"I still have a hard time processing the saturation of favor-trading you've exposed"

Tuesday 10/28/25

This is part of an exchange I had this morning with an English professor and provost I've known for thirty years.

You don't even want to see the first letter from me. It involves Megan Sexton of the literary journal Five Points and her blatant corruption. I'm not going to include that here, because I'll be featuring it in a stand-alone entry exposing what she's all about and how and why she does what she does.

She's revolting and her actions are indefensible.

Then I'll send it to the higher-ups--department head, deans, president--at Georgia State University where she works.

But, joining this back-and-forth deeper into the proceedings...

Person to me:

"the best books get the best ratings"--that is really funny that someone would think that. I mean seriously, have you ever looked at the long list of Pulitzer Prize winners. Two thirds of them are unread and forgotten. Washington Irving's story "The Mutability of Literature" had this right in 1819. Wow

Me:

Pulitzers:

https://www.colinfleminglit.com/post/prose-off-story-by-guggenheim-recipient-and-pulitzer-prize-winner-joshua-cohen-in-the-new-yorker-pu

https://www.colinfleminglit.com/post/prose-off-story-in-the-new-yorker-by-guggenheim-macarthur-and-pulitzer-prize-winning-talentless

We are talking two somewhat different things, as I'm sure you know, between me sharing the above and you saying what you said below. Pulitzers--and Academy Awards--had always gone to vanilla, lightweight, safe types of dramas that are middle of the pack, middlebrow, tepid. And Grammys. Booth Tarkington's most boring books got them, but not one of his good ones like Seventeen or Penrod. That would have been out of the question. Too alive, as the system then stood. 

What is happening now, though, is obviously even worse and a lot of different. These things are given out without the books even being read by the committees. It's who is due, because of all of these other things. The birthright, the connections, the accrued amount of water carrying, the skin color, the identity politics, etc. Look at that Tommy Orange email I sent you, and the prose off with him on the blog. 

Later I'll send you an interview with the person that Sigrid Rausing made the editor of Granta that will make you throw up. 

Person to me:

Yeah, that Tommy Orange thing says it all. I still have a hard time processing the saturation of favor-trading you've exposed. 

Me:

Because even in a world rampant with it, it's nothing like it is here. There is no "comp" for publishing. It's uniquely rancid and incestuous.