<![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke - Gawker Comments]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke - Gawker Comments]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @ahabs_whale:

Nothing against her personally, but I know quite a few people with the same qualities and work ethic.

Seeräuber Jenny

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> it's the heartbreaking dullness of all that privilege that has infected everything.

IamnotStarJones

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @clydes_muse:

Yes! Yes. Thank you for putting this in a short, clear, funny way.

nonce

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Very late on this: she sounds insufferable, but most people like that are insufferable; that's why you don't read The New Yorker or The Paris Review.

No good poetry has come out of either place since, say, 1960. In my MFA program the shorthand for awful writing, even for non-poets, is "New Yorker poetry."

nonce

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @ahabs whale: Meghan O'Rourke's poetry=chick lit with line breaks.

clydes_muse

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @ahabs_whale: well now i almost feel bad.

lalalina

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @passthesalt:

Actually Harold Bloom is an extremely good scholar. His work is very influential in academic circles.

Pope John Peeps II

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Surowiecki yes--good reading, Gladwell also. He's got O'Rourke love too.

Hugo8

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Better-than-300-poetry-MFAs hot.

phoebette

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Heh heh.

sloppy_seconds

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @sloppy_seconds: Fuck off and die. Seriously. Now.

@Johnny_boy: Surowiecki is competent and readable. Do people talk about him? No, they talk about shtickety non-entities like Gladwell.

Thanks for helping base currencies drive out good ones, all of you.

dntsqzthchrmn

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Does anyone read that terrible column in the New Yorker? It has been published for years and I have never, ever heard it mentioned or seen it referred to. Who would go to the New Yorker for business coverage?

It must be like being the fashion reporter for The Nation--your opinion counts for nothing and no one is interested.

Johnny_boy

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Wait! You're telling me people still write poetry? Get the fuck out.

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!

Thanks. That was a very good laugh. You may now return to whatever the fuck you think is worth discussing about this (snicker) poet.

sloppy_seconds

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Correction: You get your friends to buy the beer.

KarenUhOh

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @kll5: This is Gawker. You get yourself some clear twine, covertly lash it between a couple trees where Mr. Supersnazz (rollerblading?? Dork.) is operating, buy beer, invite over friends, and watch him pirouette onto his ass.

Then you help him up, brush him off, and tell him how much you admire his form.

KarenUhOh

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @trix-are-for-kids:
Brilliant, seriously. You've put very succinctly what a passel of us disgruntled poets have been trying to say for ages.

Smitros

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> An editorial position at the Paris Review hardly qualifies someone to judge the best of contemporary poetry. I don't think they even read any contemporary poetry there--they're too busy pondering over those long-lost Hemingway ejaculations to consider the work of recent MFAs.

The PR is the Harold Bloom of literary journals. That is, they are obsessed with preserving some kind of "pure" Anglo tradition, and go to great lengths to make their publication as boring and obsolete as possible. (Gertrude Stein, despite the Parisian connection, still befuddles and offends them, to say nothing of Leslie Scalapino.)

The New Yorker is hardly a bastion of literary innovation, either. Their forty years overdue profile of John Ashbery took several thousand words to say, basically, 'this guy writes so weird.' You know, the whole Cy Twombly 'my kid could have made that' thing. Both magazines are high culture (tm) for the masses.

If some boring Yale kiss-ass wants to make herself the belle of the ball by climbing the editorial ranks of these irrelevant publications, fine. But being a New York media Brahmin with a nice ass does not make you a relevant poetic voice.

passthesalt

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> She's extremely smart, extraordinarily literary, and quite down to earth. Her parents were eccentric teachers, and from the look of their apartment on Eastern Parkway, not particularly well-off either. She worked hard at St. Ann's, hard at Yale, and hard thereafter, and had she become a lawyer or banker, she'd be making five times as much.

Unlike most of the dillettantes featured here, she's the real deal. If her poetry and book reviews are boring, go back to chick lit.

ahabs_whale

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Mainstream poetry publishing is furthest thing from a meritocracy but that is not the same thing as saying that her work isn't up to the standards of excellence as defined by the publications. Her work is as good as what is published in the pages of the publications. Therefore her work is among the best. That is why the editors only publish work that is just like everything else in their pages. Anything that is different couldn't possibly be better so it must be worse.

trix-are-for-kids

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @kll5: you're a republican, aren't you?

lalalina

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> If you live in NYC you just have to be prepared for this sort of thing. There is always someone better, smarter, thinner, richer, blah blah fill in the blank than you.

I once read a more amusing metaphore for this phenomena...

you are rollerblading in central park.
you feel great, on top of the world, like "wow I really know how to rollerblade. I rule."

And then comes some guy in the snazziest rollerblading outfit ever, doing some amazing spin/twist combo and suddenly you feel like the biggest loser/worst rollerblader ever.

Now, I would never rollerblade, I can't even rollerskate, but that analogy is something I will never forget.

You have to be lucky to live in New York, EB White said that.

You also have to have fucking backbone. Of couse someone is better than you, but you live in New York, you are lucky, and you secretly know you are better than everyone else anyways. So why worry about the rollerbladding O'Rourkes?

Surely, they are secret bed-wetters. Envy is so unattractive.

kll5

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Ok, she's sincere about everyday life, but that doesn't mean that her self-satisfied contemplation of the small satisfactions of bourgeios normativity (i love planning a wedding! yale was wild! this book is just like planning a wedding after graduating from yale!) should be congratulated. Someone roll out the guillotine.

DrDude

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @DonPardoCalrissian: As for privilege...

I didn't think you were confusing privilege with access until that last sentence. You've had a look at her tuition bills/finaid statements/parents' tax returns?

Yuck.

dntsqzthchrmn

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Her auto-journalism is inexcusable, ok, mock on. But the young and successful thing, that's so ubiquitous and bland but routinely mocked here. I'm torn. Isn't it legitimate to postulate a world in which her bad writing is not foisted upon the public by dint of her ambition and connections?

As for privilege, I thought she went to StAnn's and Yale?

DonPardoCalrissian

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> I'm pretty sure she's not the culture editor at Slate anymore, might want to double-check your facts.

traydon_barter

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Wake me up she leaks her own sex tape featuring all 89 of the Radar interns.

sexbot

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @clydes_muse: Anything's possible. For example, it's possible that she is a brilliant politician, a credible editor, and an okay writer.

Also, it's possible that she could have filled out an identical vita as a he, eliciting nasty anonymous e-mails just like the one Emily cited.

dntsqzthchrmn

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @Puff Eyelid: For serious. I love that at:

"Oh, and did we mention she's also an attractive young woman?"

I was like, Oh, this is Emily. Gawker, culture, a side of femiladyism - I like it.

SurplusJ

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @lalalina: sure, the privileged are fair game, and where would we be without our schadenfreude, anyway. but anyone who writes anything for a big magazine, or goes to work at some place like the new yorker or slate, is probably exploiting their privilege one way or another--to take down all of those people would require too much time and energy.

herzen

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> "If everyone is just sarcastic and guarded and self-mocking all the time-as opposed to given over to 'minute examinations[s] of [their] traipsing, boring lives'-then what would we have to work with, or think about?"

Are you saying that we should be nicer to her because she serves up such deliciously sincere material for Gawker editors to pillory? I'm with Clarence on this one. My head hurts.

Fred Allen

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> There are eerily similar parallels to Amanda Hesser here: both women are smart, talented, successful at a young age, and married to New Yorker staff writers. Oh, and cute to boot. It's really disturbing how jealousy moves people to tear down women who fit this bill, while the many men who do seems to skip by unnoticed. Probably because they're are so fucking many of them out there - the New Yorker, Slate et al are just teeming with men like this - and we hardly hear a peep about it.

PigsNPickles

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> The rest of my anonymous email read:

" . . . and even 'journalism' about her 'verse,' -- see here: http://www.slate.com/id/2162725/entry/2162726/ -- "complaining that her verse is often mistaken for journalism about herself -- which it is not (that's the job of her journalism about her verse)."

Which is true and annoying and well deserving of snark.

A_Boojum_You_See

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @DeathOrGloryToad: Abso-effen-lutely. Or, "Tune In, Turn On, Go to the Office Late on Monday," the short piece about his first ecstasy trip -- hilarious.

hhpeterson13

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Damn. Now I've double posted.

yellojkt

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @Clevertrousers: I'd even hit it in a bathroom stall at 11th Street Bar.

yellojkt

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @dntsqzthchrmn:
"it drives people crazy to see a young woman get ahead."

Is it not possible that this is about more than whether or not she has a vagina?
Unless of course, she writes persona poems as in the voice of her vagina.

clydes_muse

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> ms. gould, that was almost as rad as your times op-ed piece. rock on.

usmeekly

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @herzen: aw, this is just the yin to her yang. if she's going to so unabashedly exploit her privilege, she should expect people to call her on it.

lalalina

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Meghan ain't gonna be happy when she sees you abbreviated the "Saint" in "Saint Ann's".

That's a big no-no.

zibby

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> I'd hit it. In the restroom at 11th Street Bar.

yellojkt

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> National Poetry Month ended, and here we are, still talking about poetry.

O'Rourke's book is okay. Your estimate of the annual yield of poetry MFAs is low. And yes, it drives people crazy to see a young woman get ahead.

dntsqzthchrmn

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> If everyone is just sarcastic and guarded and self-mocking all the time-as opposed to given over to "minute examinations[s] of [their] traipsing, boring lives"-then what would we have to work with, or think about?

Someone needs to update the Gawker Commenter FAQ, pronto.

Clarence Rosario

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @BangersandMashees: Cute and Catholic-nosed. I'd hit it. You can't fault Buford for taste.

Clevertrousers

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> how about licked her way to the top? is a distant relative of bareback top? is a huge fan of Top Gun?
but fucked her way to the top?
please stop.
(courtesy of your local MFA program)

clydes_muse

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @Puff Eyelid: Here, here! Three cheers for a Gawker editor who can turn the snark off sometimes.

snarkplug

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> "a stint at the New Yorker, where she became a fiction/nonfiction editor at what her then-boss Bill Buford called the "alarmingly tender" age of 24..." Honeys, if you want a clue to what's behind Ms. O'Rourke's admirable ascent, one might venture that Mr. Buford's known fondness for lasses of "tender alarm" may have had somethun to do with it...Yeeeouch!

BangersandMashees

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @herzen:

"(who can tell, really, with poetry),"

Believe me, you'll know.

Lolaclaire

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @Lolaclaire:

rock on, lolaclaire; rock on

if_i_only_had_a_heart

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @if_i_only_had_a_heart: "there's not much of a future after those degrees"

It really depends on the kind of future you have in mind. I'm doing just fine, barely eking out a living as the number one patron at the only decent bar above 88th St.

Lolaclaire

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @emily: phew.

Diglett

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> this is bullshit. it's fair game to note, snarkily, that she might not be much of a poet (who can tell, really, with poetry), and that her stature as an editor and critic of poetry can go a long way toward explaining the publication of her book of poetry (rather than someone else's) and the review of said book in the times. that the literary world is driven by connections is not exactly news, and unless someone wants to pony up evidence that ms. o'rourke slept her way to the top, i say shut the fuck up.

herzen

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> supply/demand: there are infinitely more talented and privileged (never mind talented and non-privileged) young things seeking ny'er gigs than there are gigs at the ny'er ... sniping ensues no matter to whom the gig goes ... tho sometimes it goes to more special peeps and sometimes to less special ones

mfa programs should be closed by the bbb for fraudulent approaches to life ... unless mom and dad are buying you a nyc condo, there's not much of a future after those degrees

if_i_only_had_a_heart

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> I got laid-off in dot-com land when I was the alarmingly tender age of 24, and all I got was a stupid anxiety disorder. Bitch.

Mabimab

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @puff: agreed. it's refreshing. like the 8th step of AA.

ellagood

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> if only Ms. Meghan were as sisterly as Emily.
And Lolaclaire is right, all poets are whores. Some just have better technique than others.

clydes_muse

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> It wasn't her educational bonafides that got her an internship and subsequent full-time gig at the New Yorker. There are plenty of smart, ambitious Ivy League via upper-crust New York prep school kids who could never land that type of gig. Inevitably, she knew someone. That's why people hate her.

Also, the posts have been wayyyy too long today.

transomist

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Is her ascendancy upsetting because the New Yorker and Paris Review are thought to immune to the charms of young underachievers? As for Slate, who was her predecessor?

TRG

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @oovy: Nope, but Balk is.

Emily Gould

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @Puff Eyelid: I agree. I'm pro-sisterly-phase Emily. Although there does need to be a mean one, so hopefully Doree's game.

Diglett

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @Puff Eyelid:
Of course you can say it. We're in the trust tree.

HoHoKennedy

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> I'm sure she can spell "euphemism."

Seeräuber Jenny

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> 90% of the poets I know get published and written about and fawned over and noticed based on a combination of persistence, luck, and ass-kissing. This is nothing remarkable.

Lolaclaire

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Can I just say that I like the increasingly frequent snark-free literary Emily? Makes me feel like I'm getting some Culture with my Gawker.

Puff Eyelid

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> I wanted to like Meghan's poetry, I really did. But I can't forget how she acted when I landed in the same MFA program as her - she was not nice to the new girls and behaved eerily like something out of "Mean Girls." Sad, because the program is for "adults" who hadn't seen the inside of a high school cafeteria in many years (mercifully).

And the fact of the matter is, there are far better poets out there, just as young and annoying as Ms. O'Rourke, whose poetry just happens to be really really good. I just wish that sometimes, somewhere in our universe, talent could triumph over privilege and connections.
Silly me.

clydes_muse

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> @Sayser: Yeah, but not so much the recent aging rightie O'Rourke, but more the bygone author of "How to Drive Fast On Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink."

DeathOrGloryToad

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> PS - when is the TBR going to get around to reviewing the Snorg Girl's novella?

Gabe

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> That was really sweet of you, the way you defended Meghan O'Rourke against that vicious email we never would've read if you hadn't posted it. "Some people say Meghan's a spoiled, talentless slut, but not us! No, sir!"

Drew Kerr Jr.

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> She is undoubtedly very smart and accomplished and pretty and well-read. She is also a calculating schmoozer, painful to watch--a literary Olivia Palermo, if you will.

obonobo

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> ...so Gould, did the abyss look back at you, or what?

DeathOrGloryToad

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> My only consolation is the hope that she will end up looking like Shane McGowan by the time she's 40.

(Because, you know, she's Irish-ish, and - yeah, okay, that's stupid. I hate her.)

unutterable

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> Is she any relation to P.J. O'Rourke?? That would genuinely make her enviable. Seems like a chick I'd like to party with -- a CILP, if you will. Spin that into an ode, Meghan.

hhpeterson13

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> I think more the point of the griping when she was coming up was that she was unquestionably editing and giving direction to people far more experienced and qualified than her. Not to say she wasn't qualified, but when even some New Yorker writers pine for full-time work, it begged a lot of questions. Now that's she's managed to focus on her navel with laser-beam accuracy, there's a whole new set of "hunhs?" to deal with.

Gabe

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> But, where does she stand on peanut butter?

NYM

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> She spells her name with an "H" - for "hatorade," of course. Or is it "(w)hore"?

Johnny Awesome

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> i'll say it: i'm jealous of her.

sing_michael_sing

]]> <![CDATA[Why People Hate Meghan O'Rourke]]> The unexamined life is not worth mocking?

BadUncle

]]>