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Personal News and/or Shoutouts for Pals
Hey CNFers, The Front Runner is officially out. I like to think I don’t ask for much, but now is the time buy a copy or three and, if you read it, you know the drill, need ratings and reviews. I won’t read them because I don’t want to be driven insane, but that’s the world we live in: ratings and reviews. Your call to action to support the book, me, and ye ol’ CNF Pod. If you’re still on the fence, and why would you be, there’s an excerpt of the book over at Lit Hub. Dig it.
Next two events are July 17 at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle at 7 p.m. and July 27 at Gratitude Brewing for a live taping of the podcast, 1 p.m.
I also started what’s proving to be a pretty popular venture called Pitch Club. It’s at welcometopitchclub.substack.com and I have a writer audio annotate a pitch. It’s tactical and it’s practical. It’s going to help you get where you want to go.
“I don’t have to state too baldly what that all means. And because I think part of it is that I’m incapable of stating things like that baldly. I’m not smart enough. I lack the language and the real rhetorical muscle to state things baldly. I’d rather not hit it on the nose, because I have bad aim.” — Nick Paumgarten, staff writer for The New Yorker
Link to a mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 478.1
Wow, so today we have Nick Paumgarten and can I tell you something? Nick has long been my favorite New Yorker profile writer. Whether it’s profiling Mikaela Shiffrin or Mr. Money Mustache, or features about elevators, teaching birds to migrate, the Eagles winning the Super Bowl, or a feature about a potentially sketchy restaurateur, he is appointment reading. I see his name in the table of contents of an issue of The New Yorker and I will stop just about everything I’m doing and spend the next hour or so reading Nick’s work. Over the years, he’s been the model, for me, as the perfect profile writer.
So Nick Paumgarten is a long-time New Yorker staff writer. You know, it’s funny, since I’ve never landed a big feature at a big magazine like The New Yorker, I kinda feel like a phony, a fake writer, even though I have two books under my belt. When Nick and I were off mic, he was saying how because he hasn’t published a book yet, he feels like a fake writer. This is Nick fucking Paumgarten saying he feels like a phony. It goes to show, none of us feel good about ourselves.
In this episode, we talk about:
- The reporting suggesting the root system of a piece
- Loosening your grip
- Stories being like a rip tide
- Need a lede to work first
- Befriending chronology
- And the nerdery
I mean, great stuff. I was finally put in touch with Nick by CNF Pod alum Jared Sullivan, the author of the brilliant book Valley So Low, of Ep. 443 fame, and I’m so glad we got to make this happen.
CNFin’ Snippets
“I think the ego in me, the glory hound in me, the selfish part of me, which is a big part of me, wanted to write rather than edit. And so I made that decision.”
“I certainly wouldn’t say I’m having fun while I’m doing it. I’m one of those complainy writers. You know, it’s a pain in the ass.”
“I know there’s a root system there, and the reporting suggests that root system.”
“I’m a guy who needs a lede. I need the lede to work. I need it to be compelling. And it doesn’t have to be the best place to begin. It just has to be a place to begin that works, that amuses and sucks you in.”
“Just piles. I’m a piles guy. And I have notebooks, pieces of paper, legal pads, various, Word files open. I write in Word, still. I just got Scrivener. I’m working on a book, and, I got Scrivener for that, which was kind of an interesting move for me.”
“I’m just, just kind of a sloppy person.”
“I need someone to tell me this is great, and then they can tear me to pieces.”
Nick’s Recs
The band The Bug Club
Jui Jitsu
Parting Shot: Death to Velvet Sundown
It wasn’t until the other day that this thing came up, this AI band by Spotify called Velvet Sundown. The fact that AI bands are a thing is one of the many mounting insults to humanity as we know it. The fact that this fake band has more than 1 million followers is all the more upsetting.
Two things hit me almost right away: I need to see more live music and I need to own more analog music delivery systems. I still have a small cache of CDs from high school that I listen to in the car. I have a burned CD called “BO’s Walkin’ to Class Mix” that I made in the fall of 2000. It’s … an experience … I’ll talk about that another time.
But what’s even more disturbing about Spotify is the CEO, Daniel Ek, has invested something like $700 million in AI tech for the fucking military. Listen, I understand we need armies and shit (I guess), but the glut of funding the war machine at the expense of so many other things….. How about we skim off a billion of military spending? Send 10,000 kids to college, debt free, if the average four-year degree costs around $100,000. Anyway … can’t have that …
Fact is, the algorithms, AI, is ever so insidously nudging us into numbness, to keep blunting the edge of our taste until we’re consuming the most banal art imaginable. The only thing we can trust is IRL: in real life.
That’s the vision that Ruby McConnell and I had as we do these live podcasts. With AI taking over, eroding our trust in what’s real and what’s not, what’s unmistakably real is gathering as a community and celebrating reading, music, and conversations. It’s all we can trust. And these tech giants think they’re the arbiters of culture, the gate keepers of taste. No. They are a poison. Worse, they are a parasite sucking the blood of our data, our attention, and we do it willingly.
Yes, I still pay $16.99 a month for spotify because, in theory, it’s amazing. All this music in my hand? Oh, I want to listen to The Queen’s Gambit Soundtrack? The Arrival Soundtrack? The Inception Soundtrack? The Batman Soundtrack? (I like to write to soundtracks). Whale sounds? Yep. Falling rain? Yep. Every Metallica record? Pantera? Gojira? Sabbath? Black Label Society?
As I’ve said before, they numb us with convenience, we sell off so much of ourselves for convenience. But it’s in the inconvenient where life really exists. Interfacing in public, be it at a live podcast recording, a concert, trivia nights, fucking Bingo, it means we have to leave our homes and interface with the public. I’m a bit of a recluse. I’m an introvert, so the idea of being around people drains my battery faster than anything, but I know it’s the way.
I peruse used CDs to find some of my favorite 90s bands and records to listen to in my car. I’m gonna go look for a used boombox at St. Vinnies today. I was never a real music nerd, but some of my favorite memories are when I was in my late 20s at a buddy’s apartment, and we listened to Tool and Metallica records beginning to end while we drank Budweisers and ate Ramen. Listening to a CD beginning to end, the way the artist intended is magical.
Spotify’s days are numbered, not in the culture, but in my culture. They treat artists like shit and this AI nonsense and military investment has eroded what little trust I had in the service to begin with.
My rage against the algorithm newsletter feels more relevant by the day. Go subscribe.
Many Moons Ago
400 Episodes Ago
Louisa Thomas on Problematic Writers, Mercenary Work, and Picking Up the Phone
300 Episodes Ago
Elisa Gabbert — Tweet-Size Ideas and Letting Time Do the Work
200 Episodes Ago
Having a ‘Blast’ with Volcanologist Jess Phoenix
100 Episodes Ago
- Should you use this, please check against the original audio and cite me and the show. ↩︎
