In a book called Das Kapital, first published 154 years ago, Karl Marx predicted capitalism would, in time, transform everything into a saleable commodity.
Long before the advent of the dark web, where you can buy everything from AK47s to children to data hacked from the HSE, Marx knew that, left to its own devices, money would in time turn everything into an item someone, somewhere, would want to buy.
Now, a leading State funded Irish resource organisation for writers has, on its website, admitted that Marx [pictured below] was right, though one doubts that most of the esteemed administrators at the Irish Writers Centre own a copy of Das Kapital. No doubt on publication of this article some underlings will be given a few euro from petty cash and sent out to purchase a copy for the higher up’s perusal.
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On its website, the Irish Writers Centre urges aspiring writers to: “Get a professional headshot taken. You would be surprised how many professional writers have terrible headshots. If you can afford to, hire a professional and get a great shot. This will make you appear more serious and professional as a writer.”
As someone who has been involved in programming literary events, Insider has long held a profound suspicion of artistic types obsessed with “appear[ing]...serious”. The serious do not generally need to try to appear so. While those who want to appear serious are, in Insider’s experience, usually a good deal less intellectually serious than Lulu or Foster and Allen.
Style over substance
Insider also has a confession to make: when programming literary events, Insider has found that those he works with, tend to discriminate against writers who are all stunning publicity photographs and not much else. After reading the Irish Writers Centre website, Insider vows that such discrimination will be intensified. For it is, or a least should be, a literary festival programmer’s job to discriminate against people whose real dream is not to write books, but to be interviewed by Michelle Obama in Time magazine, and in favour of literature.
A poet of a slightly mature age told Insider a while ago that before sending her manuscript to a certain publisher she felt it would be necessary for her to “start wearing a bustier”. Said publisher does have a tendency to reject manuscripts by older women poets while accepting those submitted by lithe young ones.
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Milton Friedman.
Perhaps said publisher genuinely believes their poetry is better? Or perhaps, like those who write the content on the Irish Writers’ Centre website, the publisher in question, who is by no means alone in this, is a little over concerned with image. A writers’ physical appearance, or their ability to pay for expensive (and flattering ) photographs of themselves should play no role, zero, in their ability to get published or invited to participate in literary festivals. It should be about the writing and nothing else. And remember, these administrators of things literary are not spending their own money but yours, as without Government funding the vast majority of these organisations would cease to exist tomorrow.
'The crucial word in this bit of advice is “brand”. In some dark corner of hell Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are crying tears of joy'
In its website advice to aspiring writers, The Irish Writers Centre goes on to advise: “Have business cards made. This is essential for networking. Have a few on hand when you attend events so you can get your name out there.” Insider thought writers were meant to “get their name out there” on the basis of things they had written. Apparently, he was wrong, it is actually all about slithering around other people’s book launches and readings offloading your greasy little business cards on as many people as
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Ayn Rand.
My favourite advice for new writers on the IWC website, though, is the following: “Take a Mindshift course at the IWC. Our Mindshift courses are dedicated to various aspects of professional development including building your brand as a writer, using social media, and joining the festival circuit. They are facilitated by experts in the field and provide you with opportunities to learn some tricks of the trade and network with other professional writers.”
“Mindshift” conjures up for Insider something that would probably be organised by a cult who believe Elon Musk is the one true god on an island somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The crucial word in this bit of advice is “brand”. Here a leading Irish literary organisation, funded overwhelmingly by your money and mine, overtly descends into the language of capitalism at its most neoliberal extreme. In some dark corner of hell Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are crying tears of joy.
'Internationally, we have seen a rare instance of an entirely overt collaboration between poetry and capitalism when Maison Valentino commissioned American poet Ocean Vuong to write a poem to accompany an ad'
Crucially, the young writers are urged to market themselves as a brand, just like companies do when trying to sell you higher speed broadband, or dark chocolate, or lingerie, or a new kitchen you do n’ot really need. This is not merely about helping a writer market a particular book. It is about turning the person the writer publicly pretends to be – for that is what a brand is in this instance – into a saleable thing. Image comes first; the writing is entirely secondary.
Fashion and poetry
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Internationally, we have lately seen a rare instance of an entirely overt collaboration between poetry and capitalism when Maison Valentino, the Italian online boutique which sells items designed by Italian fashion designer Valentino Garavani - who the internet describes as “legendary” - commissioned American poet Ocean Vuong to write a poem to accompany an ad which appeared in both the New Yorker and The New York Times. The result was a ‘poem’ titled ‘Gian Giacomo Caprotti. to Leonardo Da Vinci’ which was full of Vuong’s particular variety of metaphorical windiness.
Vuong has long traded on his brand rather than his writing; particularly on the fact he was born in Hanoi, which leads many literati to want to embrace the Ocean Vuong brand in an attempt to assuage their guilt for the Vietnam War - although had they been around at the time they would likely have most been in favour of it.
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Ocean Vuong. Photo:- Tom Hines
Until Insider started doing research for this article, he had thought that Vuong’s advertorial poem was a one off. No such luck. Valentino is planning an entire campaign using literati to get rich people to buy, among other things, $990 sandals. This is what Valentino has to say about the matter themselves:
“Clothes can communicate many things, and in the case of Valentino's new campaign, the label takes a literary approach to champion not only their Fall/Winter 2021 collection, but arts and culture in general.
Rather than releasing a traditional image-heavy campaign, this year during Milan Fashion Week, the label tapped literary talents Donna Tartt, Elif Shafak, Janet Mock, Lisa Taddeo, Matthew Lopez, Ocean Vuong, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Fatima Farheen Mirza, and Raven Leilani for words that express the poetics of fashion. These authors were given a single blank page to fill (or not fill ) and through love letters, poems, and one-liners, they convey the emotions and power associated with a really good look.”
‘Literature is where we go for truth’
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It is disturbing to see Donna Tartt’s name on this list of the terminally shallow, for she is actually a good writer, but then good writers have been dragged into ghastly ideologies in the past. The discredited variant of neo-liberalism which has stalked the earth like a particularly unpleasant zombie since 2008, is just the latest to claim its kilo of literary flesh.
This matters because literature is where we go for truth. Without literature truth slowly dies. If a writer turns themselves into the hired mouth of another, that writer is finished, though they will likely be very well paid for it.
Insider, though, is always hopeful. For the alternative to hope is the ghastly possibility that Ocean Vuong might be right. Progressive writers and artists here in Ireland - those more interested in words and stories and poems and paintings and videos than in brands or helping sell sandals to millionaires - must hope that after the next election, and the advent of a Left government likely led by Sinn Féin, that the Department of Arts and Culture calls the Irish Writers Centre in for a stern chat and tells it to stop talking about brands, and get back to talking about writing.
