I don't think MFA degrees add much to constructive discussions about writing, so nothing to worry about there. Reading helps more, and I enjoyed reading about what you're reading, and loved that you're looking at the whole literary market.
On to topic then.
What you've called 'subvertstructionism' sounded to me like postmodernist noise. Postmodernism chops familiar, derivative images into pithy little icons, and then rearranges them to talk about society and oneself (most often society *through* oneself.) English literature has had it in various forms since the 1960s. Though witheringly critical it's notoriously poor at offering inspiration, and over time, has become egregiously self-absorbed to the point of competitive narcissism. But its barrier to entry is also low -- anyone can write a postmodern treatment of nearly anything, and so it's very noisy. There are thoughtful postmodernist works, but also plenty of meaningless wannabes. I don't know how many of them we actually need.
When you offered 'vitalism' as an alternative I immediately thought of three other things that term already meant: an ancient belief that a thing is its living spirit more than its form (the ancient Egyptians and Greeks had such views), a pre-industrial biological theory for how life worked (now abandoned), and a pseudoscience in the modern wellness industry that turns up in chiropractic, acupuncture and homeopathy.
I don't think that's what you meant though. What I think you meant was drawing emotional and social inspiration from the integrated forces of nature and life. You're right that such writing has only niche popularity at the moment, although art has never entirely been without it. We'd agree that it's a refuge against postmodern noise because we've both experienced that it is. But if your meaning is more than just nature-writing or adventure-writing for nature- and adventure-lovers then what precisely do you mean?
I wouldn't try to read tea leaves from the success of romance either. As a category it's successful because women still read fiction while men largely don't, and what they read most is writing about intimacy and sex -- but that category's success is decades old. It's not a trend, but an enduring social context while other categories have come and gone. (It's also not an especially realistic genre: its Happy Ever After idealism and Happy for Now optimism have the impractical expectations of a first-time boat buyer.)
The thing I think nature-writers suffer most from today is a modern tendency to treat nature as either an escape or an abstract clinical curio. Industrial, urban life is seen as 'reality', and there nature is harnessed, imprisoned or remote. So urban cycles, urban architecture, urban concerns and struggles are treated as enduring and central while nature with its increasingly vulnerable ecosystems is treated as fleeting, peripheral and receding: a place for experts and tourists, or a backdrop for influencers looking for the perfect adventure lifestyle shot.
What strikes people who spend a lot of time in the natural world though is that the reality is more like the reverse: in biological timeframes, urban structures and human lives are fleeting while biological resilience is enduring. Biological, meteorological and geological forces are all unthinkably vast and our cities and technologies aren't resilient against them -- they just endure enough in human lifetimes that they feel permanent.
That sense of scope and scale in nature can't be appreciated through monitors, TVs and framed oil-paintings. You can never catch an authentic alpine view with a macro lens, nor capture wave-height and motion accurately on a GoPro. All you get instead is a sort of impressionistic amuse bouche.
But that scope, scale, complexity and resilience -- and the need for stoic practicality and open-minded questioning in dealing with them -- are all anodynes for postmodern neurosis. So while I didn't agree with your analysis, I agreed with your intuition.
Nature explorations may well offer templates for exploring how to treat people better too -- with more agency, more dignity, less performative individualism and more responsibility for choice. There's fiction and memoir which does this, but so far as I've seen it's niche: if there's any evidence of people flocking to read it, then I have yet to see that.
Really, the thing I think that reaches people best is to experience living alongside nature in a well-guided fashion -- as participants, rather than tourists. When they experience it they may want to read more, think more, discuss more. If they don't, then whatever you write is competing with TikTok and Instagram for their attention.
Finally, while I realise that Americans love writing about themselves, I don't think that this is specifically an American concern. The social issues, the opportunities, the tensions and trade-offs can be found everywhere in the industrialised world. What I think you're talking about is a fundamental human need to be a part of something bigger, more complex and more diverse growing increasingly strained, and I don't think pinning a flag on it adds much.
In Australia where I live, a third of us were born somewhere else, and half of us have at least one parent born overseas. That amazing demographic is very visible in National Park campgrounds, where I work as a volunteer host during busy times. There I meet Nepalese, Koreans, Syrians and many others, all trying to get closer to the unthinkably ancient Australian landscapes (while also trying to be moderately comfortable and not die.) Notably, they're *not* trying to relive some Great Man myth of colonial history because that's not their heritage. They're just trying to understand and appreciate the country they're living in. It's a human desire and I agree that it heals and grows us -- can even help us find our common humanity.
Anyway, that's just one reaction from a fellow enthusiast. I've been reading your Norris Notes with interest, and will continue to do so. I love that you're seeking to position your writing interests within a conversation about broader human needs, and hope that this response may be useful in some way.
Thank you for the thoughtful response! I will likely read it a few times to let it soak in. Good to know there are such reflective humans prowling Substack.
To your bit at the end about these themes being bigger than America, I totally agree. I often focus on the American lens because that is where I am--not because I'm trying to keep other perspectives out. I try to tread with a bit of humility, not assume what I'm seeing is what's going on in say your Australia. Who knows, maybe there are cultures out there yearning for "subvertstructionism" due to their particular cultural moments? Hope that makes sense.
Hi Norris, thank you for replying. Some extra context here might help.
When Americans publish, they have a potential domestic audience of hundreds of millions. When Australians publish, it's only ten million. (If you move 700 copies of a fiction title in the first week of release here, we call it a bestseller.) Without much domestic audience, it's natural to make as much material as possible relevant to foreign readers, which makes it less domestically-focused when it can be. That might make our scope more cosmopolitan at times but may also weaken culture.
On the other hand, Americans fall naturally into writing for a domestic audience, and can forget to ask questions of broader scope. (For some reason, the Brits don't have that problem so much -- perhaps because they have a broad historical interest in the Anglosphere anyway.) So accepting that your foreign readership may be much smaller than your domestic readership, this is just a friendly reminder that it exists. :)
Yet because your focus is mainly sailing, that also helps. Where hiking and camping (for example) are local culture, I think sailing is more global culture with local flavour. We might not know the names of each others' fish or historical boats (I bet you've never heard of this one, for example -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couta), yet sailors can talk endlessly about boat design, handling, trimming, currents, weather, anchorages, anchors, rigging, knots, upkeep, maintenance, disaster management. It's a naturally global topic.
On the other hand, I also read about AAT and PCT hikes, and the fundamental questions for endurance hikes are different here. Australians couldn't tell you how to use a bear-bag, but could talk at length about how to deal with getting lost, getting injured, how to avoid dehydration or getting bitten to death. We cache more than resupply simply because resupply is longer distances apart. We're literally solving different problems.
Culture is permeable and malleable, adapting to shifting demographics and economics. What gets Syrian boys smoking hookahs in the same remote campground where a Korean father in a cowboy hat is making a fire for his family -- I think that's human. But I think it's not yet a literary trend -- more of an inchoate social yearning.
Either way, however you encourage it to develop will have me cheering. Keep it up!
Norris thank you for venturing such a post.
I don't think MFA degrees add much to constructive discussions about writing, so nothing to worry about there. Reading helps more, and I enjoyed reading about what you're reading, and loved that you're looking at the whole literary market.
On to topic then.
What you've called 'subvertstructionism' sounded to me like postmodernist noise. Postmodernism chops familiar, derivative images into pithy little icons, and then rearranges them to talk about society and oneself (most often society *through* oneself.) English literature has had it in various forms since the 1960s. Though witheringly critical it's notoriously poor at offering inspiration, and over time, has become egregiously self-absorbed to the point of competitive narcissism. But its barrier to entry is also low -- anyone can write a postmodern treatment of nearly anything, and so it's very noisy. There are thoughtful postmodernist works, but also plenty of meaningless wannabes. I don't know how many of them we actually need.
When you offered 'vitalism' as an alternative I immediately thought of three other things that term already meant: an ancient belief that a thing is its living spirit more than its form (the ancient Egyptians and Greeks had such views), a pre-industrial biological theory for how life worked (now abandoned), and a pseudoscience in the modern wellness industry that turns up in chiropractic, acupuncture and homeopathy.
I don't think that's what you meant though. What I think you meant was drawing emotional and social inspiration from the integrated forces of nature and life. You're right that such writing has only niche popularity at the moment, although art has never entirely been without it. We'd agree that it's a refuge against postmodern noise because we've both experienced that it is. But if your meaning is more than just nature-writing or adventure-writing for nature- and adventure-lovers then what precisely do you mean?
I wouldn't try to read tea leaves from the success of romance either. As a category it's successful because women still read fiction while men largely don't, and what they read most is writing about intimacy and sex -- but that category's success is decades old. It's not a trend, but an enduring social context while other categories have come and gone. (It's also not an especially realistic genre: its Happy Ever After idealism and Happy for Now optimism have the impractical expectations of a first-time boat buyer.)
The thing I think nature-writers suffer most from today is a modern tendency to treat nature as either an escape or an abstract clinical curio. Industrial, urban life is seen as 'reality', and there nature is harnessed, imprisoned or remote. So urban cycles, urban architecture, urban concerns and struggles are treated as enduring and central while nature with its increasingly vulnerable ecosystems is treated as fleeting, peripheral and receding: a place for experts and tourists, or a backdrop for influencers looking for the perfect adventure lifestyle shot.
What strikes people who spend a lot of time in the natural world though is that the reality is more like the reverse: in biological timeframes, urban structures and human lives are fleeting while biological resilience is enduring. Biological, meteorological and geological forces are all unthinkably vast and our cities and technologies aren't resilient against them -- they just endure enough in human lifetimes that they feel permanent.
That sense of scope and scale in nature can't be appreciated through monitors, TVs and framed oil-paintings. You can never catch an authentic alpine view with a macro lens, nor capture wave-height and motion accurately on a GoPro. All you get instead is a sort of impressionistic amuse bouche.
But that scope, scale, complexity and resilience -- and the need for stoic practicality and open-minded questioning in dealing with them -- are all anodynes for postmodern neurosis. So while I didn't agree with your analysis, I agreed with your intuition.
Nature explorations may well offer templates for exploring how to treat people better too -- with more agency, more dignity, less performative individualism and more responsibility for choice. There's fiction and memoir which does this, but so far as I've seen it's niche: if there's any evidence of people flocking to read it, then I have yet to see that.
Really, the thing I think that reaches people best is to experience living alongside nature in a well-guided fashion -- as participants, rather than tourists. When they experience it they may want to read more, think more, discuss more. If they don't, then whatever you write is competing with TikTok and Instagram for their attention.
Finally, while I realise that Americans love writing about themselves, I don't think that this is specifically an American concern. The social issues, the opportunities, the tensions and trade-offs can be found everywhere in the industrialised world. What I think you're talking about is a fundamental human need to be a part of something bigger, more complex and more diverse growing increasingly strained, and I don't think pinning a flag on it adds much.
In Australia where I live, a third of us were born somewhere else, and half of us have at least one parent born overseas. That amazing demographic is very visible in National Park campgrounds, where I work as a volunteer host during busy times. There I meet Nepalese, Koreans, Syrians and many others, all trying to get closer to the unthinkably ancient Australian landscapes (while also trying to be moderately comfortable and not die.) Notably, they're *not* trying to relive some Great Man myth of colonial history because that's not their heritage. They're just trying to understand and appreciate the country they're living in. It's a human desire and I agree that it heals and grows us -- can even help us find our common humanity.
Anyway, that's just one reaction from a fellow enthusiast. I've been reading your Norris Notes with interest, and will continue to do so. I love that you're seeking to position your writing interests within a conversation about broader human needs, and hope that this response may be useful in some way.
Thank you for the thoughtful response! I will likely read it a few times to let it soak in. Good to know there are such reflective humans prowling Substack.
To your bit at the end about these themes being bigger than America, I totally agree. I often focus on the American lens because that is where I am--not because I'm trying to keep other perspectives out. I try to tread with a bit of humility, not assume what I'm seeing is what's going on in say your Australia. Who knows, maybe there are cultures out there yearning for "subvertstructionism" due to their particular cultural moments? Hope that makes sense.
Hi Norris, thank you for replying. Some extra context here might help.
When Americans publish, they have a potential domestic audience of hundreds of millions. When Australians publish, it's only ten million. (If you move 700 copies of a fiction title in the first week of release here, we call it a bestseller.) Without much domestic audience, it's natural to make as much material as possible relevant to foreign readers, which makes it less domestically-focused when it can be. That might make our scope more cosmopolitan at times but may also weaken culture.
On the other hand, Americans fall naturally into writing for a domestic audience, and can forget to ask questions of broader scope. (For some reason, the Brits don't have that problem so much -- perhaps because they have a broad historical interest in the Anglosphere anyway.) So accepting that your foreign readership may be much smaller than your domestic readership, this is just a friendly reminder that it exists. :)
Yet because your focus is mainly sailing, that also helps. Where hiking and camping (for example) are local culture, I think sailing is more global culture with local flavour. We might not know the names of each others' fish or historical boats (I bet you've never heard of this one, for example -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couta), yet sailors can talk endlessly about boat design, handling, trimming, currents, weather, anchorages, anchors, rigging, knots, upkeep, maintenance, disaster management. It's a naturally global topic.
On the other hand, I also read about AAT and PCT hikes, and the fundamental questions for endurance hikes are different here. Australians couldn't tell you how to use a bear-bag, but could talk at length about how to deal with getting lost, getting injured, how to avoid dehydration or getting bitten to death. We cache more than resupply simply because resupply is longer distances apart. We're literally solving different problems.
Culture is permeable and malleable, adapting to shifting demographics and economics. What gets Syrian boys smoking hookahs in the same remote campground where a Korean father in a cowboy hat is making a fire for his family -- I think that's human. But I think it's not yet a literary trend -- more of an inchoate social yearning.
Either way, however you encourage it to develop will have me cheering. Keep it up!
All the best, RD.