So, I opted to wait to comment 'til it appeared others had had their say about my essay. As the number of comments have remained at a total of 37 for a good number of hours, I think now is a good time to offer my own follow-up thoughts.
First, I want to thank the majority of folks for whom the essay resonated and also those few who were less than enthused. The reason I thank both groups is because if anything, I think the essay served to be something of an ice-breaker in terms of discussing some of the negative behaviors we all witness in online spaces among writers and publishers alike.
Next, I want to remind that larger group for whom the essay resonated of the old Chinese proverb, "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness." I remind you of that because while I understand much of the frustration expressed in your comments, the proverbial darkness surrounding dogpiles, smear campaigns, false accusations, and damaged reputations is going to continue to exist. Reason being, social media is anarchic, and when it comes to online mobs, there is no central authority to appeal to for redress.
Recognizing that fact, the way I've chosen to light a candle is not simply to have written the essay above. I also host the On the Record blog, where James Diaz' Testimonial is archived. If you're a writer or publisher who's been the target of a dogpile and/or smear campaign where your peers have defamed and libeled you, then I am more than willing to try and help you, should you wish. And, I will do so free of charge.
How can I help you? I can help you to collect, organize, and analyze the “receipts” of any dogpile and/or smear campaign to which you’ve been subjected. And, to aid you in composing an argument that pushes back against any lies your peers told about you, and/or illogical arguments they made against you. Such a testimonial can be shared with individual writers or publishers should they come to you with questions based on rumors or gossip they heard. Or, it can be shared online via social media if deemed necessary to more publicly counter your detractor(s), most especially if they seek to continue (or resume) their smear campaign against you.
Please note, I understand how collecting, organizing, and analyzing such data about yourself can be triggering. As such, I can do as much or as little as you wish in terms of interacting with such derisive materials. I can also serve as a sounding board for sorting through all the myriad accusations and claims made against you in order to focus on those which are at the heart of the smear you suffered. In so doing, I can help to restore at least *some* of that sense of Self you had before your peers screwed with both your head and your reputation, and also provide you with something tangible to push back against any continued campaigning on their part.
With all that in mind, if you've been a target of an online dogpile and/or smear campaign and feel a testimonial would help you, then I can be reached by email at midnightlanegallery@gmail.com, or on Twitter @BAD_ACID_LABS
I’ll add, in the closing paragraph of the “Contextualizing Hobart Pulp,” I asked those who are tired of being passive bystanders and might wish to participate in awareness raising campaigns for their thoughts. But, the only two people in the comments who shared their thoughts on that matter was James Diaz and Alina Stefanescu.
This, I will admit, was a tad disappointing. Though, I’ll acknowledge the lack of curiosity related to what an awareness raising campaign might look like could at least be in part due to the open-ended manner in which I posed the question. And, little concrete detail as to what such an awareness raising campaign might entail, beyond my offering James’ testimonial and Michael Schmeltzer's FB slideshow as suggested reading.
Here, I think the question is, how might you light a candle? First, consider taking your primary focus off those who do the targeting and place it instead on those who've been targeted. For, the latter group is far and away more important than the former from an ethical perspective. Moreover, from a practical standpoint, it’s far easier to help one who’s been targeted than it is to change the collective behavior of a group of bullies.
Next, consider speaking up for those who’ve been targeted. Speaking up can be as simple as posting a testimonial on your social media platform, should a target desire such aid in order to help them rewrite the false narrative others have composed about them. Becky did that for James when she promoted their testimonial recently on this very Substack, as did Misery Tourism when they replatformed some of James’ poetry. If you’re a writer and/or publisher, others might need similar help from you promoting their stories or deplatformed work in the future. (And, you never know. You yourself might need such help in the future.)
If you wish to be an active bystander in pushing back against those cases where the Wisdom of the Crowd turns out to not be any too wise, then you can reach me at the same email address or Twitter handle I left earlier in this comment. Beyond building a pool of participants potentially willing to post any future testimonials, I'd also certainly appreciate volunteer help from anyone with a social science background in qualitative research to aid in collecting, organizing, and coding materials such as tweets and Facebook posts, should the need arise. For, I sense there’s a very good chance that need will arise.
If you have any related experience, I’d be glad to hear from you. Hell, if you have no experience at all, but wish to learn some basics in terms of conducting qualitative research and utilizing the findings to perform victim advocacy relative to online bullying, I’d also be glad to hear from you.
An element missing from this fantastic write up is that in the current climate where most literature exists in a closed-world community of other writers, the lack of external measures of success means that gaining "clout" functions more like high school cliques than like any meaningful engagement between writers and critics.
Thanks so much for this important post. It is so well reasoned and explores elements of this issue I was unaware of.
I am proud to have work up on several of the journals you list – first because of the quality of the company my poems are situated among, and second because of their courage in the face of the purity police. As an old leftist living in Trump country, I confess I have more productive conversations with my right wing neighbors than many of my fellow lefties.
I think the closest analogy: when the fellow next door argues with me about the election, he does not immediately demand I return his pressure washer I borrowed. Nor does he demand I stop writing poems about his son (who I loved as an only a neighbor can), lost to suicide – even when those poems challenges his beliefs about gun rights.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful post. I am so glad to see an in-depth discussion of this phenomenon, which I find very concerning and upsetting. I think your suggestions of ways to protect journals and writers from being pulled under are important to consider. I would not want to be an editor of a journal in this climate. Editors are, in my opinion, heroes for putting themselves out there and facing this kind of wrath because of the decisions they make about what and who to publish. It's hard enough being a writer. I feel that having to use the word courageous (you are courageous for this post!) to describe editors and writers in this climate is indicative of what is so problematic right now.
Thank you very much, Susan. I also want to be clear that I am not the author of this article. For some reason, the author's name did not come through in the email that got sent out. It is written by Editor and Poet Johnny Longfellow and he deserves full credit. I agree that he did a stupendous job outlining the situation and offering practical remedies.
Ah, you just answered the burning question I came away with, which was who wrote the essay. I wanted to know what kind of authority and or credibility was behind its author. Especially because I had a piece published by Hobart which is still in their archives. Or it was, anyway. I wish Johnny would have just summarized in one quick sentence what happened in that interview with Hobart,'s EIC and a contributor. I'm dying to know if I should pull my piece or not.
As a new writer who wants to talk about some sensitive issues from a personal viewpoint that diverges from the accepted norm in literary circles, I worry about where/if/whether I will get those ideas published.
I don't know the details of the "mis-step" (a term that sounded like 1984 New Language to me when I read it and is a charge that sounds handy and ready to use to facilitate the "re-education" camps), but I can guess.
Firstly, I'm convinced Lenny Bruce would not be allowed to even breathe today. Today's electronic left has an active lust for censorship and a burning desire for groupthink, and that part of us, therefore, is no better than the MAGA cult. Maybe worse, because the veneer of "free speech" is just a gauze shield you can see right through with them.
Secondly, I can't keep track of what products I'm not supposed to buy, what magazines I'm not supposed to read, what websites I must block, which actors I'm supposed to boycott, and what words I'm not supposed to use.
Thirdly, fuck that shit all to hell.
I print out all the online stuff I have published here and there and file them in a box all with the physical publications that published me. I am in the process of republishing everything on Patreon - specifically in the case of hivemind crap like this.
When we were doing Thrice Fiction I published a writer who wrote a story that contained the "N-word" not in the form of "N-word" but in its actual word (and don't get me started about the gymnastics I just had to do to tell you about it just now). In the story, it was used by a bigot. The story concerned a guy who made it his life's mission to actually travel the country and piss on the graves of every racist segregationist he could think of. It was used because that's the way his opponent would talk, ffs. I got a couple of emails complaining and basically told the senders to go fuck themselves. Nothing came of it, but I almost wish it had because I was ready to go to war about it.
I look at young "reactors" on YouTube looking at old movies and cringe when the morés of today don't match the morés being depicted and their visceral, even predictable, reactions make them look either like Puritans or pearl-clutchers.
Put me down as ready to fight about cancellation, labeling, and what can only be described as cyber-bullying - a phenomenon that depends on the bully being and staying cowardly annonymous. /rant.
There's cancellation and then there's critique. Unfortunately, the two are currently conflated.
The interview was truly pretty dumb; the author spoke of "masculinity" in histrionic and frankly ignorant ways, as someone who also loves many of the same 'problematic' male authors (claiming a lineage of masculinity without acknowledging Papa Hemingway's *blatant* genderqueerness in 2022 is frankly absurd lol). If you're looking for a cancellation hill to die on, this ain't it.
However, I do share many concerns about the myopic nature of literary aesthetics right now, and he's a good example of how the push for diversity becomes problematic because it 1) hems in writers into this very specific 'regionalized' and politicized-in-the-sense-of-very-specific-politics aesthetic that is liberating for some marginalized writers and confining for others and 2) does not guarantee that you don't have a 'diverse' asshole writing behind the screen. I wish that a better and more nuanced interview had sparked this controversy because this guy was way too easy to dismiss and as such, the real problems aren't going to get discussed.
I read the actual original interview and it (referring to that, not this post) was interesting. The whole issue is so convoluted. I felt a lot of the content was both provocative, in the current climate, and also kind of substantively reasonable, AND presented (by both in interviewer and inerviewee) in an eggregiously bombastic manner--a sort of dare-devil move. So my sympathies are very divided.
I broadly agree with these sentiments - though this piece doesn't read to me like an interview but rather an essay crafted by a single person. Beyond which, it doesn't sound like it's written in your voice, Becky, which I very much do enjoy. But that only added to the confusion for me. For these reasons I'd like to suggest you consider re-distributing the essay with a clear editorial disclaimer and/or with the name of the author.
I can’t decide if this furor is more like the Salem Witch Trials or the book burning of the USSR. The American Left has become the very thing we used to despise: a mob intent on punishing or destroying anyone who disagrees with them.
No Bruce. It's not like the Salem Witch Trials OR the book burning of the USSR. In both those cases, people were killed by the state for words they published.
This "furor" is actually more like a kerfuffle in the American literary industry about an online literary magazine that published one of the longest, most whiny interviews I've ever read with a writer who sounded like he was writing a drinking game for Men's Health Quarterly. It was a a terrible interview--by which I mean, the writing was so bad that I blushed in embarrassment for the masthead. The whole thing read like a University of Iowa entitlement spree. It's fine to go trash a hotel room if you're willing to pay the cost, but not all of us can afford that.
As for who is profiting from this kerfuffle, I guarantee it's not the writers whose work was published at Hobart.
I agree with you Alina, it's not at all a good or fair comparison. Also the Hobart interview was equally awful. I'm curious though what your thoughts are on what, to me, is the more poignant part of the article, namely: online dogpiling and bullying, most especially when it happens to outlets or individuals who haven't done anything wrong? It seems to me this is a growing problem in the writing community that sadly no one really wants to talk about. Since the literary community doesn't have an HR department or conflict resolution / deescalators, it seems to me that part of the ethics of literary citizenship might be to find ways to healthily address the real harm caused by online dogpiling, harassment and bullying, and to intervene in ways that help deescalate. Increasingly people with mental health issues, addiction issues and other things that make them very vulnerable to these sorts of devastating attacks are left to feel pretty alone in it. In the past couple of years alone I've witnessed several vulnerable individuals attacked with nearly no visible support from the community. This seems very tragic to me. I hope as a community we might someday soon find ways to better support each other and make our spaces truly safe.
I think the dogpiling reminds me of high school, and the pressures of crowd behavior. In a way, it's very market-driven. It makes me sad and I hate it. I'm not sure writing spaces can be safe, or I'm not sure what that would look like, especially since safety is socially constructed on the basis of current articulations of feelings and emotions which vary from person to person?
I was sad about pulling my Hobart piece--that essay meant a lot to me, and unlike Alex's whine-fest, it was raw and dark-- but when the editors and masthead explained what was going on behind the scenes, I felt incredibly uncomfortable with 1) the amount of power Ellen had and 2) the way she displayed this power intentionally.
Per: "Increasingly people with mental health issues, addiction issues and other things that make them very vulnerable to these sorts of devastating attacks are left to feel pretty alone in it. In the past couple of years alone I've witnessed several vulnerable individuals attacked with nearly no visible support from the community. This seems very tragic to me." I agree with you and it disturbs me. :(
That said, I feel like what happened with Hobart was just a power play of the sort one sees in circles of friends who think getting an MFA at Iowa means their shit is interesting. Unfortunately, Iowa doesn't make your shit interesting. Shit is still shit, whether it has an Iowa brand or baseball team on it or not.
The Left compares conservatives to “fascists” and “Nazis” all the time, so it’s hardly a reach to compare the current climate in publishing to the Salem Witch Trials. The impulse is the same: banish everything that goes against the accepted narrative. Same impulse behind Twitter banning certain people and shutting down their accounts. I remember the “free speech” movement at Berkeley in the 1960’s, but those days and those ideals are long gone. Today the Left is a force for intolerance and narrowness of thought, and they don’t think twice about ganging up on anyone who disagrees with them.
I understand your frustration Bruce, but Alina was right to point out the vast difference between actual witch trials, which took lives, and the current dysfunction we're facing in the literary world. I think the word "dysfunction" is key here, in that we're dealing with extremely wounded individuals who are unhealthy communicators and problem solvers. The "right" has this problem too, as does every family or neighborhood for that matter. I think the more existential problem is the harassment, bullying and misinformation campaigns that many in the literary community wage from a place of real emotional handicap, and the consequences of that are quite real. I can speak from some personal experience as someone who has been a victim of my peers scapegoating and bullying, to the point that I almost didn't make it. And these sorts of campaigns have been on the rise, often against vulnerable people with mental health issues and complex trauma histories. I think it's important that we as a community find ways, rooted in restorative justice and conflict resolution, to help temper these campaigns, or at the very least to offer aid and support as Johnny Longfellow has suggested. To me this is the real problem in our community. As to banning certain speech, no one banned Alex's interview from Hobart, it's still up. People just chose to un-allign with Hobart, which in this case I think was the right call. There are plenty of venues that publish the unpublishable and controversial. I think the real threat is the massive rise of scapegoating and bullying, and it's incumbent on us to band together as a community to find ways to help temper it. (For what it's worth (and as a leftist myself) I feel you on the hypocrisy of the left, but I think what we're experiencing in our community at the moment has way more to do with untreated complex ptsd and enabling than hypocrisy. In many ways I'm tempted to say the same of the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world also.)
I should probably add that there are many involved in online smear, blacklisting and bullying campaigns who are clearly cunning and exploiting the situation to their own self interest. I think Alina's point about it being market driven behavior speaks to that as well. I think also you have quite a lot of young people in the lit community who are especially vulnerable to getting caught up and carried away in these online behaviors (although I've heard tell that some people even act this way in person at AWP). Their elders are either standing by while it happens or are the one's doing the bullying and blacklisting. It becomes addictive too I think, people get a thrill from it. There's so many reasons for it but there aren't many good reasons, or at least honest ones, for not doing anything to help stop it. And it's very interesting to me how almost no one in the comments has touched on this aspect of the article. It does seem to be out third rail. But at what cost?
It is indeed the third rail. I don't know whether you saw my general comment written after most everyone seems to have had their say, but I addressed it. It's a bit of a lengthy comment, so beware, lol.
And, just for the record, historical analogies are really limited in their applicability. I'm not into it, either. I have a great grandmother going 11 generations back who was tried and convicted for "witchcraft" in 1692--i.e. Mary Bradbury (née Perkins). This was near the end of the furor when it moved from widowed women of property with no son/male heir to inherit their deceased husband's estate to more upper-class targets such as Judge Hawthorne's wife. Mary Bradbury and her husband, Thomas, were also wealthy.
What distinguished Mary was she had her own small dairy business and was accused of selling some firkins of butter to tradesman from Gloucester that spoiled en route from Salisbury. As noted, she was tried and convicted, and would have been the woman furthest north of Boston to have been hanged, had she not mysteriously escaped the jail where she was held. She did not show up on public record 'til 5 years later. Meanwhile, Susana Martin of neighboring Amesbury became the tragic figure who lived the furthest north of Boston and was tried, convicted, *and* hanged.
1692 is a dark tale, but one that only ended when it began affecting those who were wealthy and held power. The issues I've addressed, while they can result in severe mental and emotional hurt, and a risk of suicide, nonetheless aren't even close to comparable to the horrors of 1692. Add to that, as they are more bottom-up then top-down in terms of how they manifest themselves, I don't expect that they will cease occurring, at least until Twitter decides dogpiling and smear campaigns/libel is deemed an unacceptable form of driving "social engagement." (And, driving "social engagement" is one aspect of capitalism at work, btw.)
Twitter acts as the absentee landlord in all this, doing little to nothing. This is quite unlike1692 when those in positions of authority from the church to the courts worked *in unison* with mobs to not only falsely accuse women of "witchcraft," but also to try, convict, *and* execute them.
For all these reasons, and more, what I've discussed in my essay should be treated as its own phenomenon relative to the time we live and the digital spaces we inhabit. For ultimately, not only are such analogies offensive, but they say nothing about how the behaviors discussed in my essay might be curbed, or--short of that--at least be made less problematic for those who are most ill-affected when the crowd turns out to be wrong.
You’re welcome to your theories about the source of the dysfunction, James. I’m not so interested myself. What I see is a class of people who believe in group-think and want to destroy anyone who disagrees with them. This insane ideology must be (and will be) defeated on the battleground of ideas, where free speech is a sacred right.
You're flattening individuals into a conglomerate that is dehumanizing and I'm not so sure that puts any of us in a better place, you know. The left isn't a class of people, but they are people. Again, no one is hampering Alex's free speech, and I'm not so sympathetic to someone who has his foot way more in the door than most of us. It's also sad to see how "not interested" most people seem to be in grappling with the complexities and nuances of the situation, and the very real involved in them. I tend to think that's where our work lies. Messy work but doable. And needed.
No one is hampering Alex’s free speech? Of course they are. Other lit mags are watching this spectacle and vowing never to do what Hobart did. The overall effect is to lessen what little free speech there is in the lit mag world, and there wasn’t much to begin with.
Alina said it better, but please get a sense of proper proportion here. SJWs are not the Inquisition, lol. This is highly annoying and affects people's lives, it certainly deeply affects what I feel is the 'publishability' of my own work, and I certainly wish literary aesthetics/ethics and online discussions about them would get more nuanced and sophisticated, but dumb misogyny like the one exemplified in the interview has kept women writers down since people have been writing things down and is, frankly, a *much* bigger deal.
Does that mean he should be tarred and feathered for his opinion? No, it means he should have just been logically eviscerated through discourse (and has been, here, in addition to whatever else happened). Still.
Looks like I'm in the minority here, but I feel like this column is off-key in several areas. Most of the editors I know offered to consider reprinting stories pulled from Hobart because they felt sympathy for the authors. Contrary to one of the main points in this column, I think most lit mag editors are decent people who are trying to promote stellar writing while supporting the authors. My eyes glazed before I made it through all the footnotes in the Longfellow column, but I don't recall any "competing" journals conducting smear campaigns against Hobart in regard to the Perez interview. (Do today's online lit mags really compete with each other?) Maybe I missed some instances of that? The magazines and editors I follow are generally not opportunistic vultures hoping to capitalize on another publication's downfall. And I can't blame authors for wishing to not be associated with a pub that blasted extreme political & social commentary all over Twitter. Why shouldn't authors have the right to ask that their work be removed in such volatile (and rare) situations? As the column bemoans, this is not the old days of print magazines. We're publishing in an electronic world now, and the landscape is different than it used to be. I think that's (mostly) a good thing. I do agree with the point that dogpiles are usually unnecessary and cause undue harm, and they happen too frequently on social media--but that doesn't mean we don't have the right to speak up when we disagree with something, like I'm doing now.
Most literary journals spew extreme political commentary over Twitter. It's just not extreme for the narrow demographic group you belong to. What Perez said is actually much closer to the median American who doesn't have an MA in English literature.
Absolutely right, Valerie. Literary journals are a monolithic group that always toes the liberal line. There’s a lot of cowardice in that world, which is why what Hobart did is to be commended.
Can't wait for St. Margaret of Atwood to demand she be 'de-platformed' from the archives of Playboy, that despicable magazine that first published Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451', which was about a future of book burners and thought controllers. And rush to your bookshelves to bin anything by Raymond Carver because he got his start with Esquire. The only new suggestion I would add to Johnny's recommendations is to cancel your subscription to any magazine who cancels writers. ;-)
Yeah, Atwood would be the last to do this. Much of The Handmaid's Tale is a critique of -- and the dystopian upshot of -- the ultra-feminist censorship of pornography.
Both history and human nature show that those who cancel today may themselves be canceled tomorrow [see: Brave New World; 1984 ; Animal Farm; The Trial; The Gulag Archipelago]
Thank you J. Longfellow for your thoughtful, researched insights to the Hobart incident. And a big thanks to Becky Tuch too for sharing and creating this space. To have a piece published in a lit mag, which takes only first time rights but then archives the piece on its website, has always seemed like a win-win for the writer to me--despite the potential impermanence of the online journal. (I always make a pdf of my published lit mag work and advise other writer to do this too.) Looking at this thru the writer's lens, maybe it's isn't necessarily a win. It's clearly more complex in a situation like this, albeit not common. I'm left with some questions. When the founder of the Hobart and several editors left the magazine en masse, seems that the EIC was left with sole control. Who owns Hobart? The EIC? And if yes, then does she get to call the shots? Maybe, probably. Writers are not typically aware of the structure, like ownership, of a journal beyond what they can see in the masthead. What all do we need to know about a journal before we submit? I echo what others have said in this stream that journal editors are a dedicated group of lit lovers who do a giant service to readers and writers--for the large, large part. Does Hobart have advisors? If the journal had an advisory board in place, that might have helped to manage, or maybe avoid, the mass exodus. Who knows. But possibly there could have been facilitated discussions outside of social posts that could have led to a different outcome. Given how lit mags run, on small budgets and manpower, having an advisory board may be a luxury. Some have advisors, but I don't know how common that is. When a previously published piece is "rehomed," is it published with an * or some explanation of how it was included? I don't feel or mean to say that rehoming indicates that the work is of less quality, but rthe e-published piece has taken different editorial channel from all the other submissions. This might something for the writer to consider. Archival rights is interesting--but again from the writer's view, as long as those rights don't interfere with what the writer might then do with the work (submit to an anthology, incorporate into a collection, etc.) And as a writer, I'm not sure I want to give up my right to withdraw. I've read the Hobart has recruited another top editor, so it may be that the journal moves on and this incident fades away with time. But what if the editorial direction changes? What if there are more bombastic interviews? Of course, changes in editorial direction and missteps can happen with any journal at any time. And if a piece was included in a print issue, of course you can't change that. But if the journal and editor can remove my work (if I behave badly or in a way they don't approve), should I not be able to do the same? Again, Mr. Longfellow, thank you for all the work you did on this essay. I agree with many of the points you raise and potential ways to address this ugly aspect of the lit mag publishing climate. Last question: For the writer who has published work on Hobart's archive right now, what do you suggest? Wait and see?
Sorry to have missed your comments, and not to have responded 'til now. I only became aware of your comments on 12/26/22 and needed some time to not just consider your questions, but how to respond with some degree of brevity. With all but the last question I managed to be brief, whereby I apologize in advance for the length of my final answer. Your questions were so good, I had to spend some added time flushing out my thoughts.
Anyway, here are my responses to topics you addressed and questions you asked . . .
Beyond offering those resources, I’ll just add I think you’re right. We generally have no way of knowing about the structure and internal dynamics of journals and presses, at least prior to some “drama” and “discourse” occurring, wherein they are made public.
2) Journals that "Rehome":
I'll say this. It used to be a more general practice that if a piece was reprinted, then the first publisher would be credited. That in mind, I’ve not researched whether journals that “rehome” withdrawn work are crediting the first publishers of the pieces they republish. It’s an interesting question, though, and maybe worthy of follow-up. For I would hazard to guess whether or not they end up crediting the first publisher varies from publication to publication, not to mention how, if they do.
3) Archival Rights Conflicting with Republication:
I'm doubtful added Archival Rights would present much of any obstacle to writers having their work appear in anthologies and/or collections. Most journals seek either One Time, First Serial, First Electonic . . . namely, they seek credit for being the first publisher, if not some limited right to republish in the case of First Serial. In such cases, adding Archival Rights shouldn't present any serious hurdles, but for *maybe* a publisher being concerned that such archived work would somehow cut into sales. Which seems to me far-fetched. One would have to have rather sizable cache of work included in a collection that's also archived online to warrant such a concern. And, many presses limit the percentage of previously published work included in a collection anyway, Archival Rights or not.
4) Miscellaneous Questions:
You wrote:
"I've read Hobart has recruited another top editor, so it may be that the journal moves on and this incident fades away with time. But what if the editorial direction changes? What if there are more bombastic interviews? Of course, changes in editorial direction and missteps can happen with any journal at any time. And if a piece was included in a print issue, of course you can't change that. But if the journal and editor can remove my work (if I behave badly or in a way they don't approve), should I not be able to do the same?"
I’ll only note here that to my knowledge, the EIC remains, and new staff have been hired, with the next issue of Hobart slated for early 2023.
Beyond that, for now I’ll just address your last question which reads: “[ . . .] if the journal and editor can remove my work (if I behave badly or in a way they don't approve), should I not be able to do the same?”
As a general principal I'd say sure! But, with some qualification. If a journal doesn’t assure writers their work will remain on site for the life of the site, then yes, as a general principal I would guardedly suggest writers should be able to *at least* request their work be removed. Guardedly, since even if a journal doesn’t publicly offer the aforementioned assurance, I’d still be reticent to simply assume they are willing to deplatform writers. And, if they’re against doing so, then I’d find little hypocrisy in them not honoring a voluntary request for removal, most especially if made against a backdrop of a “call out,” “dogpile,” and/or smear campaign. Though, I’d certainly urge them to be more explicit about where they stand going forward and consider how including Archival Rights in their guidelines would help make that stand clearer.
5) Your final question(s):
You wrote, “For the writer who has published work on Hobart's archive right now, what do you suggest? Wait and see?”
That question seems clearly related to others you asked in the preceding paragraph, which I quoted above, but didn’t answer. Most prominently, “But what if the editorial direction changes? What if there are more bombastic interviews?”
My answer is an unequivocal I don’t know exactly. For, what are their choices? Assume those things will happen and pre-emptively make a voluntary request for removal? Or, if they wait and see, only make their requests if and when it’s clear the editorial direction changes in a manner they personally dislike? Or, do nothing at all?
Sorry, but I've no one size fits all prescription here. I suspect writers' responses will likely be conditioned by how offended they feel, should Hobart take a different editorial direction in the future. Also, such responses will likely be conditioned by people's own underlying assumptions, along with how their peers might react. Those who assume that journals *should* adopt expansive Human Resource Department like roles, and that peers *should* inform on peers for real or perceived misdeeds via call-outs, dogpiles, deplatforming campaigns, etc. are but one subcommunity within the larger indie lit scene. Their reactions will necessarily be different from those who are more critical of such assumptions and the collective online practices ostensibly performed in the name of "accountability."
I’m more closely but not exclusively aligned with the latter camp. I generally look more askance at events that involve bad actions and institutions than I do events involving bad opinions and individuals. This is why I treated Hobart as a springboard in my article, rather than as a case study unto itself. I sought to explore related trends and past events, so Hobart might be considered within a larger context, rather than in a fashion where the individual actors and their opinions are inevitably brought to the forefront. There were already articles written in that vein, and another (from me, at least) seemed unnecessary, not to mention less important than trying to contextualize the event.
That in mind, any advice I’d have to offer would involve considering the larger indie lit ecosystem of which Hobart is but a part. Here, I guess I'd suggest writers consider questioning the utility of participating in an ecosystem that has more gatekeepers than gates. Reason being, that's the very ecosystem that made the events surrounding Hobart possible. It's one where the number of people with direct access to any given delete button is exceeded by those who lack direct access, but who nonetheless are prone to catch a nasty case of what is known as Itchy Finger Syndrome (IFS). *Most importantly,* it’s this same ecosystem that has produced other online events where reputations and psyches were unduly damaged by false and/or overblown claims. All such events—Hobart and otherwise—were borne out of assumptions about how journals *should* be adopting Human Resources roles, along with the "call-outs," "dogpiles, and deplatforming campaigns that accompany those assumptions.
Given all this, I'd ultimately suggest every writer would do well to contend with what it means to be a "literary citizen" operating within an ecosystem that has grown increasingly reminiscent of Omelas. And, with that, consider practicing social media distancing from those who all too regularly succumb to the ravages of IFS. Quarantine them if necessary, via the block button on Twitter. For the toxic nature of IFS is such that regular sufferers often exhibit condescending, snarky attitudes which afford them very pleasant feelings of moral superiority over others, most especially when another writer’s work is deplatformed. Conversely, those who've never previously suffered its effects report feeling as if their soul was run over by a large-scale, id driven tornado, leading them to do things like delete their social media accounts out of fear and humiliation. Finally, as it’s believed to be highly infectious, I’d again suggest inoculating online journals and their contributors against IFS via the adoption of Archival Rights. For, it's like Kryptonite when faced with an outbreak. And, it has the added benefit of helping publishers avoid suffering their own unique symptoms which includes an undo feeling of being pressured by others to make a hasty decision, not to mention the nausea that accompanies thoughts of not taking the easy way out via simply pressing the delete button.
All that noted, thanks for your thoughtful questions. I enjoyed discussing them, and only regret not having seen them sooner. And, for going on so long in at least *trying* to answer your final question. There's just so much to unpack.
I consider myself pretty far out on the left, politically, but it is so unfortunate that the forces of political correctness and thought/language control are able to run people out of the arena simply because they don't like/agree with what they read. Poetry/ writing isn't supposed to affirm/reflect the status quo but the gate keepers and ministers of taste apparently have forgotten about the utility of its subversive power.
As a writer, I have the right for my work to appear in an online publication--and to disappear from that online publication if said publication promotes positions I deem problematic. I think the "smear campaigns" described in "Contextualizing Hobart Pulp" are exaggerated. Some editors, in sympathy with concerned writers, are offering homes for displaced work. Those offers are generously intended, and no author should feel it's inappropriate to republish elsewhere.
So, I opted to wait to comment 'til it appeared others had had their say about my essay. As the number of comments have remained at a total of 37 for a good number of hours, I think now is a good time to offer my own follow-up thoughts.
First, I want to thank the majority of folks for whom the essay resonated and also those few who were less than enthused. The reason I thank both groups is because if anything, I think the essay served to be something of an ice-breaker in terms of discussing some of the negative behaviors we all witness in online spaces among writers and publishers alike.
Next, I want to remind that larger group for whom the essay resonated of the old Chinese proverb, "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness." I remind you of that because while I understand much of the frustration expressed in your comments, the proverbial darkness surrounding dogpiles, smear campaigns, false accusations, and damaged reputations is going to continue to exist. Reason being, social media is anarchic, and when it comes to online mobs, there is no central authority to appeal to for redress.
Recognizing that fact, the way I've chosen to light a candle is not simply to have written the essay above. I also host the On the Record blog, where James Diaz' Testimonial is archived. If you're a writer or publisher who's been the target of a dogpile and/or smear campaign where your peers have defamed and libeled you, then I am more than willing to try and help you, should you wish. And, I will do so free of charge.
How can I help you? I can help you to collect, organize, and analyze the “receipts” of any dogpile and/or smear campaign to which you’ve been subjected. And, to aid you in composing an argument that pushes back against any lies your peers told about you, and/or illogical arguments they made against you. Such a testimonial can be shared with individual writers or publishers should they come to you with questions based on rumors or gossip they heard. Or, it can be shared online via social media if deemed necessary to more publicly counter your detractor(s), most especially if they seek to continue (or resume) their smear campaign against you.
Please note, I understand how collecting, organizing, and analyzing such data about yourself can be triggering. As such, I can do as much or as little as you wish in terms of interacting with such derisive materials. I can also serve as a sounding board for sorting through all the myriad accusations and claims made against you in order to focus on those which are at the heart of the smear you suffered. In so doing, I can help to restore at least *some* of that sense of Self you had before your peers screwed with both your head and your reputation, and also provide you with something tangible to push back against any continued campaigning on their part.
With all that in mind, if you've been a target of an online dogpile and/or smear campaign and feel a testimonial would help you, then I can be reached by email at midnightlanegallery@gmail.com, or on Twitter @BAD_ACID_LABS
I’ll add, in the closing paragraph of the “Contextualizing Hobart Pulp,” I asked those who are tired of being passive bystanders and might wish to participate in awareness raising campaigns for their thoughts. But, the only two people in the comments who shared their thoughts on that matter was James Diaz and Alina Stefanescu.
This, I will admit, was a tad disappointing. Though, I’ll acknowledge the lack of curiosity related to what an awareness raising campaign might look like could at least be in part due to the open-ended manner in which I posed the question. And, little concrete detail as to what such an awareness raising campaign might entail, beyond my offering James’ testimonial and Michael Schmeltzer's FB slideshow as suggested reading.
Here, I think the question is, how might you light a candle? First, consider taking your primary focus off those who do the targeting and place it instead on those who've been targeted. For, the latter group is far and away more important than the former from an ethical perspective. Moreover, from a practical standpoint, it’s far easier to help one who’s been targeted than it is to change the collective behavior of a group of bullies.
Next, consider speaking up for those who’ve been targeted. Speaking up can be as simple as posting a testimonial on your social media platform, should a target desire such aid in order to help them rewrite the false narrative others have composed about them. Becky did that for James when she promoted their testimonial recently on this very Substack, as did Misery Tourism when they replatformed some of James’ poetry. If you’re a writer and/or publisher, others might need similar help from you promoting their stories or deplatformed work in the future. (And, you never know. You yourself might need such help in the future.)
If you wish to be an active bystander in pushing back against those cases where the Wisdom of the Crowd turns out to not be any too wise, then you can reach me at the same email address or Twitter handle I left earlier in this comment. Beyond building a pool of participants potentially willing to post any future testimonials, I'd also certainly appreciate volunteer help from anyone with a social science background in qualitative research to aid in collecting, organizing, and coding materials such as tweets and Facebook posts, should the need arise. For, I sense there’s a very good chance that need will arise.
If you have any related experience, I’d be glad to hear from you. Hell, if you have no experience at all, but wish to learn some basics in terms of conducting qualitative research and utilizing the findings to perform victim advocacy relative to online bullying, I’d also be glad to hear from you.
On that note, take care.
An element missing from this fantastic write up is that in the current climate where most literature exists in a closed-world community of other writers, the lack of external measures of success means that gaining "clout" functions more like high school cliques than like any meaningful engagement between writers and critics.
Thanks so much for this important post. It is so well reasoned and explores elements of this issue I was unaware of.
I am proud to have work up on several of the journals you list – first because of the quality of the company my poems are situated among, and second because of their courage in the face of the purity police. As an old leftist living in Trump country, I confess I have more productive conversations with my right wing neighbors than many of my fellow lefties.
I think the closest analogy: when the fellow next door argues with me about the election, he does not immediately demand I return his pressure washer I borrowed. Nor does he demand I stop writing poems about his son (who I loved as an only a neighbor can), lost to suicide – even when those poems challenges his beliefs about gun rights.
Becky,
Thank you so much for this thoughtful post. I am so glad to see an in-depth discussion of this phenomenon, which I find very concerning and upsetting. I think your suggestions of ways to protect journals and writers from being pulled under are important to consider. I would not want to be an editor of a journal in this climate. Editors are, in my opinion, heroes for putting themselves out there and facing this kind of wrath because of the decisions they make about what and who to publish. It's hard enough being a writer. I feel that having to use the word courageous (you are courageous for this post!) to describe editors and writers in this climate is indicative of what is so problematic right now.
Thank you very much, Susan. I also want to be clear that I am not the author of this article. For some reason, the author's name did not come through in the email that got sent out. It is written by Editor and Poet Johnny Longfellow and he deserves full credit. I agree that he did a stupendous job outlining the situation and offering practical remedies.
Ah, you just answered the burning question I came away with, which was who wrote the essay. I wanted to know what kind of authority and or credibility was behind its author. Especially because I had a piece published by Hobart which is still in their archives. Or it was, anyway. I wish Johnny would have just summarized in one quick sentence what happened in that interview with Hobart,'s EIC and a contributor. I'm dying to know if I should pull my piece or not.
Thanks for this. Smartest thing I've read about this whole mess. We do ourselves no good by eating our own.
As a new writer who wants to talk about some sensitive issues from a personal viewpoint that diverges from the accepted norm in literary circles, I worry about where/if/whether I will get those ideas published.
As a fellow "new writer" (in an old man's body), I have found that there are many places that have the "courage" to take work 100% on its merit.
Ha, ha, I don't want to compete but suspect the age of our bodies may be similar!
I don't know the details of the "mis-step" (a term that sounded like 1984 New Language to me when I read it and is a charge that sounds handy and ready to use to facilitate the "re-education" camps), but I can guess.
Firstly, I'm convinced Lenny Bruce would not be allowed to even breathe today. Today's electronic left has an active lust for censorship and a burning desire for groupthink, and that part of us, therefore, is no better than the MAGA cult. Maybe worse, because the veneer of "free speech" is just a gauze shield you can see right through with them.
Secondly, I can't keep track of what products I'm not supposed to buy, what magazines I'm not supposed to read, what websites I must block, which actors I'm supposed to boycott, and what words I'm not supposed to use.
Thirdly, fuck that shit all to hell.
I print out all the online stuff I have published here and there and file them in a box all with the physical publications that published me. I am in the process of republishing everything on Patreon - specifically in the case of hivemind crap like this.
When we were doing Thrice Fiction I published a writer who wrote a story that contained the "N-word" not in the form of "N-word" but in its actual word (and don't get me started about the gymnastics I just had to do to tell you about it just now). In the story, it was used by a bigot. The story concerned a guy who made it his life's mission to actually travel the country and piss on the graves of every racist segregationist he could think of. It was used because that's the way his opponent would talk, ffs. I got a couple of emails complaining and basically told the senders to go fuck themselves. Nothing came of it, but I almost wish it had because I was ready to go to war about it.
I look at young "reactors" on YouTube looking at old movies and cringe when the morés of today don't match the morés being depicted and their visceral, even predictable, reactions make them look either like Puritans or pearl-clutchers.
Put me down as ready to fight about cancellation, labeling, and what can only be described as cyber-bullying - a phenomenon that depends on the bully being and staying cowardly annonymous. /rant.
There's cancellation and then there's critique. Unfortunately, the two are currently conflated.
The interview was truly pretty dumb; the author spoke of "masculinity" in histrionic and frankly ignorant ways, as someone who also loves many of the same 'problematic' male authors (claiming a lineage of masculinity without acknowledging Papa Hemingway's *blatant* genderqueerness in 2022 is frankly absurd lol). If you're looking for a cancellation hill to die on, this ain't it.
However, I do share many concerns about the myopic nature of literary aesthetics right now, and he's a good example of how the push for diversity becomes problematic because it 1) hems in writers into this very specific 'regionalized' and politicized-in-the-sense-of-very-specific-politics aesthetic that is liberating for some marginalized writers and confining for others and 2) does not guarantee that you don't have a 'diverse' asshole writing behind the screen. I wish that a better and more nuanced interview had sparked this controversy because this guy was way too easy to dismiss and as such, the real problems aren't going to get discussed.
Johnny Longfellow, thank you for taking the time to put together this analysis. I am new to this issue and you’ve given me a lot to consider.
I read the actual original interview and it (referring to that, not this post) was interesting. The whole issue is so convoluted. I felt a lot of the content was both provocative, in the current climate, and also kind of substantively reasonable, AND presented (by both in interviewer and inerviewee) in an eggregiously bombastic manner--a sort of dare-devil move. So my sympathies are very divided.
I broadly agree with these sentiments - though this piece doesn't read to me like an interview but rather an essay crafted by a single person. Beyond which, it doesn't sound like it's written in your voice, Becky, which I very much do enjoy. But that only added to the confusion for me. For these reasons I'd like to suggest you consider re-distributing the essay with a clear editorial disclaimer and/or with the name of the author.
NOTE: I meant the original interview, which launched the controversey, not this post, which was relatively balanced.
Oh, got it. Thanks for the clarification.
I can’t decide if this furor is more like the Salem Witch Trials or the book burning of the USSR. The American Left has become the very thing we used to despise: a mob intent on punishing or destroying anyone who disagrees with them.
No Bruce. It's not like the Salem Witch Trials OR the book burning of the USSR. In both those cases, people were killed by the state for words they published.
This "furor" is actually more like a kerfuffle in the American literary industry about an online literary magazine that published one of the longest, most whiny interviews I've ever read with a writer who sounded like he was writing a drinking game for Men's Health Quarterly. It was a a terrible interview--by which I mean, the writing was so bad that I blushed in embarrassment for the masthead. The whole thing read like a University of Iowa entitlement spree. It's fine to go trash a hotel room if you're willing to pay the cost, but not all of us can afford that.
As for who is profiting from this kerfuffle, I guarantee it's not the writers whose work was published at Hobart.
I agree with you Alina, it's not at all a good or fair comparison. Also the Hobart interview was equally awful. I'm curious though what your thoughts are on what, to me, is the more poignant part of the article, namely: online dogpiling and bullying, most especially when it happens to outlets or individuals who haven't done anything wrong? It seems to me this is a growing problem in the writing community that sadly no one really wants to talk about. Since the literary community doesn't have an HR department or conflict resolution / deescalators, it seems to me that part of the ethics of literary citizenship might be to find ways to healthily address the real harm caused by online dogpiling, harassment and bullying, and to intervene in ways that help deescalate. Increasingly people with mental health issues, addiction issues and other things that make them very vulnerable to these sorts of devastating attacks are left to feel pretty alone in it. In the past couple of years alone I've witnessed several vulnerable individuals attacked with nearly no visible support from the community. This seems very tragic to me. I hope as a community we might someday soon find ways to better support each other and make our spaces truly safe.
I think the dogpiling reminds me of high school, and the pressures of crowd behavior. In a way, it's very market-driven. It makes me sad and I hate it. I'm not sure writing spaces can be safe, or I'm not sure what that would look like, especially since safety is socially constructed on the basis of current articulations of feelings and emotions which vary from person to person?
I was sad about pulling my Hobart piece--that essay meant a lot to me, and unlike Alex's whine-fest, it was raw and dark-- but when the editors and masthead explained what was going on behind the scenes, I felt incredibly uncomfortable with 1) the amount of power Ellen had and 2) the way she displayed this power intentionally.
Per: "Increasingly people with mental health issues, addiction issues and other things that make them very vulnerable to these sorts of devastating attacks are left to feel pretty alone in it. In the past couple of years alone I've witnessed several vulnerable individuals attacked with nearly no visible support from the community. This seems very tragic to me." I agree with you and it disturbs me. :(
That said, I feel like what happened with Hobart was just a power play of the sort one sees in circles of friends who think getting an MFA at Iowa means their shit is interesting. Unfortunately, Iowa doesn't make your shit interesting. Shit is still shit, whether it has an Iowa brand or baseball team on it or not.
The Left compares conservatives to “fascists” and “Nazis” all the time, so it’s hardly a reach to compare the current climate in publishing to the Salem Witch Trials. The impulse is the same: banish everything that goes against the accepted narrative. Same impulse behind Twitter banning certain people and shutting down their accounts. I remember the “free speech” movement at Berkeley in the 1960’s, but those days and those ideals are long gone. Today the Left is a force for intolerance and narrowness of thought, and they don’t think twice about ganging up on anyone who disagrees with them.
I understand your frustration Bruce, but Alina was right to point out the vast difference between actual witch trials, which took lives, and the current dysfunction we're facing in the literary world. I think the word "dysfunction" is key here, in that we're dealing with extremely wounded individuals who are unhealthy communicators and problem solvers. The "right" has this problem too, as does every family or neighborhood for that matter. I think the more existential problem is the harassment, bullying and misinformation campaigns that many in the literary community wage from a place of real emotional handicap, and the consequences of that are quite real. I can speak from some personal experience as someone who has been a victim of my peers scapegoating and bullying, to the point that I almost didn't make it. And these sorts of campaigns have been on the rise, often against vulnerable people with mental health issues and complex trauma histories. I think it's important that we as a community find ways, rooted in restorative justice and conflict resolution, to help temper these campaigns, or at the very least to offer aid and support as Johnny Longfellow has suggested. To me this is the real problem in our community. As to banning certain speech, no one banned Alex's interview from Hobart, it's still up. People just chose to un-allign with Hobart, which in this case I think was the right call. There are plenty of venues that publish the unpublishable and controversial. I think the real threat is the massive rise of scapegoating and bullying, and it's incumbent on us to band together as a community to find ways to help temper it. (For what it's worth (and as a leftist myself) I feel you on the hypocrisy of the left, but I think what we're experiencing in our community at the moment has way more to do with untreated complex ptsd and enabling than hypocrisy. In many ways I'm tempted to say the same of the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world also.)
I should probably add that there are many involved in online smear, blacklisting and bullying campaigns who are clearly cunning and exploiting the situation to their own self interest. I think Alina's point about it being market driven behavior speaks to that as well. I think also you have quite a lot of young people in the lit community who are especially vulnerable to getting caught up and carried away in these online behaviors (although I've heard tell that some people even act this way in person at AWP). Their elders are either standing by while it happens or are the one's doing the bullying and blacklisting. It becomes addictive too I think, people get a thrill from it. There's so many reasons for it but there aren't many good reasons, or at least honest ones, for not doing anything to help stop it. And it's very interesting to me how almost no one in the comments has touched on this aspect of the article. It does seem to be out third rail. But at what cost?
It is indeed the third rail. I don't know whether you saw my general comment written after most everyone seems to have had their say, but I addressed it. It's a bit of a lengthy comment, so beware, lol.
And, just for the record, historical analogies are really limited in their applicability. I'm not into it, either. I have a great grandmother going 11 generations back who was tried and convicted for "witchcraft" in 1692--i.e. Mary Bradbury (née Perkins). This was near the end of the furor when it moved from widowed women of property with no son/male heir to inherit their deceased husband's estate to more upper-class targets such as Judge Hawthorne's wife. Mary Bradbury and her husband, Thomas, were also wealthy.
What distinguished Mary was she had her own small dairy business and was accused of selling some firkins of butter to tradesman from Gloucester that spoiled en route from Salisbury. As noted, she was tried and convicted, and would have been the woman furthest north of Boston to have been hanged, had she not mysteriously escaped the jail where she was held. She did not show up on public record 'til 5 years later. Meanwhile, Susana Martin of neighboring Amesbury became the tragic figure who lived the furthest north of Boston and was tried, convicted, *and* hanged.
1692 is a dark tale, but one that only ended when it began affecting those who were wealthy and held power. The issues I've addressed, while they can result in severe mental and emotional hurt, and a risk of suicide, nonetheless aren't even close to comparable to the horrors of 1692. Add to that, as they are more bottom-up then top-down in terms of how they manifest themselves, I don't expect that they will cease occurring, at least until Twitter decides dogpiling and smear campaigns/libel is deemed an unacceptable form of driving "social engagement." (And, driving "social engagement" is one aspect of capitalism at work, btw.)
Twitter acts as the absentee landlord in all this, doing little to nothing. This is quite unlike1692 when those in positions of authority from the church to the courts worked *in unison* with mobs to not only falsely accuse women of "witchcraft," but also to try, convict, *and* execute them.
For all these reasons, and more, what I've discussed in my essay should be treated as its own phenomenon relative to the time we live and the digital spaces we inhabit. For ultimately, not only are such analogies offensive, but they say nothing about how the behaviors discussed in my essay might be curbed, or--short of that--at least be made less problematic for those who are most ill-affected when the crowd turns out to be wrong.
You’re welcome to your theories about the source of the dysfunction, James. I’m not so interested myself. What I see is a class of people who believe in group-think and want to destroy anyone who disagrees with them. This insane ideology must be (and will be) defeated on the battleground of ideas, where free speech is a sacred right.
You're flattening individuals into a conglomerate that is dehumanizing and I'm not so sure that puts any of us in a better place, you know. The left isn't a class of people, but they are people. Again, no one is hampering Alex's free speech, and I'm not so sympathetic to someone who has his foot way more in the door than most of us. It's also sad to see how "not interested" most people seem to be in grappling with the complexities and nuances of the situation, and the very real involved in them. I tend to think that's where our work lies. Messy work but doable. And needed.
No one is hampering Alex’s free speech? Of course they are. Other lit mags are watching this spectacle and vowing never to do what Hobart did. The overall effect is to lessen what little free speech there is in the lit mag world, and there wasn’t much to begin with.
Alina said it better, but please get a sense of proper proportion here. SJWs are not the Inquisition, lol. This is highly annoying and affects people's lives, it certainly deeply affects what I feel is the 'publishability' of my own work, and I certainly wish literary aesthetics/ethics and online discussions about them would get more nuanced and sophisticated, but dumb misogyny like the one exemplified in the interview has kept women writers down since people have been writing things down and is, frankly, a *much* bigger deal.
Does that mean he should be tarred and feathered for his opinion? No, it means he should have just been logically eviscerated through discourse (and has been, here, in addition to whatever else happened). Still.
Looks like I'm in the minority here, but I feel like this column is off-key in several areas. Most of the editors I know offered to consider reprinting stories pulled from Hobart because they felt sympathy for the authors. Contrary to one of the main points in this column, I think most lit mag editors are decent people who are trying to promote stellar writing while supporting the authors. My eyes glazed before I made it through all the footnotes in the Longfellow column, but I don't recall any "competing" journals conducting smear campaigns against Hobart in regard to the Perez interview. (Do today's online lit mags really compete with each other?) Maybe I missed some instances of that? The magazines and editors I follow are generally not opportunistic vultures hoping to capitalize on another publication's downfall. And I can't blame authors for wishing to not be associated with a pub that blasted extreme political & social commentary all over Twitter. Why shouldn't authors have the right to ask that their work be removed in such volatile (and rare) situations? As the column bemoans, this is not the old days of print magazines. We're publishing in an electronic world now, and the landscape is different than it used to be. I think that's (mostly) a good thing. I do agree with the point that dogpiles are usually unnecessary and cause undue harm, and they happen too frequently on social media--but that doesn't mean we don't have the right to speak up when we disagree with something, like I'm doing now.
Most literary journals spew extreme political commentary over Twitter. It's just not extreme for the narrow demographic group you belong to. What Perez said is actually much closer to the median American who doesn't have an MA in English literature.
Absolutely right, Valerie. Literary journals are a monolithic group that always toes the liberal line. There’s a lot of cowardice in that world, which is why what Hobart did is to be commended.
Can't wait for St. Margaret of Atwood to demand she be 'de-platformed' from the archives of Playboy, that despicable magazine that first published Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451', which was about a future of book burners and thought controllers. And rush to your bookshelves to bin anything by Raymond Carver because he got his start with Esquire. The only new suggestion I would add to Johnny's recommendations is to cancel your subscription to any magazine who cancels writers. ;-)
Yeah, Atwood would be the last to do this. Much of The Handmaid's Tale is a critique of -- and the dystopian upshot of -- the ultra-feminist censorship of pornography.
Both history and human nature show that those who cancel today may themselves be canceled tomorrow [see: Brave New World; 1984 ; Animal Farm; The Trial; The Gulag Archipelago]
Thank you J. Longfellow for your thoughtful, researched insights to the Hobart incident. And a big thanks to Becky Tuch too for sharing and creating this space. To have a piece published in a lit mag, which takes only first time rights but then archives the piece on its website, has always seemed like a win-win for the writer to me--despite the potential impermanence of the online journal. (I always make a pdf of my published lit mag work and advise other writer to do this too.) Looking at this thru the writer's lens, maybe it's isn't necessarily a win. It's clearly more complex in a situation like this, albeit not common. I'm left with some questions. When the founder of the Hobart and several editors left the magazine en masse, seems that the EIC was left with sole control. Who owns Hobart? The EIC? And if yes, then does she get to call the shots? Maybe, probably. Writers are not typically aware of the structure, like ownership, of a journal beyond what they can see in the masthead. What all do we need to know about a journal before we submit? I echo what others have said in this stream that journal editors are a dedicated group of lit lovers who do a giant service to readers and writers--for the large, large part. Does Hobart have advisors? If the journal had an advisory board in place, that might have helped to manage, or maybe avoid, the mass exodus. Who knows. But possibly there could have been facilitated discussions outside of social posts that could have led to a different outcome. Given how lit mags run, on small budgets and manpower, having an advisory board may be a luxury. Some have advisors, but I don't know how common that is. When a previously published piece is "rehomed," is it published with an * or some explanation of how it was included? I don't feel or mean to say that rehoming indicates that the work is of less quality, but rthe e-published piece has taken different editorial channel from all the other submissions. This might something for the writer to consider. Archival rights is interesting--but again from the writer's view, as long as those rights don't interfere with what the writer might then do with the work (submit to an anthology, incorporate into a collection, etc.) And as a writer, I'm not sure I want to give up my right to withdraw. I've read the Hobart has recruited another top editor, so it may be that the journal moves on and this incident fades away with time. But what if the editorial direction changes? What if there are more bombastic interviews? Of course, changes in editorial direction and missteps can happen with any journal at any time. And if a piece was included in a print issue, of course you can't change that. But if the journal and editor can remove my work (if I behave badly or in a way they don't approve), should I not be able to do the same? Again, Mr. Longfellow, thank you for all the work you did on this essay. I agree with many of the points you raise and potential ways to address this ugly aspect of the lit mag publishing climate. Last question: For the writer who has published work on Hobart's archive right now, what do you suggest? Wait and see?
Hi Andrea,
Sorry to have missed your comments, and not to have responded 'til now. I only became aware of your comments on 12/26/22 and needed some time to not just consider your questions, but how to respond with some degree of brevity. With all but the last question I managed to be brief, whereby I apologize in advance for the length of my final answer. Your questions were so good, I had to spend some added time flushing out my thoughts.
Anyway, here are my responses to topics you addressed and questions you asked . . .
1) Hobart’s Structure:
Some specifics regarding its structure were offered by the departing editors. See: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQaXxY2Ice6hefLh0e_ph8BCzMPtXuEBYceULnSxICU3uQ_sxh_GSCrLjNVJaqxegOFFI4-Zk4jF6Fa/pub
And, the EIC did explain the history of her role, in what is part book review/part autobiography. See: https://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/year-of-the-buffalo-by-aaron-burch-a-review
Beyond offering those resources, I’ll just add I think you’re right. We generally have no way of knowing about the structure and internal dynamics of journals and presses, at least prior to some “drama” and “discourse” occurring, wherein they are made public.
2) Journals that "Rehome":
I'll say this. It used to be a more general practice that if a piece was reprinted, then the first publisher would be credited. That in mind, I’ve not researched whether journals that “rehome” withdrawn work are crediting the first publishers of the pieces they republish. It’s an interesting question, though, and maybe worthy of follow-up. For I would hazard to guess whether or not they end up crediting the first publisher varies from publication to publication, not to mention how, if they do.
3) Archival Rights Conflicting with Republication:
I'm doubtful added Archival Rights would present much of any obstacle to writers having their work appear in anthologies and/or collections. Most journals seek either One Time, First Serial, First Electonic . . . namely, they seek credit for being the first publisher, if not some limited right to republish in the case of First Serial. In such cases, adding Archival Rights shouldn't present any serious hurdles, but for *maybe* a publisher being concerned that such archived work would somehow cut into sales. Which seems to me far-fetched. One would have to have rather sizable cache of work included in a collection that's also archived online to warrant such a concern. And, many presses limit the percentage of previously published work included in a collection anyway, Archival Rights or not.
4) Miscellaneous Questions:
You wrote:
"I've read Hobart has recruited another top editor, so it may be that the journal moves on and this incident fades away with time. But what if the editorial direction changes? What if there are more bombastic interviews? Of course, changes in editorial direction and missteps can happen with any journal at any time. And if a piece was included in a print issue, of course you can't change that. But if the journal and editor can remove my work (if I behave badly or in a way they don't approve), should I not be able to do the same?"
I’ll only note here that to my knowledge, the EIC remains, and new staff have been hired, with the next issue of Hobart slated for early 2023.
Beyond that, for now I’ll just address your last question which reads: “[ . . .] if the journal and editor can remove my work (if I behave badly or in a way they don't approve), should I not be able to do the same?”
As a general principal I'd say sure! But, with some qualification. If a journal doesn’t assure writers their work will remain on site for the life of the site, then yes, as a general principal I would guardedly suggest writers should be able to *at least* request their work be removed. Guardedly, since even if a journal doesn’t publicly offer the aforementioned assurance, I’d still be reticent to simply assume they are willing to deplatform writers. And, if they’re against doing so, then I’d find little hypocrisy in them not honoring a voluntary request for removal, most especially if made against a backdrop of a “call out,” “dogpile,” and/or smear campaign. Though, I’d certainly urge them to be more explicit about where they stand going forward and consider how including Archival Rights in their guidelines would help make that stand clearer.
5) Your final question(s):
You wrote, “For the writer who has published work on Hobart's archive right now, what do you suggest? Wait and see?”
That question seems clearly related to others you asked in the preceding paragraph, which I quoted above, but didn’t answer. Most prominently, “But what if the editorial direction changes? What if there are more bombastic interviews?”
My answer is an unequivocal I don’t know exactly. For, what are their choices? Assume those things will happen and pre-emptively make a voluntary request for removal? Or, if they wait and see, only make their requests if and when it’s clear the editorial direction changes in a manner they personally dislike? Or, do nothing at all?
Sorry, but I've no one size fits all prescription here. I suspect writers' responses will likely be conditioned by how offended they feel, should Hobart take a different editorial direction in the future. Also, such responses will likely be conditioned by people's own underlying assumptions, along with how their peers might react. Those who assume that journals *should* adopt expansive Human Resource Department like roles, and that peers *should* inform on peers for real or perceived misdeeds via call-outs, dogpiles, deplatforming campaigns, etc. are but one subcommunity within the larger indie lit scene. Their reactions will necessarily be different from those who are more critical of such assumptions and the collective online practices ostensibly performed in the name of "accountability."
I’m more closely but not exclusively aligned with the latter camp. I generally look more askance at events that involve bad actions and institutions than I do events involving bad opinions and individuals. This is why I treated Hobart as a springboard in my article, rather than as a case study unto itself. I sought to explore related trends and past events, so Hobart might be considered within a larger context, rather than in a fashion where the individual actors and their opinions are inevitably brought to the forefront. There were already articles written in that vein, and another (from me, at least) seemed unnecessary, not to mention less important than trying to contextualize the event.
That in mind, any advice I’d have to offer would involve considering the larger indie lit ecosystem of which Hobart is but a part. Here, I guess I'd suggest writers consider questioning the utility of participating in an ecosystem that has more gatekeepers than gates. Reason being, that's the very ecosystem that made the events surrounding Hobart possible. It's one where the number of people with direct access to any given delete button is exceeded by those who lack direct access, but who nonetheless are prone to catch a nasty case of what is known as Itchy Finger Syndrome (IFS). *Most importantly,* it’s this same ecosystem that has produced other online events where reputations and psyches were unduly damaged by false and/or overblown claims. All such events—Hobart and otherwise—were borne out of assumptions about how journals *should* be adopting Human Resources roles, along with the "call-outs," "dogpiles, and deplatforming campaigns that accompany those assumptions.
Given all this, I'd ultimately suggest every writer would do well to contend with what it means to be a "literary citizen" operating within an ecosystem that has grown increasingly reminiscent of Omelas. And, with that, consider practicing social media distancing from those who all too regularly succumb to the ravages of IFS. Quarantine them if necessary, via the block button on Twitter. For the toxic nature of IFS is such that regular sufferers often exhibit condescending, snarky attitudes which afford them very pleasant feelings of moral superiority over others, most especially when another writer’s work is deplatformed. Conversely, those who've never previously suffered its effects report feeling as if their soul was run over by a large-scale, id driven tornado, leading them to do things like delete their social media accounts out of fear and humiliation. Finally, as it’s believed to be highly infectious, I’d again suggest inoculating online journals and their contributors against IFS via the adoption of Archival Rights. For, it's like Kryptonite when faced with an outbreak. And, it has the added benefit of helping publishers avoid suffering their own unique symptoms which includes an undo feeling of being pressured by others to make a hasty decision, not to mention the nausea that accompanies thoughts of not taking the easy way out via simply pressing the delete button.
All that noted, thanks for your thoughtful questions. I enjoyed discussing them, and only regret not having seen them sooner. And, for going on so long in at least *trying* to answer your final question. There's just so much to unpack.
Johnny
I consider myself pretty far out on the left, politically, but it is so unfortunate that the forces of political correctness and thought/language control are able to run people out of the arena simply because they don't like/agree with what they read. Poetry/ writing isn't supposed to affirm/reflect the status quo but the gate keepers and ministers of taste apparently have forgotten about the utility of its subversive power.
As a writer, I have the right for my work to appear in an online publication--and to disappear from that online publication if said publication promotes positions I deem problematic. I think the "smear campaigns" described in "Contextualizing Hobart Pulp" are exaggerated. Some editors, in sympathy with concerned writers, are offering homes for displaced work. Those offers are generously intended, and no author should feel it's inappropriate to republish elsewhere.