Let me see urple's "meh," and say "Who is Mallory Ortberg?" I've googled, and she's a writer or critic, but on what does her reputation rest? This is the only place I've heard of her.
The Toast is pretty great, in my opinion.
No need for the double-fake pseud there. Sorry.
I'm too uncool to fall for the "recharacterize the qualities lacking in your work as faults in your critics' souls" dodge.
The Toast is very funny, in a surreally dismissive kind of way. I'm not sure that it's important feminist work (god knows nothing I do is), but she cracks me up something fierce. The Two Monks... and Women In... posts of captions to paintings make me really happy.
And there was a list of normal developmental stages for your baby that was the best thing ever.
I'm fond of Ortberg like Fafblog -- funny as anything, in a kind-of-political way that I'm sympathetic with, but I'm in it for the funny not all that much for the political insight. The Fafblog bits I treasure are ham jello and 'that duck's tears formed the Cuyahoga river', not anything that was identifiably political satire.
Thought the review was very good and made the book seem funny. Helped that the hapless Gilmour was so Canadian I almost fell off my chair laughing.
I really don't understand this paragraph:
However, it's worth anticipating at least one possible criticism of Ortberg -- that her dismissal of men and male behavior is too wide-sweeping. I can imagine being a male novelist, or even just an actual male, and finding Ortberg wearying. Her condemnation of men writing, and also men reading, is so sweeping that it borders on farcical. Isn't it man-hating? Isn't she reinforcing the stereotype that feminists, and feminist critics, hate men? Shouldn't she be more nuanced? Shouldn't she acknowledge more fully how many good men there are in the world?
I guess for reasons related to comment seven. I can't really imagine reading even lots of Ortberg's stuff and coming away feeling really condemned and hated. She calls herself a misandrist but she isn't, like, a misandrist the way misogynists are misogynists. (Especially given the interviews where she mentions things like 30% or so of The Toast's readership being male even though they (obviously) aren't trying to appeal to teh menz and how that's neat.)
She calls herself a misandrist but she isn't, like, a misandrist the way misogynists are misogynists.
Well... we had a post here commenting on a post of hers called something like "Liberal Dude Erotica", and I had a pretty firm "Not all [liberal] men" reaction to it, despite the fact that (a) it was funny, and (b) I knew exactly the type she was talking about, and have met a couple of him on the hoof. She's definitely taking advantage of the existence of the patriarchy to allow her to be an asshole about men generally, because under the circumstances that's not serious in the way men being assholes about women generally is.
I mean, you're right, and she's right, that it really isn't the same. But I get a little sketchy about mounting a full-throated defense of it as a rhetorical position; mostly, she can carry it off because she's really funny.
I've only read a handful of her articles, but I thought this Guardian interview was disarming and down-to-earth, as well as funny.
Here's our thread, and LDE wasn't Ortberg, but another Toast writer. But it's pretty much along the lines of something Ortberg might have written.
posts of captions to paintings make me really happy
Me also. They are the best thing since captioning cats.
I've read a few of her things on the Toast that struck me as funny concepts, but the execution has never been good. And if 7.1 is supposed to be funny, then maybe I'm just humorless.
But it's pretty much along the lines of something Ortberg might have written.
#notalltoastwriters
I suspect that captioned cat paintings could hold my attention for a little while. Probably not for as long as captioned real cat photos, though. Those are hilarious.
7.1 didn't do much for me, either, when I read it, but Ortberg is too prodigious to have it all be golden, and her hit rate is IMO very high. I'd rather have all the hits and a a few misses than fewer hits with no misses at all.
I agree that the LARB piece is very incisive.
An undudely "Meh." The phrase "snark-as-smarm school of avowedly feminist online writing" occurred to me before I closed the LARB article window, but I don't know if it actually refers to anything real. It's nauseating to have to pick sides between Ortberg and Jonathan Franzen, however. ("I conclude that literacy is shit!") Maybe Flippanter or urple can recommend a book to me.
"The Complete Far Side" by Gary Larson.
I liked Ernst Jünger's On the Marble Cliffs quite a bit. The new William Gibson is, so far, a bit William Gibson-y. Does the flat affect of so much of his characterization keep him from getting much credit for female protagonists and the occasional poor protagonist?
Well... we had a post here commenting on a post of hers called something like "Liberal Dude Erotica", and I had a pretty firm "Not all [liberal] men" reaction to it…
Which, even if it had been by Ortberg, still wouldn't have been, like, indicative of actual misogyny-but-for-men, right? Unfair, maybe, but … I dunno, the idea that someone would really get up in arms over it strikes me as weird.
People seem to get up in arms only about ethics in games journalism [choking sound, punching sound] lately, though.
I think the Jünger was a last-minute cull from my orals list. I'd definitely give it a try. I don't know who serves as the official accrediting body for female protagonists.
I have to say it's news to me that seriousness is coded as male on the internet. Certainly not the case on Unfogged. If one had to pick the ten most and least serious commenters I would expect seriousness to be a predominantly female trait. (none of this should be taken as advocacy of more or less seriousness either at an individual level or a group level.)
I can imagine being a male novelist, or even just an actual male, and finding Ortberg wearying.
Enjoyed the reviewer's contraposition of "a male novelist" and "an actual male." This may be why Hemingway felt compelled to box, go to bullfights, and kill large animals and fish. Like us actual males. I think Ortberg is very funny. Hmmm.
I don't know who serves as the official accrediting body for female protagonists.
Mostly men I think.
I dunno, the idea that someone would really get up in arms over it strikes me as weird.
Yes, weird, yes, point-missing. I'm sort of worrying about the explicit misandry as constituting insensitivity to the innocently clueless ("Wait, she hates men generally? But, I'm a man. Why does she hate me, I haven't done anything wrong?"), which, maybe I shouldn't worry about so much.
And it's not that I'm actually worrying about it, in the sense that I think Ortberg shouldn't be writing exactly as she does, but that I can see it as a spot where criticism is possible.
15: I'm with urple. At best, I've been mildly amused by Ortberg.
The LARB article made me contemplate: I've always been a bit defensive about (or on behalf of) the Western canon, partly because adolescent me identified that way, partly because I really do like parts of it*, but Ortberg's schtick doesn't trigger that defensiveness at all. I'm not sure how she pulls that off, exactly. I think she really is skewering her targets, so I don't think my lack of defensiveness is due to the weakness of the attack. Probably it's some combo of the successful humor and the misandry, which I truly appreciate.
Somehow, by making the "Ugh, men" component explicit, she makes me more open to criticism of the canon.
*not that most people who attack the canon don't, but that it constitutes the vast majority of serious literature I've consumed (mostly because I stopped consuming serious literature awhile ago, when I was still focused on reading the classics - the last 10-15 years, when I've been much more aware of all the non-canon shit I should have read, I've mostly read the internet, non-literature, and history/biography. Which is an embarrassingly white guy reading path I know)
I have to say it's news to me that seriousness is coded as male on the internet.
Not on the internet more than in general.
Once you're talking generally, seriously, you're saying you haven't noticed?
32: All the canon-skewering she's doing is loving and attentive. You don't make fun of the things she's making fun of in the way she's doing it unless you enjoy them enough to submerge yourself in them.
The passage in the review that puzzles neb above would seem too conciliatory were it not followed by, and in fact setting up, this one:
Here is my response: I turn to Ortberg's work in moments when I have been patted on the head by older men who don't see it a problem that they will never imagine me as more than a child; when I am told (overtly or implicitly) that whatever I do it will never be as important as what a man does; when yet another male talent is revealed as abusive and the world fails to respond. I turn to Ortberg when I, like her, feel rather proud to wear the "misandrist" mantel. I turn to Ortberg when I want to say to the men I love that "your request of 'gotta hear both sides' has been denied."
ajay, I think the point is more "authority is coded male; authority is serious." There may also be a composite stereotype where women are stuck being neither serious nor funny, just generally trifling.
33: I suppose it is more that unseriousness is coded as maleon the internet. Say someone posts a detailed recipe for stir fried chilli ginger mammoth that involves using a small volcano to heat the wok. And another someone posts a n article about the problems of long term unemployment in rural Kansas. One of these posters is male and one female. Which way round do you think they are?
I have to say it's news to me that seriousness is coded as male on the internet.
I don't think that was said or implied in the LARB piece; "seriousness" was being referred to as something that male writers - that is, novelists and critics and such, not just dudes typing away in comment sections - arrogate to themselves. A male novelist can - according to the likes of Gilmour anyway - be "serious" whether he's wry or deadly humorous in a way that is essentially denied to women (since if they're humorous then they're frivolous, if they're not witty then they're humorless*, and if they reveal their inner lives then they're emotional and probably solipsistic, not universal). And that's what Ortberg is skewering. Updike is still taken seriously for some reason, and I think that Ortberg's work (although AFAIK she's never directly addressed his stuff) does a good job at showing why that's weird - here's a massively self-centered guy with no real problems who thinks that his problems are deep and resonant. I mean, I'm sure some of his prose is lovely, and perhaps he wrote a book or three that deserves to be remembered, but the idea that he's a towering figure? It only works as long as the canon is controlled by privileged white men.
*the "feminist" is silent
37: Have you read the LRB article? The type of authorial voice that's getting labeled "serious" seems pretty recognizable to me.
Also, I think that Unfogged is hardly a fair picture of gender relations on the internet. Lord knows Crooked Timber* is chock full of serious, self-regarding men, as the comments to more or less any Belle post quickly reveal.
Male internet banter is jocular in very much the locker room vein, and I'd bet money that the locker rooms at Harvard and Oxford are just that jocular, and just that full of men who are convinced that they must be taken seriously when they stop joking.
*commenters; not saying anything about posters
I've noticed that to be explicitly feminine is coded as unserious, but not that seriousness is coded male. ajay's 37 is more my experience--as usual, in any given cohort the women are more impressive than the men. But I'll try to keep a closer eye on this.
34: Yeah, I was going to offer that, but I wasn't sure how much to credit it.
Now that you say it, though, it occurs to me that she successfully signals being on the inside - not of the canon, obvs., but of people who know and appreciate the canon. It's the classic "only Jews can tell Jewish jokes" thing.
Which, to be clear, doesn't mean that she secretly thinks the canon is great - group criticisms by members of the group are often deadly serious.
Well, I think she secretly, or really openly, thinks the canon is great, and that she loves it, and that it is hugely flawed and ridiculous and damaged and damaging. Serious criticism combined with serious affection.
here's a massively self-centered guy with no real problems who thinks that his problems are deep and resonant
I hate this kind of thing. It's impossible to be human and not have real problems. I'm not defending Updike in particular - there are so many authors both male and female that could be described this way.
I have to say it's news to me that seriousness is coded as male on the internet.
Sort of pwned, but I'm going to make my point anyway. It's that men are by default credited as having some level of authority/gravitas. They can go ahead and go into tedious detail on whatever interests them and not, on the whole, suffer the same level of dismissiveness or ridicule that a woman would.
Like, that dude who wrote a whole book about abortion -- the Cider House Rules. That was seen as a Serious book. A woman writes about abortion and she has a vested interest, she's shrill, or childish, or wants to live without "consequences" or what-have-you.
And really, I absolutely love this. Possibly because I feel that it has happened to me nine zillion times in real life.
15 and 19 get it right. I just can't stand this stuff, where the whole point is to heap contempt on your pathetic despised enemies in a pseudo-amusing format, and make up little nicknames and categories to trivialize everyone who doesn't share your background and beliefs. It's not good when Charles Pierce and "TBogg" do it to conservatives either.
And where did this trend come from of making statements that are such ridiculous overgeneralizations that they go beyond generalization into vagueness again? The internet has agreed that by saying something like "White women need to stop doing X right now" you achieve the elusive goal of being seen as joking when you want to be seen as joking, and as serious when you want to be seen as serious. All my life I've been trained that the generalization is an example of a logical fallacy and that if anyone points out a bunch of exceptions to your rule, you lose. Where do people learn the opposite?
Like, that dude who wrote a whole book about abortion -- the Cider House Rules. That was seen as a Serious book
That's not entirely true. The literati have determined that John Irving is too popular and accessible to be taken seriously as a novelist.
43 is my impression too. I will read the LRB piece when I land (currently over, I don't know, somewhere dry looking with mountains. Possibly Mars.)
Surely LA doesn't really have a Review of Books, unless the illegal nannies are writing the reviews.
47: Does it help to think that the humor just isn't working for you? If it doesn't strike you funny, it's not going to, and there's no need for you to feel bad about it. I'm still kind of boggled that Moby doesn't think Wodehouse is funny, but I'm not holding it against him. But stipulate to the humor, as genuinely funny to the audience, and then the whole thing is going to make more sense.
52: Sorry! Since I was capable of abstract thought. I lose again.
Like, that dude who wrote a whole book about abortion -- the Cider House Rules. That was seen as a Serious book. A woman writes about abortion and she has a vested interest, she's shrill, or childish, or wants to live without "consequences" or what-have-you.
A woman novelist would be seen this way? Like Maeve Binchy or someone? I think she's taken seriously.
Maeve Binchy is taken seriously? I mean, I kind of agree that Irving isn't taken all that seriously, but Binchy really isn't. (Not that I think she should be, particularly.)
54: No, she really, truly isn't. And I saw that as someone who loves Irish novelists who write mostly love stories.
peep's point is interesting. At least I assume you were serious?
Combining this thread and the "Stroll" thread from last week, Asian woman comic makes video about her fetish for white men.
It's impossible to be human and not have real problems.
Speaking for myself, I disagree. Assuming that I'm not actually a horrible husband and father but they haven't told me yet, I'd say I haven't had a real problem since I stopped feeling depressed back in HS.
Now, a lot of that is mindset - my hedonic treadmill is set to "things are pretty good, and if they're not right now, they will be soon" - and I know that nobody controls their own mindset. I would never tell another IRL individual that they have no real problems, because whatever their problems are, they might look unsurmountable to them.
But Rabbit Angstrom? Fuck that guy. No real problems.
57.2: If you're referring to my 48, yes, that was serious. And I'm a male -- so, very serious indeed!
43 is definitely correct. I really wanted a different word than "great" in 42.last, but I couldn't find the right one, and I wanted to finish my thought.
But "damaged and damaging" are serious flaws/criticisms, and not ones that I've traditionally been open to.
Meanwhile, we've fulfilled the Heebie Rule, which states that any thread she expects to be full of comity will turn out to be full of disagreement, if not outright contentiousness.
All my life I've been trained that the generalization is an example of a logical fallacy and that if anyone points out a bunch of exceptions to your rule, you lose.
I think that generalization is necessary for satire.
I liked Ernst Jünger's On the Marble Cliffs quite a bit.
I wouldn't have figured you for a Fascist sympathizer, Flip.
She's like a lady Hennesy Youngman. I mostly like her on the toast, nice combination of Hennesy Youngman, who I enjoyed, and the Hallmark Channel.
I think it's not that seriousness is coded as masculine as the reverse; whatever men are doing is serious. Hence the author mentioned who just doesn't like women or Chinese authors... just his prerogative as a serious instructor and lover of literature, right? Whereas his female counterpart who refuses to assign any male authors... crazy feminist bitch, right?
I haven't followed The Toast all that closely, but made me laugh and laugh.
I agree that Fafblog is a great comparison, but I also feel that both Fafblog and Ortberg had/have a serious political message to communicate. Also, come to think of it, their names sound pretty similar; they should join together and become an unstoppable force known as FortBlerg!
66.2: I did enjoy that.
DO YOU WANT ME TO READ THIS TO YOU
OR ARE YOU FINALLY READY TO CRITICALLY INTERROGATE THE TEXT
is a line I would like to try out on a toddler.
C'mon.
This is hilarious:
http://the-toast.net/2014/11/06/women-rejecting-marriage-proposals-western-art-history/
And this!
http://the-toast.net/2013/09/24/lullabies-misandrists/
I feel like I've actually read quite a few things by Ortberg that made me laugh, but nothing linked in this thread is funny at all.
I wouldn't have figured you for a Fascist sympathizer, Flip.
Fascism is this particular misanthrope's greatest temptation. But it's a slippery little stiletto of a book, even in translation.
I'm still kind of boggled that Moby doesn't think Wodehouse is funny, but I'm not holding it against him.
You're dead to me, Moby! Dead! Dead!
You should probably link us something you think is funny, urple, so we can get an idea of what you mean.
Ortberg's twitter feed is a delight to read, and engage with. As is she.
Ortberg's stuff does have a political / feminist bent, but I think it's a lot more obvious if you follow her on Twitter, and it can stand coherently on its own without that aspect.
Not only have I had a pleasant time on the Toast, just now and in general, but I got a book recommendation out of the comments on praise of Rilla of Ingleside.
Ooh, thanks for sharing that one, clew!
sorry to miss another one of my guest posts but I do want to express my appreciation for having my pseud rendered as "K-sky" rather than "K-Sky."
Probably it's also linked in the back of a Phryne Fisher novel, but I sure haven't read all those sources.
I dunno, K-sky makes you seem kind of Jewish.
Presumably "k-sky" would be better still.
I previously followed and then unfollowed M____ Ortberg on twitter. Then I started following her again for the same reason I did initially: people retweeted her and the stuff they retweeted made me think I wanted to follow her.
The problem, which she shares with a number of people I follow, is that she tweets so much and retweets others so much that at slow times of the day a large proportion of the tweets I see are from her. So I turned off retweets for her account and all is well.
And then I found five followers.
LARB is one of my favorite Thai dishes but the capslock seems needlessly emphatic.
And here might be the funniest yet:
http://the-toast.net/2014/11/07/ozten-pride-and-prejudice-for-australians/
Except it has no farts. Sorry, urple!