buttercup — response to 'jack serge: savior, antichrist or irrelevant?'

response to 'Jack Serge: Savior, Antichrist or Irrelevant?'

by buttercup

[curator's note: feel aversion to posting this, but am doing it anyway for indiscernible reasons on both counts of feelings of aversion and impulse to post this, idk]

really enjoyed this

audibly said 'damn' after 'pop serial' comment

jack having discerned the 'waves' or 'phases' seems interesting to me in that i once posited the same idea, i think, vaguely outlined as different 'generations', and i think people 'on the outside' might discern or describe this as what's happened the past five-to-ten years if they were to suddenly become very fascinated/entrenched in all the work that's been produced while continuing to feel detached from the people making it

i like what he's saying even though i don't agree with the majority of it

i.e. i don't think pop serial is damaging, and if it were, don't feel able to discern what it could damage, i don't discern the definition of 'community', as it's been used, from what i consider 'alt lit', if anything, to be

just found this definition:

3 a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals : the sense of community that organized religion can provide.

• [in sing. ] a similarity or identity : writers who shared a community of interests.

this seems more accurate, to me, than 'an actual group of people', therefore i don't discern the necessity or desire for a 'leader' or 'figurehead' and preferred when my sense of competition was derived from 'trying to write the best version of [my own story/poem/essay]' or something, rather than all the concepts and imposed tropes and memes and branding

however, as a 'foil' to [something, some sense of 'that's not how you do it'] i appreciate jack's presence because his perspective and consistent output by people with a similar stance/understanding of developing structure is what caused me to want to write, unlike fitzgerald, kerouac, plath, austen, tolkein, and clancy, who made me want to kill myself before i 'had the opportunity to make the mistake of breeding', or attempted to write fiction, 'for that matter'

i think there's an ongoing, baffling, in my opinion, debate about 'style over substance' and writers' intent that jack is subverting, simply by existing and, without openly saying 'i'm a writer, listen to what i have to say', seems like a parody of [presumably all of our] internal monologues

for instance, i don't feel able to discern myself as 'having something i need to say', but, for some reason, continuously do say things, and continuously spend time trying to ascertain the 'best way' i can approach saying them

jack being a forthright, obtuse, in my opinion, exemplar of that impulse, by 'only being a brand' seems fascinating and earnest in a way i don't feel capable of conveying or perceiving my will to, interest in, or motivation for writing

these qualities about him seem to be usurping, or rather, negating any concern i have with regard to his 'intent', maybe because what he's doing seems unsustainable, maybe because demanding solicitation (or attention in general) seems like an improbable and undesirable way to get published (see andrea, metaknight, andy moreno)

but the 'benign shock factor' of jack's presence and stance seems funny to me in a way that i'm intuiting as 'beneficial to my [and hopefully others'] perspective on 'what 'writing' can be''

i've written short stories and chapbooks since i learned to read, but as i read more of the bible (my father is a pastor), then c.s. lewis, tokein, the 'left behind' series, and 'ender's game', for fun, i felt a debilitating urge to want to produce realistic work, in contrast, though i felt i had no concept of 'reality', living everyday thinking about myths, legends, fairytales, science fiction, etc

in high school i read austen and plath and a few other 'big name' writers i've forgotten about, and felt alienated by the time displacement, bleak, institutionally trapped tone, and lack of current language, the same thing happened again in college, seemingly endlessly, even the writers i was surrounded by as friends either wrote about obscenely banal, directionless subjects, or were obsessed with surreal abstraction and stream-of consciousness

then i read 'hipster runoff' and some of tao's and his friends' work and immediately felt affected by the combination of confusion and structure, apathy and diligence, and felt endeared to it in a way i hadn't previously to any writing i had encountered anywhere

i wrote my first novel the winter of 2009, it's shitty, it's 'juvenile', but it is structured and confused and thematically repetitive without adhering to any social construct, in the way i felt the work i'd begun to enjoy was

i view jack as a further 'deconstruction of the norm' as it seems to have settled, whatever that may be, whether it be years of submitting pieces, or haphazardly constructing a personal brand, or coming up with an interesting idea, he doesn't seem to have done any of those things, but with a strength and confidence that seems baffling and hilarious

i enjoy the paradox of jack's lack of, yet insistence on using 'tact', which seems like his only device, most self-undermining quality, and also seems like something we all self-consciously strive to master, whereas he just applies his understanding of it, seemingly haphazardly with humorous affect

rhetorical question: does anyone reading this actively hate carles for 'challenging' the concept of journalism the way he has

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read buttercup's first novel male, black