Gawker: the literary life

Reading Gawker In Moscow Is The New Reading Lolita In Tehran

Moe — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:33:36 EDT

"Dear Moe, Thank you for defending my good looks on the internet. I am going to press that post to my heart as the Moscow air and water slowly turn me into a walking cadaver. Yours, -k"

Meet The New N+1 T-Shirt Models!

Moe — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:10:43 EDT

The highbrow low-pay publishing community has long suffered from a startling male-female attractiveness imbalance exemplified by the case of that American Apparel modeling Paris Review intern. I mean, if Jessica Roy was ever right about anything, it is that.* But for its work righting the prettiness gap perhaps we owe a debt of "gratitude" to the most important literary journal of our time, N+1, whose founding editors Keith Gessen and Benjamin Kunkel are not only decidedly conventionally attractive but extra reviled on the basis of that fact. And as the Observer noticed today, N+1 is now employing male contributor Wesley Yang (and his wavy hair I will refrain from calling a "mane") in the new capacity of T-shirt pitchman. Yang, you might recall if you are one of N+1's numerous readers, originally ascended to literary microfame in a piece in the last issue about how he related to Virginia Tech school shooter Seung Hui-Cho for feeling fundamentally "unlovable."

Look, at some point I actually scanned in the good parts.

Anyway, I think we can all agree that Yang is no "Morlock." Here is his blog, it needs more comments. Oh, and the girl is managing editor Kate Perkins. One day maybe she will write something about her comically bad self-esteem and I'll post about that.

*Seriously, you are a girl and you go to their parties and think, "Whoa, I am never going to get laid, I give up," but you quickly learn this is wrong, you will totally get laid, and you'll make some of the most pretty friends you ever had bonding with the literary scene girls over what a unique experience it was!

Meet the 'Paris Review's' American Apparel Model

Pareene — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:36:33 EDT

Legendary literature magazine The Paris Review is still publishing, you know, despite the death of founding editor George Plimpton and the requisite identity crisis that followed changes introduced by new editor Philip Gourevitch (color photos! shorter poems!). One thus far unmentioned change: while the magazine used to be put together entirely by a small crew of Plimpton friends, protégés, and well-groomed young acolytes (Yale-graduate interns and "editorial assistants" who'd use the magazine's famous parties to establish themselves in the literary scene, such as it was), now their staff is branching out a bit from that rarefied Ivy League lit-mag milieu. At least in the case of the notorious American Apparel Model Paris Review intern.

Most Paris Review interns are still Ivy League grads (or grad students) looking to break into whatever semblance of a literary career they may still be afforded in this debased age. Their resumes are carefully hand-crafted from the finest of intellectual extracarricular endeavors. Perrin Drumm, though, had just finished the College of Santa Fe's New York Arts program, and applied through the Paris Review website because she wasn't interested in a job at "a low-grade women's fashion and health magazine." She explains, in an interview with CSF's alum mag: (Scroll down—it's a pdf link toward the bottom.)

I applied with what the Review staff calls "The weirdest cover letter in Paris Review history." I looked at the other cover letters and they were like, "This job will really prepare me for the tasks at hand..." and mine said, "I can MacGuyver a terrarium out of a Frisbee and some gum" or whatever.

Quirky!

Oh, but here's the thing! Perrin's experience didn't include much contemporary literature, but it did include modeling for pervy hipster clothing chain American Apparel! A fact that reportedly "fascinated" a senior editor who interviewed her. The fascination goes unmentioned in the interview, but Drumm does point out that she was hand-selected to model The Paris Review's brand-new t-shirt line! The products are, of course, printed on American Apparel t-shirts.

All Drumm says is, "I modeled tee shirts and bags for their website. That got the other girl interns really mad."

So—what does a Paris Review intern do? Besides drink scotch and play pool and harass writers at parties? They go through the slush pile, mostly, they fact-check (unaltered quote: "Facts are really hard to find out.") and also empty Philip Gourevitch's trash.

A couple more selections from the interview, which will presumably upset you, unless you happen to be the guy whose Nerve.com personal ad netted you the famed Harper's internship: