Letter from the Editor #3
Defending the personal essay *again*; A visit from mom; RIP MTV...?
Readers,
Hello! I’m enjoying writing these missives, and I hope you’re enjoying reading them. Read the rest of the series here. Tomorrow I’ll have one heck of a Friday Link Roundup for you.
By the by, I emailed free subscribers this week about a 20% discount on paid subscriptions for life, to make up for an Amazon Web Services outage last week that interfered with several subscribers converting to paid. Then that email got stuck in everyone’s Gmail “promotions” folder.
Oy vey. 🤦🏻♀️
Defending the Personal Essay for About the Ninety-Millionth Time
I’ve lost count of how many times someone with a big platform has taken a giant, public dump on the two (related) literary categories that mean the most to me: personal essays and memoirs. It always involves a mean kind of punching down at those of us willing to vulnerably wear our tender insides on the outside, and each time I’ve felt compelled to stand up for us.
It just happened again. Someone specifically derided personal essays on Substack. Not on my watch, Bucko.
(I’m not going to dignify the kerfuffle by explaining the who, what, where—it’s just the same B.S. all over again. And I’m not referring to the Dirt piece that essay nerds are freaking out over.)
To know me is to know that I freaking love personal narratives—can’t get my hands on, nor publish, enough of them. I absolutely devour memoirs and personal essay collections. Sometimes I read fiction, but the novels I prefer read like memoirs. This is the writing I naturally gravitate toward. It moves me, expands my understanding of what it is to be human, and makes me feel less alone in this crazy world.
To know me is to know that I freaking love personal narratives—can’t get my hands on, nor publish, enough of them. This is the writing I naturally gravitate toward. It moves me, expands my understanding of what it is to be human, and makes me feel less alone in this crazy world.
For a long time I firmly believed personal narratives alone could effectively change the world. The backlash against all kinds of social progress in this country has sadly disabused me of that notion—that there’s a direct line between the sharing of true stories, and meaningful, lasting social change. But I still very much believe it’s possible to open people’s hearts and minds through personal writing. And I find the identification that takes place between writer and reader to be incredibly valuable.
This is the kind of exchange I live for: A skilled writer compellingly shares an experience they’ve had, lending new insight, often into a phenomenon that is somewhat common or mundane; a reader suddenly understands their own similar experience in a new, more expansive light; the reader reaches out to tell the writer how much they identified; both feel seen, and understood, and less alone.
***
Currently I’m reading Diane Keaton’s 2011 memoir, Then Again. While on vacation in early September, back-to-back I inhaled Molly Jong-Fast’s How to Lose Your Mother one day, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s All the Way to the River the next. My all-time favorite book, the one I always come back to, is Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.
Somewhat famously, I love Joan Didion’s essays that are more personal, not just “Goodbye to All That,” (duh) but also “On Keeping a Notebook,” “Why I Write,” “On Self-Respect,” etc. (Somehow I still haven’t read The Year of Magical Thinking or Blue Nights. I have copies of both, and I need to get on that! I’ve been too conflicted to read Notes to John, containing her posthumously published journals. )
A dozen years ago, I turned my admiration for Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” into the cornerstone of an entire career built around personal essays and memoir. Inspired by it, I published two essay anthologies about loving and leaving New York City. I went on to serve as the personal essays editor at Longreads for several years. In addition to publishing personal essays every week here at Oldster, I also publish another magazine on Substack called Memoir Land, which features, and is all about, first-person writing. (And which has a “Goodbye to All That” section.) Plus I’ve published a memoir of my own.
So, yeah, I’m deep in it. Obviously I’ll keep working in these categories as a writer, editor, and publisher—and defending them for as long, and as often, as is necessary.
And here’s my brilliant recommendation for people who don’t enjoy personal essays and memoirs: Just don’t read them. Maybe that will leave you less inclined to shit on them. Think of all the time that will save you.
Going Through Old Photos with Mom (and Taking New Ones)
My mom came to visit last weekend. We had the loveliest time—playing Rummikub, going for walks around my neighborhood, visiting with friends of mine whom she’s met before, eating, eating, and eating some more.
She got to meet my friends’ 2-year-old son, and they hit it off instantly. My mom, a long-time elementary school teacher, has a great affinity for little kids. After we all had lunch together, the toddler grabbed my mother’s hand, led her over to our piano, climbed up on the bench, and proceeded to play “moosic” for her.
On the final evening of her visit, I took a box of old family photos down from a shelf so we could look at them together. We’ve done this before, but not with a particular album, my falling-apart “baby book,” containing the earliest photos of me as an infant.
At the beginning of the month, on my birthday, I’d flipped through it on my own, realizing maybe for the first time just how young my mom was when she had me. She was just 25.
It was kind of wild bookending a 60-year time span in this way. The disintegrating album holding the photos made me appreciate just how long a span of time that really is.
It also made me appreciate that the photos, and our physical forms, have survived in better shape. Time to transfer the pics to a new album…
RIP MTV
Is MTV dead? I think it might be? I’m not going to pretend I understand the difference between MTV “Shutting Down Some of Its Music Channels After 40 Years” and being completely dunzo, but a lot of journalists and music fans are now eulogizing the channel that pioneered music videos, so make of that what you will.
Also, MTV co-founder and former Viacom CEO Tom Freston has a new book, Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu, due out November 18th. (Vulture/NYMag has an excerpt.)
So I’ve been thinking a lot about my time working at MTV News.
I was 29 when Michael Shore, the head of news, initially called me in to freelance there. Ironically, it was the first time I’d ever felt old for anything.
I was so flattered and excited to be asked, I took a week’s vacation from my day job writing gossip and arts pieces for WWD and W in order to do it. As jobs went at Fairchild Publications, mine was pretty plum, but the company was mainly known for trade magazines, and I was eager for opportunities to be taken seriously as an arts journalist, and make my way out of there.
I had no idea how to write 30-second news scripts, but I was eager to learn, and I’m a quick study. Still, I was nervous.
***
When I arrived that first day, I immediately felt old. The office was decorated like a playpen.
As I was busy trying to learn how to efficiently string together the words Kurt Loder and Tabitha Soren would speak, an 18-year-old summer intern lobbed a beach ball over my cubicle wall. With no time to waste, I let the shiny plastic toy sit on the floor as I kept hammering out my copy. After a few minutes, the intern came around to my desk.
“You didn’t hit the ball back,” he said, looking dumbfounded and a little crestfallen.
“I’m…working…?” I said.
The beach ball wasn’t the only indication that I didn’t belong there. A bigger problem: I wasn’t fluent, or even conversant, in current rock, pop and hip-hop. I had to spend half my working hours in the Viacom building searching Nexis and Netscape (pre-Google!) to figure out who the hell I was even writing about.
But I was good at reporting and writing the news, and I appreciated the challenges this particular gig posed for me. I was happy to be called into work there fairly often. Being in a different kind of newsroom than I was used to made me a better writer, and the need to be succinct made me a better editor.
***
I had a weird knack for being called in to freelance at MTV News when major performers died—Biggie Smalls and Jerry Garcia, to name a couple—meaning that a fair amount of my work there was writing obituaries. It was another journalistic muscle I didn’t mind further building. There’s an art to it. I love a good obit.
And now, MTV is meeting its end—or some parts of it are. Well, thanks for the memories, and for the lessons in obituary- and TV script-writing. RIP.
Okay, that’s all for today. Thanks for reading, and subscribing. I’m grateful! 🙏💝
I TOTALLY thought personal essays could change the world. Well, maybe not, but you said it perfectly. They can open hearts!
Hey Sari, Happy people don't write ugly responses. Not that we're happy all the time. Of course we're not. But we have a tolerance and a curiosity that makes us want to know what life is like for others - to expand our own appreciation of Life, not to pass judgment. Oldster and your writing are gifts. 🌟 ⭐️ 🌟 ⭐️ 🌟