PROFIT MIDDLE MEN CLAIM THEY ARE "CURATORS"

Websites that offer writing are a bonanza for the middleman, even those who aren’t formal publishers.  “Discovery” has become a major hurdle — how do you find writing that you like and value — or maybe even need?  “Curating” has become the word for people who can filter content, including writing.

To be formal, this is what “Dictionary.com” says.

noun

Chiefly British. a member of the clergy employed to assist a rector or vicar.

Any ecclesiastic entrusted with the cure of souls, as a parish priest.

verb (used with object), cu·rat·ed, cu·rat·ing.

To take charge of (a museum) or organize (an art exhibit):

To curate a photography show.

to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation, as music or website content:

“We curate our merchandise with a sharp eye for trending fashion,” the store manager explained.”

Note that the example of the verb is about merchandising, not about art, and that the goal is not to look for value but to look for what sells.  They are not the same thing, though our culture conflates them.

If I weren’t post-Christian and questioning the concept of souls, I’d be more comfortable with the idea of cure - ating secular arts.  But the common use of “saving” was also originally ecclesiastical.  We secularize words all the time.  Why would we want to diminish their intrinsic inspiration by promoting sales?

So let’s go to another question:  who “ordains” the middle man (who may be female or other) to be qualified to tell others what writing or painting — whatever — is important and valuable — in what terms?  Must the curator be from the same demographic as the writers?  The readers?  If only a certain kind of person can write certain books, must the readers also be limited to that kind of people?  Not many readers are indigenous — they don’t have money to buy books and no place on the rez that sells them.  So indigenous writers must write for white readers.

The Native American Renaissance of literature resulted from publishers thinking that they could likely sell writing by “Indians” the way anthropologists once became popular by explaining tribal culture.  They found people with an enough education to write, and promoted them.  The books didn’t sell.  I bought many for remainder prices.

Then books by “Indians” disappeared and those who could write went into journalism for their peers to read.  White people don’t usually read “Indian Country Today.”  Newspapers don’t cost as much as books and people like to save old newspapers or pass them on.

Our categories of genre are now so fluid that we have to rush to Google to see what “emo-writing” or animé might be.  Websites specialize in writing in the sub-genres — memoir, nature writing, personal essays, literary journalism, cultural criticism, and travel writing  —  that we already know and love.  “The Fourth Genre” is talked about in terms of nonfiction, possibly creative non-fiction.  Hmmm.  

Nonfiction is basic, isn’t it?  Before there was written fiction there was “non” itself, right?  Where does the idea come from that non-fiction is not creative?  Is it to separate marketing, non-edited-to-conformity print from — what should we call it?  Inspired?  Personal?  Edgy?

Even news personalities mixing written and oral words are subject to ear-mikes so producers in the control room can even INSIST on the personality being more aggressive or asking certain questions so as to please the audience.  Last night on PBS Judy Woodruff was practically writhing between what she was urged to ask and what Nancy Pelosi was avoiding by bulldozing her.  (I was on Pelosi’s side.)  PBS is a good example of the liberal misunderstanding of what “fairness” might be, thinking it’s an equal time issue and inadvertently validating lies and malevolent opinions.  Woodruff is fond and “liberal,”which producers think will sell.  But it also limits the audience to sympathizers. 

On the other hand, Barracuda, the email guardian that’s supposed to keep me from being shocked, prevented me from downloading an excerpt from “The Sex Lives of Birds” as though I might be seduced by a robin, brutalized by an ostrich, or start laying eggs.

author: Jennifer Ackerman
title: The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think

Actually, now that I’ve read the paragraphs and have been told that mallard ducks go in for group rape but that females have a defensively convoluted vaginal passage and can shit out unwanted sperm, maybe it isn’t for children.  This is pop science, which loves sexual issues.

Probably porn is one of the most confused genres as well as the earliest, though more likely in the beginning to be graphic.  But the money, honey!  More if it’s secret.  I was once in a bookstore in Manhattan and picked up a book that was in the celebrity section.  It was photos of famous people “flashing”, like getting out of cars with their skirts blowing up revealing . . . imagine.  The clerk practically ripped it out of my hands.  It was quite expensive.

In the family albums that remain in my hands because everyone else has died, are many bedtime photos of me and my younger brothers as pre-schoolers cavorting around naked.  Once considered innocent and even immortalized in garden sculpture, family snaps are now porn because of the panic about pedophilia.  At the time we thought what we called “bare scuddies” were cute and innocent.  Or should we assume that there were Freudian motives?

Put that aside.  Some websites insist that they want to guide people to be quality writers, but so far I mostly see directions for making money: how to propose, how to write, where to find enticing illustrations, and so on.  Some of it seems to be advice for people for whom English is a second language.  There’s nothing wrong with that but it’s not classic writing as in the canon we all used to learn in school.

When people have asked me to give an opinion of the quality of their writing, I’m always worried.  They think that I will “correct” it, but what I’m after is their own take on life.  What is unique and flavorful?  If it breaks the rules, so what?  It’s almost like cooking — do what tastes good to you.  Our school systems don’t like that.  Even at the U of Chicago, my professor said “sternly” (that was his name, Richard Stern) about a story I wrote, “This is NOT a University of Chicago paper!”  One of his duties was whipping undergrads into shape to fit an institutional template that is widely respected.  Then he added,  “But as what it is as itself, it’s hot.”  (It was about Blackfeet.  He knew NOTHING about Blackfeet.)  

You’re not supposed to get fancy with fonts or capitalization  It really bugs those who have been obeying the rules to think “incorrectness” can be part of good writing.  Imagine how they feel when they read a Trump tweet.  I do atypical things, for instance, I always bold proper names the first time I use them, because it helps to find that place again later.  The point of punctuation, like all the other pointers about clear writing, is to be helpful but not too intrusive.  

I converted to business letter writing habits of handling paragraph, dropping indentation to indicate the first sentence and skipping a space instead to create a block of print.  Cries of outrage from the academics.  

Self-publishing eliminates publisher demands.  I don’t care about “correctness” but only about intelligibility.  And that means caring about the reader because different things make sense to different kinds of readers.  Sod your publisher, who takes it for granted that they “know” readers when they don’t.  Find out about your reader for yourself.  And find “curators” who know those people.