Roxane Gay’s on HTML Giant talking about the covers of chick-lit novels and the stigma attached to their formulaic visual coding, though the feminization of book covers is taking over more than just the chick-lit genre. It’s unfortunate that women writers have to consciously avoid being pigeonholed into chick-lit genre or are marketed via book cover designs as such. Why are women forced to defend their writing as serious and distinct chick-lit?

“The far more serious problem is the sexism (or is it misogyny?) fueling this conversation, the sexism that makes women feel so defensive and that encourages people to dismiss or disrespect women’s books whether they are ‘chick lit’ or women’s fiction or literary fiction. Until we recognize and address the sexism at work here, we’ll continue wearing ourselves out by dealing with symptoms rather than the disease.”

A few weeks ago, I argued that the Internet age was uniquely well suited to selling short story collections. A few commenters did not agree with what seemed to be implicit in my argument: the idea that the “short attention span” or “ADD” culture is in fact better for short stories.

Instead, they said, short stories take more effort than a novel because the reader has to expend the energy to create a whole new world with each story they read. I wholeheartedly agree.

The problem, of course, is that what I was trying (and possibly failing) to say had nothing to do with short attention spans. …more

by Joshua Mohr

Lately people have been asking me why I decided to publish my novel, Some Things that Meant the World to Me, with a small press. Instinctively, my gut wants to lie, stammer some kind of self-justification: “Well, uh, I felt that a boutique house (note that I didn’t say “small press”) would give me more attention (i.e. answer my emails) and nurture the book in a way true to my artistic vision (i.e. not perform fellatio on the marketing department)

…more

When we say pop culture, what do we mean? John Story, in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, discusses six definitions. Do we mean culture that is popular, like Shakespeare or Dickens?

Or do we mean mass produced commercial culture, celebrity memoirs, pre-packaged music that intentionally sounds like music you’ve heard 1,000 times before, music you’ve already memorized? Are we talking about movies plotted out in marketing meetings meant to appeal to a segment of the population, instead of a segment of our brain? In other words, when we say pop culture, are we talking about the lowest common denominator, factory produced entertainment sucked down with soda pop and Kentucky Fried Chicken and everything else that’s making us fat? If that’s what we’re talking about, then I say fuck pop culture.

When did pop culture become cooler than regular culture? Was it when Britney replaced Madonna? When did we let the marketing executives into our living room? When did we stop being embarrassed by “guilty pleasures”?

But maybe that’s not what we mean. Maybe what we mean is pop culture appropriation, like Quentin Tarantino or Malcolm Gladwell. Or maybe we just mean anything popular. Maybe you think Jim Thompson’s The Getaway is pop culture. Maybe anything that’s fast-paced and fun, irrespective of where it originated or whether it makes you think or sheds light on the human condition. Maybe when I’m thinking of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, CSI, and American Idol, you’re thinking South Park, The Sopranos, Radiohead, and Flight of the Conchords. It gets complicated, especially when Kim Gordon starts designing for Urban Outfitters.

It’s possible that what we’re talking about is so undefined that the only thing we can actually discuss is the meaning of the word.

But that’s not what I mean. I love Quentin Tarantino, The Breeders, TV on the Radio, early Liz Phair. I’m looking forward to The Watchmen, the Tyson documentary, and the next great HBO series.

But when people write The Rumpus offering to cover “pop culture” I say, “We don’t cover pop culture, actually (Mainstream K. excepted).” We cover regular culture. We like books, art films, music that doesn’t sound like everything else. We will undoubtably write about things you consider pop culture. We will even write about things we consider pop culture. But not too much. All the other magazines already have that covered for us.

Fuck pop culture. We’re going to focus on everything else.