The New York Times and the state of Beatles writing and discourse

Wednesday 2/25/26

This is a letter I wrote a couple months ago to someone who writes film scripts and was the writer for what I consider, by far, to be the best film about the Beatles. I'll sometimes repurpose letters here because they say what needs to be said and I see no purpose in spending time and energy rephrasing that which can do the saying itself and perfectly well at that.

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Dear (),

I'm sorry for the delay in responding. I began this letter a couple Fridays ago and am just now getting back to it at this very early hour on Sunday morning. I've had a lot to write and been dealing with some things. 

But this is what I had been saying, for what it's worth...

I don't read The New York Times and wouldn't give them the click. I am banned there and they have a rule against covering my work. They are terrible people. I post about that--and them--on my blog (have a search on a name like "Sadie Stein," for instance). Most of the people in this industry are the worst people one can encounter, and they're very rarely going to do the right thing, or the non-petty thing, or the non-evil thing, if they have a choice. 

Having said that, I'd also suggest, though, that these people are just flat out bad at their jobs. Bad at writing. You were perhaps less slighted than you were left unseen by someone who would scarcely be able to see their own hand if it was waving in front of their face. They're not experts on anything, they don't even do their "homework" as such. They are going to do the bare minimum.

What I'd venture this Times piece entailed was some cliches, some BS about how it's impossible to see the film--it's easy; hell, it's on Archive--like he or she who wrote the piece personally pulled something out of the back of King Tut's tomb, give-me-credit/give-me-praise style.

And because people are very simple, very lazy, very incurious to the point of requiring anything they're going to partake of to be rammed into their face by someone else and/or a throng harping about the same thing for the same brainless reasons, such that ours is a world in which a piece or a book that's no more than a (worse-written) Wikipedia entry is treated as notable, whereas the piece or book of quality would produce ire, envy, and complaint, if not bafflement, I'd surmise that people fitting that all-too-common bill clapped and clapped.

A key with Beatles pieces (and books), by the way, is to say nothing. Which is the opposite of what I do in my many years of writing about the Beatles, but I'm well-versed in how this goes. The piece or the book that says nothing is what Beatles fans often like. Bauble pieces and books without ideas, depth, anything that makes them think, causes them to listen to the music from a new perspective.

It's this weird parasocial thing that's becoming more and more pronounced as thinking itself as an act withers away, and people are less and less sure of themselves, where many of them would prefer to encounter--notice how I didn't say "read"--pieces and books about the Beatles that contain nothing but bland platitudes of praise, with stock descriptors that could just as easily apply to a sunset or a spray-on cleaner for kitchen countertops.

There's no value whatsoever in this kind of writing, save for such people to think that they could do it, they think those things, too, thus giving themselves a pat on the back as this weird and hollow type of self-validation, and what do you know, they even think those things in the same exact words. Pieces and books about the Beatles as sugar pills. Say nothing, too, and these such people can't take offense or feel threatened on account of what they don't know. The world is like this in general now, but I'd say when it comes to nonfiction writing, music fans are especially this way (more than film buffs), and Beatles people even more so. 

Am I warm as to the Times piece? I bet I am. A writer like that isn't going to have the strength of intellect or the knowledge or the will power to bother to learn enough to call attention to the writing in the film. I'd be borderline shocked if I clicked on that piece and saw that. Almost all of this is just garbage writing now that AI could do and is indistinguishable from. The industry itself is basically a front for these people hooking each other up as that industry circles the drain. Usually the writer hadn't heard of that thing they're writing about an hour before they wrote the piece. 

I'm just cautioning you on this score. You're dealing with idiots. Privileged, pretentious (which also means very insecure), up-their-own-hindquarters idiots. In other words, perhaps the worst kind of idiot. You want to be careful in expressing certain kinds of opprobrium because they're not going to turn around and mea culpa.

As for expecting knowledge or the well done piece...That's like hoping an ant picks you up and carries you around throughout the day when you're just too tired otherwise. It ain't gonna happen because these people rarely have that in them. One has to pick one's battles/spots. And what I'm also suggesting is screw this person. Don't read it into, don't let it get you down more, do your work, be proud of the work you've done. 

I feel like all I can really offer you--as I work twenty hour days dealing with all of this while I write--beyond the above counsel is a testimonial as to what that film and your contribution meant (and means) to me. I daresay there isn't anyone else in the world who has thought about that film as much as I have, save someone like you who was a part of it. 

Don't let something like this be more than what it is. Which isn't to minimize the frustration--among other things--that's a result of it. 

Maybe this has all resolved anyway in the interim of my delay and things are looking up and rosy. I hope so, anyway. 

My best of the season to you.

Yours,

Colin