Does art have to fail?

Tuesday 7/8/25

Does art have to fail? Does art have to be niche of a niche of a niche of a niche to the point of bordering on, and, for all practical purposes being, non-existent? A non-factor? Is the point, then, that art is made anyway?

I'm looking at this woman today named E. Jean Carroll. She is incredibly vapid. She is incredibly fake. Insincere. Empty. Soulless. Glib. Annoying. Without substance. She has no conscience. No shame. No standards. Everything is smarmy and performative. She was at Elle for close to thirty years, which says plenty in and of itself. Or is there now. I don't know. She's a writer.

But she's a writer in the sense that she boasts--"dishes," you imagine someone like this putting it--about what she's wearing. Who took her photo for her latest magazine spread to hype her bad work. She's someone who ought to induce a migraine if you so much look at her, her work, anything she says, is about, for so much as ten seconds.

And of course a newspaper that is as disgusting as any in this country like The Boston Globe--with its non-stop pandering--is going to hype the shit out of this woman who begins her blog posts, "Elegant Reader!" and "Most Beauteous and Cunning Reader" and "Most Beauteous and Fastidious Reader" and "Most Beauteous and Wittiest Reader!" and "Ravishing and Relentless Reader!" because it's just soulless vomit, again and again and again.

Whoring vomit.

So how do you think it goes for someone like that? 65K followers on Threads. 50K followers on Substack. A book by such a person will come out, and these things and these venues and this disgusting industry will push it to the bestseller list, which a writer like this will brag about time and again, as if they actually believe that any of this is because of their ability and the quality of what they've written. The importance of what they've written.

There's nothing real here. There's no intelligence. You have to be a disgusting person without values, morals, a conscience, to flaunt yourself this way. Your soul would throw up if you had any self-awareness. The writing is plastic. Everything is about this persona. Being this way.

And people being as dumb as they are, as simple, as empty, as in thrall to the stupid things, and gossip, and tackiness, may very well honestly like that concept. I don't deny that.

Most people are that way. It's human nature. And more and more people are becoming more that way.

So I ask again: Does art have to fail? Can there be no audience for art? I know, people will say, "The Beatles!" The Beatles are the Beatles because they had simple melodies that people can hum. And this is me saying this, world's leading Beatles authority. Is there art there? Sure. But very few people who like the Beatles have any clue about that, they're not digging that deep, thinking that hard, and they don't understand. They don't have the knowledge to understand.

They want to gatekeep their assumed identity/self-conferred title of "person who knows a lot about the Beatles" on Reddit and social media and in online reviews as to who is worthy of the title as well.

But that's about other shit, man. That person's shit. Shortcomings. Hang-ups. Insecurities.

There are examples along these lines, where some other element creates the popularity and it may have little to nothing to do with art, and then certainly other contributing factors: PR, hype, timing, luck, old saws that never get challenged and gain momentum as a result through the years, the decades. (In these instances, the art gets a chance to resound with some people--a small percentage of that throng--because the product had the legs--and was supplied in part with the legs--to get to a great number of people. Such that, say, one out of 10,000 of those fans has an inkling about the artistry. Thinks about it openly, actively, and intelligently. But if that product hadn't reached those numbers, there could be only a dozen people--if that--in the world who had any idea about that art, and very possibly less.)

People aren't going to partake of something that they don't feel many others are partaking of as well. Let's say there's a film on Netflix. A person has never heard of it. They start to watch it, almost randomly, after scrolling around for a bit, get through twenty minutes, move on to something else, forget about it.

Then, later, that film is "rediscovered." Something happens. It trends on social media. Everyone is watching it! Yea! That same person watches that film and they like it now. Because before, it was just them. Now, it feels like they're a part of something. All of these millions are with them, or at their backs, or however you want to put it. Their experience has nothing to do with the film itself.

Nothing is about the thing itself.

And I mean nothing.

Not now.

And there's almost nothing that has to the power to be the thing itself even in theory. The power and the quality.

I'm coming at this from the other way around. I can't sell my soul, I can't banish my conscience, I can't be insipid. I have the stuff that is the stuff itself. And I think I am the only person who does. But I have none of the other things, and people hate me. They want me to fail, to die, to suppress me, because of what I am. They don't want me to have a chance. No one has ever liked me. It's the good things. It's not bad things I'm doing to anyone. We hate greatness. The greater, the more we hate the person. It's just the truth. It's a threat. It makes us feel worse about ourselves. We insist that the people we support and hype and award are achievable. We could be them.

Someone can have so many things I don't have right now. Easily. Everyone does. But no can be me. No one can have my mind. My ability. My knowledge. My legitimacy. My strength. My character. My productivity. My drive. My will power. My focus. My heart.

I am not achievable. Not as a writer in terms of the writing. Not as an artist in terms of the art. Not as a person in terms of the person.

And that will make you the most alone, loath-able person there can be. But it's this unique kind of loathing: People will know, on some level, that they can't actually blame you. That you did no wrong. They'll respect you. Paradoxically, more than they respect anyone else. Because they know what you are and it's undeniable. Like a law of nature.

And, worse than anything for them...they'll wish that they were you instead of them. They're not factoring in the pain, the privations. Because what they have in their lives, they take for granted. The house, the car, the people, the ease. They just see the genius and legitimacy. The things they don't have. Will never have. The things that are beyond them in every possible way. The things they think are the things that you'd want to have and be more than anything else.

Nothing will make anyone hate someone else more than that. Especially when that person is not rich and famous. Or not yet, anyway. Because when there is wealth and fame, we stop looking at someone as in our world. They're in a different world. That that world isn't their world makes someone doing so well in it less of a threat to themselves, their ego, their fragile sense of self. It's off somewhere else, rather than right here with me. Get it?

Take something like the Monument. The rangers all like me. We're very friendly. If they knew more about me, they'd likely dislike me. Right now, all they know about me is I'm this workout guy. I'm dedicated to that. Maybe now that they like me already, if they learned other things, they wouldn't un-like me. But if they knew the things in the first place, there wouldn't be smiles and well-wishing and jokes back and forth. There'd be a prevailing sense of lessened approachability on their part with me. There'd be fear. Intimidation. I'm always the same. With everyone. I'm not a classist like Emily Stokes and Sigrid Rausing. But that's what would happen, whereas now, I could mentally be anyone so far as they know, beyond how obviously well spoken I am in our exchange, the rapidity I have in responding to whatever was put to me with some clever line or whatever, which comes with a friendly smile, and an easy, gentle way. I'm very easy to talk to if you don't know more about me yet. But once a person does, the fear and intimidation sets in and wields influence, and quite likely other things, if that person is themselves a bad person--the envy, the animus.

I have always lived with this curse. The better I've gotten, the worse it's gotten. I get better every day in every way. As a writer, an artist, a person. I make a point of doing so. I want a level playing field and to compete. May the best person win.

I would want that, wouldn't I? Of course I would. And most people wouldn't, right? Because how would they get ahead? And have what they want?

This is even more so in publishing. If you're Junot Diaz, if you're Amie Barrodale, if you're Wendy Lesser, if you're Joshua Cohen, if you're J. Robert Lennon, if you're George Saunders, if you're Tommy Orange, if you're Jamel Brinkley, how are you going to compete with me on a level playing field?

You can't. It's impossible. You have to make sure you rig everything against this guy and for yourself. And your type.

When I ask the question whether art must necessarily fail, can only fail, because of what humans are, I don't mean because people don't "get it." I don't mean because it is too recondite or specialist or it "goes over people's heads." I'm not talking Finnegans Wake here.

I'm talking with something that could be the most accessible thing in the world. A work of fiction, for example, that just about everyone, of so many different ages, can understand as readily as anything else. About which it could be said that there is nothing they could follow and understand any better. Not a text exchange, not a sign on a bathroom door, not a TikTok video.

But it's not stupid, shallow, tacky, cheap, gross. It's not whoring around. It's not panhandling for attention. It's just amazing. Real. True.

And I very much wonder if there are enough people in the world for that to do anything in the world. Because human nature is such that we want the stupid, the shallow, the tacky, the cheap, the gross. We are stupid, shallow, tacky, cheap, and gross. We want ourselves.

The world is a shit hole. Society is a shit hole. Culture is shit hole. Humanity is a shit hole. There's so little that is good. Does the artist--and, for the most part, there are none in the world now--just give up their life to create this work because it's the right thing to do, it's the best that we can be, that any of us can be, and at least this person did it? Represented, as such?

Because it feels that way. I'm living that. Every single person I see with the big following, the hype, the awards, is a fucking idiot. A tacky, soulless, ever-performing, whoring idiot. There's nothing they won't stoop to. I don't know how they don't blow their brains out being what they are. I honestly don't get how you can just prostitute your soul. Your non-existent soul. And be so fake. Create such vapidity. Sub-AI work. And collect checks, adulation, homes, fans, subscribers, and your work sucks, you suck, and that is the name of the game. It's what people want. Or will take. Or insist on. They don't actually want anything. They're usually not capable of it. They're just...globs of mucus reacting to and incorporating other globs of mucus. Conjoining mucus globs.

Again: I see no exceptions. When I say none, I mean none. I'm not exaggerating. It's like it has to be this way. Or you fail. Everything about you has to be cheap and mediocre. Not just your work. Your persona, your attitude, what you represent. Physically, often. People need to be able to look at that person and think, "I could be them." Or, "I am them."

Everything is junk food. Stuffed down the throat. That people stuff down their throats. It's like, there can't be apples. It has to be chips. From the 7-Eleven. People get fat, their hearts swell, they sweat from moving anywhere so they reek, and it's more fucking chips. Chips and chips and chips. They buy those compression socks and they get rashes on their skin, but they insist on the chips. People could serve great food, but nah, they drop off the latest shipment of the chips.

And it's greasy skin and that reek and the obesity and the rash and more chips.

People buy chips just to buy chips because chips are on their level. Comfort food. "When I'm kicking back." "Unwinding." Get on the fat, chip-stained wife, pump away a few times, get up, go to the job, consume chips there, come home, more chips, pump, pump, done, get up, etc.

Why?

Insecurity. Laziness. But a lot of insecurity. People aren't secure enough to try and be more or partake of anything better. Especially if they're not psychologically reinforced by the feeling and wave of subconscious thoughts that they're doing what a lot of other people are doing. Humans aren't individuals. The group does this, and you want to be a part of the group. Everyone is doing this at school. You don't want to go over here on your lonesome and do this other thing. People are too damn weak to do that. They're not strong enough.

I get it. Certain things happen and there are these pockets of followers. Believers. Partakers. I'm not the only one out there listening to "Dark Star" every night. But, if the Grateful Dead hadn't had certain things go there way, for a litany of reasons like some of the ones we mentioned above, would anyone even know about "Dark Star" right now to listen to it? What's the societal impact? Is anything any different if it didn't exist in this second scenario? Then you would just have the fact that someone did it. But then again, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to do it. The Dead wouldn't have gotten together a few hundred times in rooms by themselves and set up a tape recorder to play "Dark Star." Why? To do it. To represent. To fail.

Right now, it's like the artist is that person who'd do it anyway, and that's just the end of it.

At the same time, I'm not doing anything to fail. I'm not trying just to fail. I'm not writing today having accepted that I can only fail, I'm not running stairs in a Monument so I can remain healthy in order to fail for as long as possible.