The Gloria Steinem Doc Broke My Head in Two
+ Bill Vollman’s Last Word, Dubious Sex Statistics, Adrian McKinty Has “Nothing” to Say, and How to Be Suitably Banned in Edmonton, Atwood-style
Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print
I have a review of the new documentary on the history of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem’s brainchild, in the audio link above.
Ach du Lieber!
The new movie is on HBO, and yeah, if you’re a woman of a certain age, or a dude who was in the thick of it, you’ll be rapt.
—Even if it makes you, like myself, a little upset.
William Vollman is Leaving the Building
Attention Book Nerds:
Legend William Vollmann is dying. Yeah, fuck cancer. It is a terrible loss in process. However . . .
Vollmann is finishing one last book, “A Table for Fortune.” He won’t live to write another. This is big. It’s coming out in March.
Before he could complete it, however, his longtime publisher, Viking, FIRED him on grounds of “writing too long.”
!!!
I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill died with ink leaking from his fingertips. And a pistol by his side.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story last week that lit a fire under the publishing scandal, and then. . . I found out the real poop was right here on Substack.
You see, Vollmann is displaying the dignity of the dying man by “not blaming” Viking for kicking him out.
That calm is the only road for an author’s mental health. I get it.
But we, the readers and critics— we can pin the tail on the donkey. 1
It is shameful that Viking (an imprint of Penguin-RandomHouse)— who spend untold millions on crap that will never sell2— would not find it an honor to work with Bill on his last book.
Believe me, the paper cost, the production cost, is irrelevant in their big picture.
They literally have NOTHING BETTER to do.
Publishers publish prestige, world-changing works, because they’re publishers. They exist because they are founded in the arts. Otherwise, they’re pushing garment racks around.
I have to confide where I got that last phrase:
When the notorious Robert Maxwell3, my first New York publisher, “died mysteriously” in 1991, his baby, MacMillan Books, went into free fall.
The company was assimilated by Simon and Schuster. I lost my original editor, and got a new young man, my own age, named Carlo.
I asked him where he’d worked in publishing before S&S, and Carlo said, “Oh, I didn’t. I’ve been selling rags in the Garment district.”
He must have seen the look on my face.
“It’s really not that different! Just pushing racks around.”
Kudos to The Metropolitan Review and journo Alexander Sorondo for their essay, below.
If One More Idiot Posts Their Thoughts on The End of Sex
I swear, I wanted to shut my eyes.
Then I cracked and read it: “Americans Having Less Sex Than Ever.”
Hated it! —Not because it’s not true; it is.
But their explanation is false, and a grave disservice to the truth.
Number one, the article is missing— or rather, avoiding— key data about what it means to “have less sex.”
If this is a survey about libido, it must include masturbation. Finding out who’s “married,” and has interest in a domestic bond, is quite a different matter.
Two: Blaming lack of libido on “stress” is ridiculous. Same with being “tired.” You can SAY that, but the science will not bear you out.
Stress, per se, is just as much of a potential trigger to lust, as relaxation.
This is why people have sex in taboo situations (funerals, airplane bathrooms, etc.) as well as rampant fucking upon the news that the world is ending (earthquakes, flood, and so on).
You can be horny and tired, horny and stressed, horny and ____. The same is true with erotic indifference: it pairs with all of the above. It’s not a root explanation of anything.
Declining sex has been documented for 40 years, by many researchers, including myself. I ran a survey starting in the 80s on college campuses— hundreds of schools, thousands of young people— which of course, included masturbation questions.
The sexual frequency these young people reported, both solo and partnered, fell down every year in my review, post-AIDS epidemic.
At first, I kept a careful eye on the declining results with women, who historically masturbate and achieve orgasm less frequently than men. Their lack of satisfaction grew worse, and it made me so sad.
In the 90s, I started to see small yet consistent results of young men who were also not masturbating or reaching orgasm. The first time, I thought it was a prank! (Carnegie Mellon LOL).
It turned out to be a serious occurence, a tiny minority which incrementally grew. The slide never turned back.
I came to different conclusions about waning libido.
Lack of “urge” is not about what you consciously “think” or “try”— as if your will was in charge.
It’s hormonal changes, often related to unwise pediatric use of drugs, especially SSRI’s. It’s a phenom mainly affecting the middle and upper class, who had access, insurance plans, and $$ to take those drugs.
On a classless level, the libido and fertility slide is related to hormone effects from the (gulp) food supply, and plastics pollution that we’ve barely grappled with.
HORMONES. I don’t know what else to tell you. We’re animals. “Trying” is beside the point. We either live in conditions which further sexual instinct or we don’t.
Adrian McKinty is writing short stories on Substack
“‘WHATEVER YOU SAY, SAY NOTHING’ is the kind of statement foreigners take back with them to their homeland from their visits to Belfast.
“But no person from Belfast ever needed to be told such a thing.
Before saying anything, you had to see something or hear something and then remember it.
“And no one in Belfast ever saw anything or heard anything or remembered anything.”
I’m a longtime reader of McKinty’s, and it’s quite a treat to have him posting original Sean Duffy pieces here. Below, a nice little murder in the mud:
This and That:
My comrade Margaret Atwood4 writes on The Thrill of Being “Banned in Edmonton” — my old junior high school hometown! We aren’t all cracked.
QOTD:
Once Leonard Cohen read a whole poem on the radio.
The interviewer asked him,"What does the poem mean?"
Cohen paused for a long moment - and then read the entire poem again.
I’m #4 in Santa Cruz:
This is a surprise. . . I’m on the front page of historic trailblazers of Santa Cruz County. I’m small potatoes, really. —Lots of truly great people are on the list; you might be surprised what a small town produced.
(C)Keana Parker
Vollmann said much the same when he wrote a story for Harpers in 2023, “Four Men.” Worth reading. His all-too-young daughter died that year, and so did a lot of other things.
(look up one of their latest political celebrity advances)
Yes, Ghislaine’s father! Don’t even get me started.
Eventually, a brave staffer at Ms., in their later years, commissioned a story from me on the Monica Lewinsky biography, during Bill CLinton’s term. I was very glad to, but the story came THIS CLOSE to being killed, not bc of my take on Monica, but rather bc of the staff members who were still in terror of Dworkin’s disapproval. I had to be the villain for them, it was like the walls of Jericho would come down if they relented. Oh boy.
Loved hearing this. I should have a look at the documentary despite the antipathy I had to 80’s MS’s shoulder-pads feminism. Lean in to the work place! Was very sorry to hear that story about how MS wouldn’t give a miserable classified ad to Good Vibrations while they were busy killing their readers with Virginia Slims.
Susie, those anti-pron types made me feel SO guilty. When I was parroting their line about porn harming women, I made my poor first amendment loving mother cry. Oh, and you know I snuck off to the Bascom Theater to see The Budding of Brie, a ‘50’s set XXX version of All About Eve. Gasp, what if I got seen from someone on the other side of the mountains!
I was perhaps not the targeted demographic for On Our Backs, but it lifted such a load of guilt when I first saw it at Naked Eye Video on Haight. Thanks for what you and your friends did, at the cost of threats and misunderstanding.