I was a reader for The Paris Review circa 2007, and it was one of the first big disillusioning experiences of my life as a writer. I was wrapping up an MFA, but others reading submissions included college interns and the (I believe) high school aged son of a famous writer. We had a stack of shame for particularly bonkers submissions, and I remember one of the interns trying to add a story to the stack that was clearly operating in a parodic, absurdist, Barthelme-inspired mode but which she insisted on taking entirely literally, despite the rest of us trying to dissuade her. Probably others in the stack had been the victims of similar point-missing.
However, the worst thing about the task was what you mention here: nothing made it out of the slush. For six months, likely longer, I sat for my weekly hours on that couch, reading story after story; sometimes favorites from the usual slush readers would make the rounds to higher-ups. But the tacit understanding was that the most an unknown could hope for was an invitation to resubmit. It struck me as an exercise in futility for all of us. From The Paris Review's perspective, the stakes were low -- no story existed out there in submission-land that could benefit the journal in a real way. And from the writer's perspective the chances were abysmal. I've always been more of an novelist but my attitude at that point changed from "I need to work on some shorter pieces so I have things to send out" to "The only way to win is not to play."
He’s cooking. This is a critic that gets it. This isn’t just a defense of Substack, it’s a dismantling of the nostalgia industry around literary prestige. The Vogue line is brutal. So is the takedown of Savage. This one’s going in the quote stash. This one punched the right people.
The dirty secret is that much of the editorial function doesn't involve improving accepted work, but expressing a taste barrier by rejecting 95% of what is submitted, across the industry.
Interesting read, thanks. Everyone needs an editor, though, if only to catch those pesky typos and little errors even the most accomplished writers make. I’m new to Substack and have really seen this. So, I have very mixed feelings about this platform. The difficult truth is that 95% of what we write probably shouldn’t be published; it’s not gonna be interesting or beautiful or exceptional or impactful enough. We have to be okay with, as you say, writing for the enjoyment and love of it and leaving it at that, because not everything should be read. Except for my stuff, of course. 😁
I had an editor once tell me that the only thing that would make my writing acceptable was sexual perversity. Well I went ahead and did it and next thing I know I’m in front of a judge. It turns out this “editor” was best high school friends with my ex-wife!
Absolutely wonderful essay! Substack is a splendid experience. I write for myself and for the enjoyment. If five people read one of my pieces on Substack that's great! The most important thing is that I like it. I no longer want nor need an editor to like it too. Thanks for this excellent and beautifully expressed commentary.
Great piece, now cut a third of it and get to the point quicker. (This is a joke. For anyone who lacks the ability to read deeper than the exact surface of the words, this is ribbing, because I'm a vegan author/editor who's been to prison (that part isn't a joke), but the article was actually quite good in my opinion. Even as a lowercase e, editor.)
"I have about the same chance of publishing my work in The Paris Review as getting struck by lightning while being inaugurated as the Pope," Caleb Claudell writes.
I sympathize, having just had a rejection from the Paris Review myself.
My books have been published by Simon & Schuster and Ballantine in the US and by André Deutsch and Secker & Warburg in the UK, not to speak of the University of California Press. I once wrote a book column in San Francisco magazine. But my longtime agent has died, and I am back in the wilderness at 85. Luckily, I made what seems to be adequate provision.
My advice to young aspirants: go to plumbing school. That way you'll never starve. Put not your trust in editors!
“… you may be forced to submit your slush to small presses, or, worst of all, you’ll sink all the way down to the level of Substack, living out the rest of your days writing rude essays like a bucktoothed yahoo.”
Not true. My front teeth are okay. It’s the molars that are starting to die off. But you got the correct word in there… submit. God, my knees ache after almost fifty years of that. But I’ll survive, as the lady sang in the late 1970s, because there’s always Voltaren.
“It’s true that on Substack, virtually anyone can publish anything. Terrible writers can dump their drivel…”
Yeah, man. That’s why I’m here. And it’s fresh warm drivel, straight from the heart.
“… as if the platform is something of a playground for Nazis and misogynists…”
What? Of course I hate Nazis. Now even the Nazis hate Nazis.
“What’s Vogue been up to lately?”
Well, you asked for it. I took a look over there… It’s every woman a queen, every male a decked out coachman/escort or gay dandy, mumming about for the cameras with ‘let ‘em eat Big Macs’ looks. Manhattan. Dashing Kardashians. Several ‘all you need to know’ (and that’s not much) articles. Dead pope; meet the new pope. Big ass ghetto gurl hos, petite white bitches with penises, tucked, of course. An article on men’s makeup. No evidence of it in the glossies, but, like the heads of Europe, the balls appear to never run out of champagne or white powder (not the ski slope kind).
Editors… I could write a book… and they could edit it… if I had a contract. Yeah, I know my prose could use some good editing. I have a friend (not in the business) who helps a lot. I’ve encouraged him to go into the biz, to put up a shingle, but he’s not ready for that. My brief encounter with a renowned ‘house’ was trying, as they assigned a recent immigrant to go through my manuscript. She was an ESL graduate and boy oh boy did we go round and round.
“Savage weakly mocks the insignificance of releasing a novel to 137 Substack followers…”
Damn. I’m not there yet. I had 113, but one dropped off yesterday. But, if I can’t find a publishing house for my latest, I’ll just have to release it to however many subscribers I have at that time. Maybe even you will take a look.
Hey, thank you for your article, I found it informative and enjoyable.
Really love that you mention the importance of geographical context when considering the role and importance of editors. I feel like traditional literary folks really don't understand rural areas when they say "you have to work with an editor." Editors are great in some cases but not everybody has access to them, like on a very physical, geographical distance level.
Ok well go off then! It would be interesting to know if an editor was involved in this piece, because whether you agree with the argument or not, this prose is simply propulsive. You have to admire it. I could see an editor at certain publications trying to tame it down, which would weaken the piece, but alternatively, you could imagine an editor who really gets Caudell locating this sort of energy in the prose and encouraging more of it.
Personally I’m not really pro or anti editor. I think an editor can be helpful, but it’s all about the relationship with the writer. If they’re on the same page, great things can happen. If not, maybe they mess up the piece. Writers are fickle creatures. I think a lot of us just need someone to show our work to whose opinion we trust. When Knausgaard was starting My Struggle he would call one of his writer friends everyday, read him what he’d written over the phone, and his friend would say, yeah, that’s good, keep going. That’s what one of the most important writers of the 21st century needed to know he was on the right track.
Thanks for reading Derek. The inside scoop on this one is that Ross and the team gave the essay a touch up, mostly in the sense of fixing up formatting, all the capitalizations or quotes and proper nouns, and a sentence or two was removed, a pronoun here or there was changed or removed. Certainly helpful, just the way I like it, not too meddlesome.
I'm not against all forms of feedback or collaborative writing, I just had to take some shots at a certain image of editing and the institutions that support it
I wrote elsewhere that the first duty of an editor is to instigate. Copyediting isn't the same thing, of course, but all the good instigators I knew were also aces with with language.
I could be wrong but my guess is that legacy publications like the New Yorker will increasingly scout talent from Substack -- unlike a slush pile, this platform was designed with discoverability in mind. It's also worth noting that the New Yorker praised Kanakia's editor-less work on here more than what she produced under the guidance of a mainstream publisher. When even magazines and journals are noting that writing on substack is better and easier to find, that's a real sign that something is changing.
“There are many valid reasons, but the one that’s often overlooked is fun; write because it’s enjoyable. It’s fun to be read, too; fun to be recognized for who you are and mistaken for what you’re not, to debate and criticize and throw your weight behind the establishment of new standards that will soon be overthrown and then rediscovered.”
Such a good read. I’m getting my first short published this week and, even though it’s not The Paris Review, I’m just letting myself celebrate being understood in the capacity and form I understand myself
Thank you for writing this. While very entertaining to read, it really holds up a mirror to the publishing industry and what it reflects is a sad reality. Publishers and publishing agents are so driven to publish only the Books That Will Sell that they have developed this tunnel vision where they hyper-focus only on current specific genres and trends. If you want to present any kind of alternative/currently unpopular view, or you don't fit into one of those specific genres or trends, you're dead in the water before you even start writing. It doesn't matter how talented you are or how valuable/creative your writing could be in the future. It's just a no. I went to a panel discussion event not too long ago where they invited some authors with freshly-signed book deals, accompanied by the agent who had signed them. I walked away from that event despairing of humanity, frankly. The agent was asked "how long do you read through an unsolicited MS before deciding it's not for you?" and she admitted fairly frankly: "these days, about 2-3 sentences." All three of those newly-published authors had connections in the publishing industry and got a friend to pass on their manuscript to a relevant agent. *sigh*
Couldn’t agree more. The polar absolutism on both sides has gotten exhausting - as if both legacy publishing and Substack can’t exist in the same space. If one is good, then the other MUST be bad by definition. That kind of binary thinking has resulted in an untold number of twisted panties (ouch).
There IS room for both, and our culture would do well to start recognizing depth and nuance again. Substack is clearly still in its early stages as a literary platform, but the fact that this platform is being talked about in this way gives hope.
And let’s not forget: Didion herself once wrote an entire essay championing the power and voice of the independent press (“Alicia and the Underground Press”). We’d do well to remember that spirit now.
I've published a few essays on more or less the same topic and have reached more or less the same conclusion: You're not going to get published in The New Yorker or The Paris Review. Why waste the time? Although my preferred venue is mostly small, online publications, publishing in Substack makes perfect sense. Caleb Caudell says it very well -- it's a lot more meaningful to be read by a handful of appreciative readers than to aspire fruitlessly to an exceedingly narrow definition of literary "success" as defined by the institutional interests of the publishing industry.
A few words on the subject of editing. Yes, we can all benefit from good editing, and I certainly have. But if there's good editing, there's also bad editing. I have found, roughly, that the further up the chain you go, the more obtrusive the editing. The problem arises when copy is changed to conform to the familiarity of the house style and the perceived preferences of a journal's readers. This happens more often than many readers realize. In my case, I would say that three of my essays in different publications were so egregiously edited that they fundamentally misrepresented my work, in terms of both form and content. I'm almost ashamed my name is attached to them.
I was a reader for The Paris Review circa 2007, and it was one of the first big disillusioning experiences of my life as a writer. I was wrapping up an MFA, but others reading submissions included college interns and the (I believe) high school aged son of a famous writer. We had a stack of shame for particularly bonkers submissions, and I remember one of the interns trying to add a story to the stack that was clearly operating in a parodic, absurdist, Barthelme-inspired mode but which she insisted on taking entirely literally, despite the rest of us trying to dissuade her. Probably others in the stack had been the victims of similar point-missing.
However, the worst thing about the task was what you mention here: nothing made it out of the slush. For six months, likely longer, I sat for my weekly hours on that couch, reading story after story; sometimes favorites from the usual slush readers would make the rounds to higher-ups. But the tacit understanding was that the most an unknown could hope for was an invitation to resubmit. It struck me as an exercise in futility for all of us. From The Paris Review's perspective, the stakes were low -- no story existed out there in submission-land that could benefit the journal in a real way. And from the writer's perspective the chances were abysmal. I've always been more of an novelist but my attitude at that point changed from "I need to work on some shorter pieces so I have things to send out" to "The only way to win is not to play."
Thanks for the inside view
He’s cooking. This is a critic that gets it. This isn’t just a defense of Substack, it’s a dismantling of the nostalgia industry around literary prestige. The Vogue line is brutal. So is the takedown of Savage. This one’s going in the quote stash. This one punched the right people.
The dirty secret is that much of the editorial function doesn't involve improving accepted work, but expressing a taste barrier by rejecting 95% of what is submitted, across the industry.
Interesting read, thanks. Everyone needs an editor, though, if only to catch those pesky typos and little errors even the most accomplished writers make. I’m new to Substack and have really seen this. So, I have very mixed feelings about this platform. The difficult truth is that 95% of what we write probably shouldn’t be published; it’s not gonna be interesting or beautiful or exceptional or impactful enough. We have to be okay with, as you say, writing for the enjoyment and love of it and leaving it at that, because not everything should be read. Except for my stuff, of course. 😁
Catching typos isn’t really a very skilled activity, though…I’m happy to do it for for anyone for a mere quarter of your proceeds!
Now we have AI for that 😳
lol
I had an editor once tell me that the only thing that would make my writing acceptable was sexual perversity. Well I went ahead and did it and next thing I know I’m in front of a judge. It turns out this “editor” was best high school friends with my ex-wife!
???
Absolutely wonderful essay! Substack is a splendid experience. I write for myself and for the enjoyment. If five people read one of my pieces on Substack that's great! The most important thing is that I like it. I no longer want nor need an editor to like it too. Thanks for this excellent and beautifully expressed commentary.
Great piece, now cut a third of it and get to the point quicker. (This is a joke. For anyone who lacks the ability to read deeper than the exact surface of the words, this is ribbing, because I'm a vegan author/editor who's been to prison (that part isn't a joke), but the article was actually quite good in my opinion. Even as a lowercase e, editor.)
Ha, I do appreciate the ribbing, and that was the spirit of my joke as well
I tip my vegan ex-con editor hat to you sir.
"I have about the same chance of publishing my work in The Paris Review as getting struck by lightning while being inaugurated as the Pope," Caleb Claudell writes.
I sympathize, having just had a rejection from the Paris Review myself.
My books have been published by Simon & Schuster and Ballantine in the US and by André Deutsch and Secker & Warburg in the UK, not to speak of the University of California Press. I once wrote a book column in San Francisco magazine. But my longtime agent has died, and I am back in the wilderness at 85. Luckily, I made what seems to be adequate provision.
My advice to young aspirants: go to plumbing school. That way you'll never starve. Put not your trust in editors!
“… you may be forced to submit your slush to small presses, or, worst of all, you’ll sink all the way down to the level of Substack, living out the rest of your days writing rude essays like a bucktoothed yahoo.”
Not true. My front teeth are okay. It’s the molars that are starting to die off. But you got the correct word in there… submit. God, my knees ache after almost fifty years of that. But I’ll survive, as the lady sang in the late 1970s, because there’s always Voltaren.
“It’s true that on Substack, virtually anyone can publish anything. Terrible writers can dump their drivel…”
Yeah, man. That’s why I’m here. And it’s fresh warm drivel, straight from the heart.
“… as if the platform is something of a playground for Nazis and misogynists…”
What? Of course I hate Nazis. Now even the Nazis hate Nazis.
“What’s Vogue been up to lately?”
Well, you asked for it. I took a look over there… It’s every woman a queen, every male a decked out coachman/escort or gay dandy, mumming about for the cameras with ‘let ‘em eat Big Macs’ looks. Manhattan. Dashing Kardashians. Several ‘all you need to know’ (and that’s not much) articles. Dead pope; meet the new pope. Big ass ghetto gurl hos, petite white bitches with penises, tucked, of course. An article on men’s makeup. No evidence of it in the glossies, but, like the heads of Europe, the balls appear to never run out of champagne or white powder (not the ski slope kind).
Editors… I could write a book… and they could edit it… if I had a contract. Yeah, I know my prose could use some good editing. I have a friend (not in the business) who helps a lot. I’ve encouraged him to go into the biz, to put up a shingle, but he’s not ready for that. My brief encounter with a renowned ‘house’ was trying, as they assigned a recent immigrant to go through my manuscript. She was an ESL graduate and boy oh boy did we go round and round.
“Savage weakly mocks the insignificance of releasing a novel to 137 Substack followers…”
Damn. I’m not there yet. I had 113, but one dropped off yesterday. But, if I can’t find a publishing house for my latest, I’ll just have to release it to however many subscribers I have at that time. Maybe even you will take a look.
Hey, thank you for your article, I found it informative and enjoyable.
Really love that you mention the importance of geographical context when considering the role and importance of editors. I feel like traditional literary folks really don't understand rural areas when they say "you have to work with an editor." Editors are great in some cases but not everybody has access to them, like on a very physical, geographical distance level.
Ok well go off then! It would be interesting to know if an editor was involved in this piece, because whether you agree with the argument or not, this prose is simply propulsive. You have to admire it. I could see an editor at certain publications trying to tame it down, which would weaken the piece, but alternatively, you could imagine an editor who really gets Caudell locating this sort of energy in the prose and encouraging more of it.
Personally I’m not really pro or anti editor. I think an editor can be helpful, but it’s all about the relationship with the writer. If they’re on the same page, great things can happen. If not, maybe they mess up the piece. Writers are fickle creatures. I think a lot of us just need someone to show our work to whose opinion we trust. When Knausgaard was starting My Struggle he would call one of his writer friends everyday, read him what he’d written over the phone, and his friend would say, yeah, that’s good, keep going. That’s what one of the most important writers of the 21st century needed to know he was on the right track.
Thanks for reading Derek. The inside scoop on this one is that Ross and the team gave the essay a touch up, mostly in the sense of fixing up formatting, all the capitalizations or quotes and proper nouns, and a sentence or two was removed, a pronoun here or there was changed or removed. Certainly helpful, just the way I like it, not too meddlesome.
I'm not against all forms of feedback or collaborative writing, I just had to take some shots at a certain image of editing and the institutions that support it
I wrote elsewhere that the first duty of an editor is to instigate. Copyediting isn't the same thing, of course, but all the good instigators I knew were also aces with with language.
Did you notice how excited Naomi Kanakia and John Pistelli were to be included in that New Yorker article?
This argument sort of collapses the second anyone gets a little mainstream attention.
I could be wrong but my guess is that legacy publications like the New Yorker will increasingly scout talent from Substack -- unlike a slush pile, this platform was designed with discoverability in mind. It's also worth noting that the New Yorker praised Kanakia's editor-less work on here more than what she produced under the guidance of a mainstream publisher. When even magazines and journals are noting that writing on substack is better and easier to find, that's a real sign that something is changing.
It would be insane not to. Also, doing so is very efficient.
“There are many valid reasons, but the one that’s often overlooked is fun; write because it’s enjoyable. It’s fun to be read, too; fun to be recognized for who you are and mistaken for what you’re not, to debate and criticize and throw your weight behind the establishment of new standards that will soon be overthrown and then rediscovered.”
Hell yeah Caleb
Such a good read. I’m getting my first short published this week and, even though it’s not The Paris Review, I’m just letting myself celebrate being understood in the capacity and form I understand myself
Thank you for writing this. While very entertaining to read, it really holds up a mirror to the publishing industry and what it reflects is a sad reality. Publishers and publishing agents are so driven to publish only the Books That Will Sell that they have developed this tunnel vision where they hyper-focus only on current specific genres and trends. If you want to present any kind of alternative/currently unpopular view, or you don't fit into one of those specific genres or trends, you're dead in the water before you even start writing. It doesn't matter how talented you are or how valuable/creative your writing could be in the future. It's just a no. I went to a panel discussion event not too long ago where they invited some authors with freshly-signed book deals, accompanied by the agent who had signed them. I walked away from that event despairing of humanity, frankly. The agent was asked "how long do you read through an unsolicited MS before deciding it's not for you?" and she admitted fairly frankly: "these days, about 2-3 sentences." All three of those newly-published authors had connections in the publishing industry and got a friend to pass on their manuscript to a relevant agent. *sigh*
Couldn’t agree more. The polar absolutism on both sides has gotten exhausting - as if both legacy publishing and Substack can’t exist in the same space. If one is good, then the other MUST be bad by definition. That kind of binary thinking has resulted in an untold number of twisted panties (ouch).
There IS room for both, and our culture would do well to start recognizing depth and nuance again. Substack is clearly still in its early stages as a literary platform, but the fact that this platform is being talked about in this way gives hope.
And let’s not forget: Didion herself once wrote an entire essay championing the power and voice of the independent press (“Alicia and the Underground Press”). We’d do well to remember that spirit now.
I've published a few essays on more or less the same topic and have reached more or less the same conclusion: You're not going to get published in The New Yorker or The Paris Review. Why waste the time? Although my preferred venue is mostly small, online publications, publishing in Substack makes perfect sense. Caleb Caudell says it very well -- it's a lot more meaningful to be read by a handful of appreciative readers than to aspire fruitlessly to an exceedingly narrow definition of literary "success" as defined by the institutional interests of the publishing industry.
A few words on the subject of editing. Yes, we can all benefit from good editing, and I certainly have. But if there's good editing, there's also bad editing. I have found, roughly, that the further up the chain you go, the more obtrusive the editing. The problem arises when copy is changed to conform to the familiarity of the house style and the perceived preferences of a journal's readers. This happens more often than many readers realize. In my case, I would say that three of my essays in different publications were so egregiously edited that they fundamentally misrepresented my work, in terms of both form and content. I'm almost ashamed my name is attached to them.