idea that ivy leagues give lots of advantages, since that's what they sell. and new york is particularly full of ivy grads, for lots of obvious reasons. so.

but i work in a manhattan office full of relatively well-paid editors, writers and designers, and as far as i know nobody in my department is an ivy leaguer (not surprising, considering that all the big journalism programs are at state schools). the farther up you go in the company, the more ivy leaguers you will find, no doubt. but an awful lot of us public-school yahoos are managing to make a living. (at least until the whole industry gets eaten by the internet. but i don't think our digital-side people are very ivy league either.)

also in re this:
not everyone is privleged enough to have the time/money to work on art all day tho.

this is obviously true, but i have several artist friends who came from no money and live on close to no money but have lots of time for art because that's how they've organized their lives. (they mostly don't live in new york, it's true. there are more comfortable places to be a starving artist.) i mean, i think if anything there are way more non-privileged artists now than 100 or 200 years ago, when the arts were almost exclusively the domain of the privileged.

xpost: msp otm

it's great because tom petty : strokes :: vonnegut : prep school emo fucks

THE TRUTH WILL OUT

as tipsy said, something I've always said...even in NY, you set your priorities and guess what, you can live cheap. You can pay very little for rent if you want to live in a less desirable neighborhood(or even, sometimes, a desirable one) with 10 roommates and have very little space, although some of those people manage to have lots of space. You know, some of the musicians who live in NY actually dont have trust funds! They make money tending bar and they live in a shithole or whatever.

Personally, I haven't had a full-time job for 2 years. I freelance anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks out of the month, sometimes it's my choice and sometimes it's not. I couldn't afford to do this if I lived in my old apt in brooklyn, but I live with my girlfriend in Queens, so I can. Sometimes money is tight, sometimes I have enough to buy records or a synthesizer, unless you're disciplined, this kind of lifestyle tends to be feast or famine.

but the idea that NYC is for the elite can be countered pretty much by walking down the street, any street.

OTM both posts thanx dan. I've been living this way for 26 years now

I think the thread got derailed by a less-interesting subquestion: the ivy league/elite influence in the media esp. book publishing which has traditionally been dominated by the old guard tho not exclusively cf. my wife who has had a long fruitful pub career w/o being an ivy league grad or for that matter an east coast bred WASP.

however when I worked at magazines in the 80s and 90s there was a sudden surge of editors & writers who'd gone to harvard or yale and made sure everybody knew about it. my first reaction was "so what" cause I was so stuck in the 60s counterculture it didn't occur to me how the world was changing...fucking SPY magazine was the death of NY "alternative media" in many ways but that's another story.

sour grapes? nah. I still think NYC is a land of opportunity, the sea of possibilities as patt smith said. call me naive and idealistic if you want, it won't be the first (or last) time.

Oh it SOUNDS like a lot, but once you figure you won't be billing 40 hours a week every week of the year, and you won't get an accountant so great as to make self-employment taxes not exist, you're probably coming home with the same $45k as a nice office job. Which -- don't get me wrong -- is great, except then you have to buy health insurance, and you're pretty much where you started.

I was thinking more along the lines of "Wow, an extra $6K to use for a vacation!" than I was about making this my primary profession.

vacations are awesome!

Yeah, Williamsburg is definitely not the cheapest place to live these days. I'm looking at Queens, but all my Brooklyn friends would count me as dead ! :::{ the 7 is the new L they say.

But it's true - among my generation, there are tons of kids who live only for raw paper achievement, and so have resumes of Ivy League schools and 5 year stints living in Brussles, and maaaaan, they want you to know.

There's definitely opportunity here, though, you just gotta hustle and be really good at networking - I've met many a connection at happy hour that I was unprepared to use. : < : <

living in brussels is some sort of achievement?

work hard, chase the shit that makes you bat happy at all costs, and don't stop to worry so much. (that focus is in the wrong direction.)
m.

-- msp, Wednesday, 1 August 2007 04:10 (8 hours ago) Link

MSP DROPPIN' KNOWLEDGE

It's not your generation, it's the type of people you hang out with! There's always been people like that and always will, and there will always be people who don't care. It's all about your personal peer group. I know a few Harvard geeks, all radio station dorks, but other than that I'd say 90% of my peer group went to Oberlin/Wesleyan/Vassar/Bard/etc. That's because that's what I did and that's who I hang out with. It's not some generational shift.

srsly someone answer my question about brussels.

if you youself graduated from an ivy then it superpowers yr ivyness. if you didnt then its of no use to you.

wow this thread is still going huh.

Ha, I just remembered a friend of mine once had a live-in NANNY job where the parents asked her "Why didn't you go to an Ivy?" in the interview.

oh c'mon, brussels is of no use to anyone.

hahaha i have a friend who grew up there and he just sneers at bruxelles and belgium in general "eet is sooo booojwah..."

maybe he meant Prague?

brussels is where we should be sending the army corps of engineers to learn about how to keep sacramento, miami and new orleans on dry land

for those of you complaining about nyc being $$$

http://www.losapson.net/event/070824_tonebugz.html

Hamid Drake solo (w/Braxton, Parker):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlc5zFCbfGE

Whoops, wrong thread.

Elite NYC drummer tho

http://www.losapson.net/event/070824_tonebugz.jpg

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/davis/davis.report-rockport.jpg

New York City ILXOR)RS - Is this city becoming 100% too jazzy or waht?

OLD SCHOOL BOW TIE CLUB.

the 7 is the new L they say.

i would live in queens or wherever if i knew that i wouldn't be spending my nights out in brooklyn or manhattan. i hate it people they try to shit on willamsburg because it's so expensive. it's not central park west; there are affordable options, you just have to spend a little more time looking for them. also, everyone that lives in bushwick bikes or whatever to williamsburg to go out, anyway, so quit saying it's "dead."

Castup, is that expensive because going out in general is expensive, or the exchange rate?

stencil, i have former parisian friends that still work there and commute four times a week from brussels (1h 20?) because, even with the commute, housing and living are less expensive. it's also only 2.5 hours to Amsterdam. Also, this unbearably attractive choreographer i met recently relocated there because it's "the avant-garde dance capital of the world."

i hate it people they try to shit on willamsburg

er, "i hate it when people try to shit on williamsburg"

I SHIT ON WILLIAMSBURG SO THERE SORRY LOL

Stuart Davis rules!

hamid drake is a ny drummer? when did he move here from chicago?

the secret is....Queens and Brookyn are actually REALLY close to each other. The problem is lack of useful train options. If you live in LIC, you can take the G back and forth. If you have a car, it's a 10 minute drive down greenpoint avenue for me to get to the exciting heart of Greenpoint Brooklyn. People do need to learn that the Pulaski between greenpoint and LIC isn't the only connection, there's the BQE and the little bridge that take you from western greenpoint to Sunnyside/Woodside. And even further the real hipsters can ride their bike from Bushwick to Woodside/Jackson Heights through lovely Maspeth, they can even visit the UPS depot there. And finally, the real hipsters and artists are all moving to Ridgewood. You can have a cheap suburban Queens experience at the end of the L.

xpost sorry you are correct

brussels...the avant-garde dance capital of the world.

PACKING MY BAGS NOW

i'd say it's a pretty appealing advertisement, compared to, say, Detroit, potato chip capital of the world.

or South Africa, rape capital of the world.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/banker-roommates-follow-zuckerberg-not-blankfein-with-ivyconnect.html

it's hard for me to imagine any legit "elite" attending something called "IvyConnect" but idk I'm just a little schmo from a big state u

IvyConnect, now based only in New York, plans to attract 10,000 “fascinating individuals” in each of 50 global cities

code for "we have written a free press release for this unproven startup"

damn a social network that connects people who went to the same college why didn't I think of this

ao wait, they plan to have 10,000 members at $200 per year. So there revenue goal is only 2 million a year?

not really the ideal thread, but w/out search -- tonight is the last night to stay in the Waldorf Astoria, or just wander around, before it's renovated/mutilated.

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2017/02/waldorf-astoria.html