1. It was another cold week in the park, but everyone kept warm under a blanket of snow. Or everyone except me, who not being evergreen had to keep moving if I didn't want to face the consequences.
2. This week I've been thinking a lot about The Awl, an "independent" blog that's officially closing up shop at the end of the month. I wrote for The Awl quite a bit when it started and continued to do so, albeit less frequently, over the past few years. Mostly I wrote about plants and books, often through a "gay lens" if it seemed appropriate, such as when a famous author published a novel to great acclaim and nobody seemed to care that it was filled with gay stereotypes or homophobic cliches; in short, the kind of thing that never gets written about in the mainstream media (or even the mainstream literary media). The editors at The Awl gave me a lot of freedom, in other words, and I'll always be grateful to have had the opportunity to write for a bigger "platform" than my blog. That period -- specifically from about 2006 (when I started blogging) through maybe 2011 or so -- was a good time for the internet. People were still excited about blogging. We (bloggers) read and commented on each other's work; we organized "meetups'" where we met each other "IRL" and became (and remained!) friends. There was a still a sense of possibility (creative, social, political) that -- at least for me -- doesn't exist in the social-media era of the internet. The Awl captured this energy; it was friendly, a little arrogant (like anything from New York City), but still very democratic: they published work by a very diverse group of people, in pretty much whatever way you want to define "diverse." It was "experimental" in a way that -- again, from my perspective -- is seriously lacking in today's media landscape, where conglomerates, in the pursuit of revenue, churn out content that's polished and predictable. Nine times out of ten, the headline tells you everything you need to know.
3. It was a little disappointing -- but completely predicable -- for me to read the mainstream eulogies for The Awl, which all seemed to be written from the same press release. In every case, these writers talked about how much they loved The Awl and how it was such a great "launching pad" for a handful of other "young writers" who, after writing for The Awl, went on to become writers at better-paying venues with even bigger platforms. Which is obviously not false, but I think does a disservice to the majority of writers who -- like me -- didn't see The Awl as a stepping stone to anything. It was enough, and it was good, and it didn't have to lead anywhere. Or maybe it would lead to increasing obscurity (ahem), which was fine too. I guess my point is that not everything has to lead to a job writing for "The New York Times" or "The New Yorker"; to the contrary, we should be thankful for outlets that are positioned against this kind of trajectory, or at least against the idea that everything not in the NYT is somehow "minor league" or not quite as valuable.
4. All of my favorite writers from the past fifteen years were bloggers, and none of them write anymore. Which makes me a little sad for selfish reasons, but doesn't ever lead me to think that they somehow "failed" because they didn't "make it" or whatever. Sometimes the best art is also the most ephemeral.
5. Maybe being gay and childless (except for the feline variety) allows me to have a bit more appreciation for the idea that not everything has to have a "legacy." I also think it's an idea that's becoming obsolete in the new technological era, in which it's virtually impossible to imagine a world without Apple and Google and Star Wars. There's no doubt that these entities are reshaping our cultural ideas of success and failure, which is unfortunate, because if mythology teaches us anything, it's that immortality is hell.
6. With the end of the Awl (like the end of Gawker), the internet becomes that much more immortal in a narrow sense (and that much less gay, in an existential one).
7. Kill your Tiny Letters and send me the links to your new blogs. We are all shivering trees under the snow.
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01/20/2018
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.