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Millionaire Upper West Side resident and contributor to the Atlantic and the New Yorker goes all aw-shucks, my car has 150,000 miles on it about the elite at a TriBeCa book party.
He also enjoys suing his neighbors. So watch out.
"Children, I am an author who used to type a book manuscript on a manual typewriter. Yes, I did. And mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it. And kept a carbon copy for myself. I waited for a month or so and then got an acceptance letter in the mail. It was typed on paper. They offered to pay me a large sum of money. I read it over and over and ran up and down the rows of corn whooping. It was beautiful, the Old Era. I'm sorry you missed it."
So's Lindsay Lohan.
I thought this was a parody. I was going to compliment you on your excellent parody. I wish this were a parody.
I thought so too, Mary. But I will compliment Saythatscool for curating this douchey Keillor quip.
"Back then, we climbed up to the top of the hayloft and popped a bottle of fresh dairy milk, and we called that a party. Times have changed. Nowadays, all my granddaughters are whores."
"Oftentimes, I would take my best girl down to the meadow and we would share a soda pop under the calm purples of an August moon. Yesterday, I came home and found my granddaughter naked, on my couch, while her lesbian classmate, also naked, is holding a champagne bottle that is obviously deeply embedded in her ass. We shriek, and she yanks out the bottle. And immediately out comes a LARGE, dark brown, smelly piece of poop. It just rolls out – this felt like it was happening in slow motion, and I kept trying to stop it but I couldn't – and lands on my couch. The little trollop."
@saythatscool: little early in the morning for that kind of imagery, innit?
Sorry, I couldn't resist co-opting (sorry Balk!) a Jezebel story to illustrate brian's comment.
http://jezebel.com/comment/23378779/
@saythatscool: … in Keillor's unctuous, slithery voice? Yeah, that might be the first episode of A Prairie Home Companion that I didn't immediately scramble to turn off.
What ho, Arbiter elegantiarum?
oofa. right in the keillors.
It's cocktail hour in my TZ. This was exactly the image I needed.
"And that is the future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75."
If one would really like to understand why the Economy is the way it is, why big banks run by supposedly accomplished people with expensive degrees from big name schools are largely insolvent, why media companies can no longer make money, why, all across America, people normally capable of making, if not astute, then at least reasonable personal financial decisions instead bought homes at prices far above and beyond what their incomes could support even under the most optimistic scenario; in short, why things in the economy today are the way they are, then read that statement by Keillor, think about it for a moment, and see if it can be transplanted from the sad, hateful context of an aging author's lament into reality. Because it can't. It's so brazenly wrong it doesn't even qualify as a non-sequitur.
Strangely, it never occurs to those who share Keillor's dismay about the sad demise of book publishing that what they've experienced for the past , what, 50 years?, and benefited from financially (thanks for pointing that out), was itself an unsustainable bubble that emerged from the stranglehold publishers exerted as sole gatekeepers into the rarefied air of Tribeca rooftop literary parties.
The "new economics" of publishing aren't really new at all. It's an economy familiar to industries throughout history when the barriers to production suddenly fall, or in some cases are overthrown, and the unwashed masses suddenly find themselves free, literally, to participate at will. The flood of new production overwhelms the system and destroys the old pricing models. Naturally, those who benefited most from the old economy hate the new one. I imagine that long ago someone not unlike Keillor once stood in front of a public library and complained that it's such a terrible thing to see the relatively few good books in the library get stuffed in among all the terrible ones. And people will be able to choose on their own which ones are good? Like they know! Such a terrible thing.
Yes, it's true, Mr. Keillor; no one is going to pay me a large sum of money for my manuscript. No corn row whoops for me. You're sorry I missed the Old Era? Don't be. I'm sorry for you that the most beautiful moment you retained from it was once getting paid a large sum of money.
Problem is the "new" pricing model won't make you enough money to buy a pencil. Or are supposed to build our own bookstores and marketing departments too?
But most of those 18 million authors are publishing stuff like this:
"is it me or is it strange that a wetback (caldorone) and a towelhead lover (obama) is meeting and dissing OUR COUNTRY IN OUR WHITEHOUSE!!!!!!!! WHEN WILL THIS NITEMARE END AND THE COURTMARSHALLS FOR TREASON BEGIN????????????"
or this guy: http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/.
@LondonLee It's true. Right now there are no affordable pencils for us. But the point is Keillor only imagines the end of his world, the boring observation that there will be "18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75."
What happens after that?
If we were talking about any other industry we know exactly what would happen next: unable to support themselves at such a low pay scale, producers would get discouraged and find something else to do. Why is it accepted at face value that writing is so different from any other industry? In fact, that's the key contradiction in Keillor's lament. He claims that the new world will be one of self-appointed writers happily publishing at will for $1.75 a year, then in the same breath declares the end to the "aura of martyrdom" and the era of "tortured geniuses" unable to support themselves until a kindly editor, a mediator between the writer and God, provides the laying on of hands, facilitating an ascent to the promised land of a full-fledged book deal.
So, which is it? Doesn't perpetually producing writing at $1.75 a year qualify for "martyrdom status"? Oh, wait, no… because a martyr, by definition, is someone serving the church, which in this case, I guess, is the publishing industry.
We are at the beginning of the deflationary cycle in publishing. Because the barriers to entry have been opened there is a flood of new production taking place, much of it, as @kitten_witawip points out, not very good. But this won't always be the case. And while it hurts right now, I'm optimistic that what emerges will be something far better than the Keillor ideal of rubbing shoulders with one heavyweight after another on a rooftop in Tribeca.
"t was a rooftop party in Tribeca that I got invited to via a well-connected pal…" You guys, Garrison Keillor has to rely on pals to bring him to parties with fancy book people! He's not personally invited! This is serious and sad! Why are New Yorkers so snobby that they refuse to socialize with a celebrity who regularly sells out Town Hall? Is it because he grew up on the windswept plains?
actually, this is serious and just fine with me.
Was this piece an alternate verse in Tom Waits' "Step Right Up?"
I learned to type on a typewriter too. And I was born in the '80s. Just saying, Garrison.