The Power of McSweeney’s

THE FIRST INACCURACY

WHEN I discovered the Johannes Lichtman review of Magic Hours in the Oxford American, a review which smears the Underground Literary Alliance in its first paragraph, I sent Lichtman a brief email asserting that Tom Bissell’s essay was dishonest and filled with distortions. Lichtman’s response was, predictably, filled with condescension, defensiveness, and hostility. He said, “—show me the specific sentence where I (not Bissell) wrote something inaccurate—“

I found the sentence he’s looking for at the very outset, before Lichtman’s review itself, before any Tom Bissell quotes, when Lichtman describes Magic Hours as “—a book from a small, independent publisher.”

How small and independent—how “indie”—is the McSweeney’s outfit?

I could write a book on the matter, but I don’t have the space here for a book. I made a brief examination of the McSweeney’s organization. I found:

-McSweeney’s chief Dave Eggers is published by one of the biggest book companies in the business, Random House, which in turn is owned by the gigantic media conglomerate Bertelsmann. All paperback versions of Dave’s novels are published by Random House.

-Dave Eggers is celebrated by the literary establishment, as evidenced by his having won a Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, and been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

-McSweeney’s is regularly involved in joint publishing ventures with these huge outfits. For instance, the yearly Best American Non-Required Reading series is a joint project with Houghton-Mifflin. The relationship has been ongoing for ten years.

-Eggers wife Vendela Vida, co-editor of McSweeney’s flagship The Believer, is published by HarperCollins, owned by the Rupert Murdoch media empire.

-Believer co-editor Heidi Julavits is published by Doubleday, part of Random House, which is part of Bertelsmann.

-Regular Believer contributor and long-time ULA antagonist Daniel Handler is a hugely successful author estimated to be worth a few hundred million dollars. His books are cranked out by two corporate publishers, HarperCollins and Little, Brown. Here’s an article about the author, from the New York Times, which discusses Handler’s immense wealth:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/magazine/10lives-t.html

-National TV celebrity Amy Sedaris is regular contributor to The Believer. She does a monthly column for the journal entitled “Sedaritives.”

-Other regular contributors to The Believer are successful, award-winning authors published by the “Big Six,” who also carry clout within the halls of literature. Rick Moody and Jonathan Lethem are two of them.

-McSweeney’s cultivates relationships with international celebrities who are themselves controlled by conglomerates. In 2010, McSweeney’s published a collection of writing edited by famed movie director Judd Apatow. Contributors included Jon Stewart, David Sedaris, Adam Sandler, and Steve Martin, as well as big-name dead writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most recently, McSweeney’s published a book by internationally known rock musician David Byrne.

-Big name authors published by flagship boutique journal McSweeney’s include Jonathan Franzen and Joyce Carol Oates.

-The McSweeney’s gang has a business relationship with at least one of the influential media outlets which review their books. Note this announcement at Salon.com from 4/15/10 in which Salon editor Kerry Lauerman announced “Our new partnership with McSweeney’s.”

http://www.salon.com/2010/04/15/mcsweeneys_2/

Incidentally, in 2012 Tom Bissell, himself a former Salon writer, was the subject of a gushy profile by Salon writer Katie Ryder titled “Secrets of Creation,” about Bissell’s McSweeney’s-published book.

-Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s books are regularly reviewed and lauded in America’s three main establishment book review outlets, New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker. This is evidence of a large profile and major media approval. Eggers is regularly profiled in large circulation glossies like Vanity Fair.

-McSweeney’s has established relationships with city bureaucracies not just in San Francisco, their home base, and Brooklyn, but across the country. For example, the City of Philadelphia named Dave Eggers’ What Is the What the selection for its “One Book, One Philadelphia” celebration for 2008, the novel the centerpiece of lectures, panel discussions, exhibits, and other activities throughout the city.

-One of the fundraising arms of the McSweeney’s empire is 826 National, founded by Dave and Vendela, an educational service with chapters in Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Brooklyn, and Washington D.C. These outlets include boutique retail stores.

Supporters of 826 National include notable public figures James Franco, Robin Williams, Zadie Smith, Phil Jackson, Ira Glass, Jon Stewart, Spike Jonze—who co-authored a movie screenplay with Dave Eggers—and many others.

Board members of 826 National, in addition to Dave Eggers, include a Director of Corporate Communications at J.P. Morgan; an “Investor” at Comatus Capital; a California Deputy Attorney General, the Deputy Counsel to the Mayor of New York City; a Vice President at Time Warner Cable; a Senior Vice President and Senior Portfolio Manager at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; and others.

Major donors to 826 National include Google and Microsoft.

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These aren’t slurs, Mr. Lichtman, though Dave Eggers and his gang may take them as such. They’re documented fact.

“Dave Eggers is the most powerful individual in today’s U.S. literary world,” is an opinion.

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Here’s another take on the McSweeney’s organization:

http://www.mobylives.com/Backlash.html

Note that this piece is from 2002, when journalists and writers were still free to express truths about the literary world. Yet hints about “backlash” from the literary establishment’s media lapdogs are present in the article.

Since 2002, McSweeney’s has grown only more influential and powerful.

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When Johannes Lichtman, at an Oxford American blog devoted to indie literature, designates the McSweeney’s organization as “a small, independent publisher,” is this accurate?

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(Buy the satirical novel The McSweeney’s Gang at Nook or Kindle.)

Good Guy or Bad Guy?

THE TRUTH ABOUT DAVE EGGERS?

After looking at the literary machine and a few of its players, we come to the question: What’s the truth about Dave Eggers? Is he in fact the image he portrays? Or is there a more ruthless side to him, a la the character Fake Face in my ebook novella Crime City USA?

Saint or Cynical Operator?

I’ll say up front that as a past leader of the now mothballed Underground Literary Alliance (ULA), I’m not objective about the matter. But, unlike almost anyone else, I have nothing to lose, and so I’m free to speculate.

The answer to the question comes down to whether Eggers believes his own presentation. Has he swallowed his own bullshit? If he has, it would explain his anger at critics. It’d be natural that he’d become hostile toward anyone who gets in the way of his sainthood.

On the other hand, the way he sets up and manipulates charities, and thereby his flawless image, could indicate the other possibility. His famed “Heartbreaking” “Staggering Genius” memoir for example was psychologically manipulative; hugely effective with those naive bourgie writers immediately younger than himself. Anyone older than Eggers was immune to the narcissistic presentation—unless they lived in a bubble all their life.

Was the manipulation—which continues to this day, obviously—instinctive, or part of a conscious plan? This is important in knowing how shrewd he is. Maybe he really is a naive good guy who out of pure instincts has accidentally fallen into his empire. If true, this would be limiting. It would show him to be as strictly limited in intelligence and smarts as his narrowly focused acolytes.

MCSWEENEYITES

Whether Dave Eggers is innocent good guy, evil bad guy, or a jammed-together psychotic hybrid of both possibilities, determines his attitude toward both colleagues and congregants. The Saint would feed on their worship and adulation. The Operator would have nothing but contempt for their gullibility and sheep-like behavior. I’d have to think that even the Saint would begin to question their unquestioning obedience. Who could possibly respect the stream of blindly sycophantic reviews—see Pico Iyer—which compare The Dave, marginalized but powerful cult leader, with the likes of Hemingway?

What do we make of the title of the gang’s current flagship, The Believer? Is that how the cult leaders see the magazine’s standard reader? Is it a tongue-in-cheek and very cynical mocking of the cult; the game?

PEERS

While it’d be difficult for anyone who can see the world clearly to respect those who believe the p.r., Eggers’s colleagues are a different matter. Let’s take them in stages.

Jonathan Lethem and Ben Marcus. The gang’s front men “intellectuals,” a notion which, for anyone who’s actually read them and tried to decipher their “ideas,” is comical. They’re stooges propped up by today’s cronyistic literary system. They survive strictly on cronyism and a manipulated media. Moreover, the largesse, unlike that given to Eggers, is not of their own making. Do you think Eggers respects these guys? Really? I think Eggers knows that in a debate, say, with myself, the two stooges would be ripped into pieces. He’d have to know it, if he has the sense he appears to have.

Daniel Handler. Lemony Snicket’s attacks upon myself and this blog, using the name “Jimmy Grace,” including his crank emails and phony mail, were ridiculously childish. There’s a reason his friends recommended he become a children’s author. It’s clearly the way his mind operates. Despite how much money Handler has accumulated—no doubt more than Eggers—he remains secondary in any relationship with The Dave. Thuggish, simplistic, not very bright but with childlike malice, a one-dimensional thinker: Handler is easily manipulated. One sees him as an overgrown kid. “Hey guys! Let’s torture some cats! Let’s get our magnifying glasses and burn up some bees! Let’s throw rocks at Mr. Parker’s dog! No?” Handler frowns because the gang won’t go along with his own ideas. But Dave can certainly think of one or two things which will make his half-witted friend happy.

Hiram F. “Rick” Moody III. Moody is a different matter. Before Eggers came along, Rick Moody was the coming young establishment writer. He’s proved his adeptness at gaming the literary system. It took Eggers to take such machinations and shell games to another level. Eggers has to respect Moody, without seeing him as his equal. Dave Eggers has done things bigger and better. He also knows that Rick, who comes from Big Money on both sides of the family, has had an easier path. Moody doesn’t have Eggers’s will or energy. Like Handler, Rick Moody has fit naturally into a secondary position in the McSweeney’s operation. He offers, due to his passive personality, not a shred of a threat. Don’t think for a moment that people aren’t like animals—like a pack of dogs. Within his gang, Dave is the Big Dog and can only be the Big Dog. His associates are instinctively accommodating.

Vendela Vida. The Dave’s wife and closest colleague. I can’t say I know much about her. Only what I’ve heard. She seems to be ambitious, with a powerful ego. Whether or not The Dave is in fact very ruthless, she’s said to be. Perhaps Vendela is the “bad guy” side to his personality?

RIVALS

As I stated in the post previous to this one, only one literary figure has faced up to Dave Eggers and gotten away with it. (We in the ULA didn’t.) Eggers has since done nothing to remedy the situation, which is telling.

This causes us to wonder about his ultimate survival in the literary game.

I believe his prospects are better than those of many. With his emphasis on nonprofits, Eggers has built his empire to survive the loss of Big Publishing and Big Media. The future is bright, if he survives long enough to see it. It’s within the present shaky literary system that one questions his prospects, based on his old-fashioned gang leader personality. The system draws ever more toward consensus and integration, in reaction to the ebook chaos outside the establishment castle. Witness the Commisar-like arguments of Insider lit figures such as Leon Wieseltier issuing panicked screeds against individual economic behavior and the liberating freedom of ebooks.

Despite the stage scenery which justifies the fundraising, Dave Eggers appears to be apolitical and non-ideological. His recent actions bolster this viewpoint—including the Gunter Grass controversy. Particularly in his Saint side, he’s more interested in the cult of self—while other powerful figures on the literary scene are interested in power for the sake of power. Like him, they may want a benevolent “liberal” dictatorship overseeing literature, but they want a dictatorship of the machine. Could Eggers blend in as a low-profile cog in the larger operation? Not likely.

In temperament, Dave Eggers is Dutch Schultz, not Lucky Luciano. The consolidating, paranoid machine allows him his territory—for now.