McSweeneys McGriddles

Dave Eggers dropped by town recently. Of course he used to live in Brooklyn so that isn’t such a big deal. The founding branch of his publishing house is here, and the fledgling second home of his youth writing centers. Eggers arrived for a fundraiser for the same tutoring hall, 826NYC, at its secret Park Slope hideout, the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. Aspiring literary moguls filled the seats and the standing room for an adult seminar with the symmetrically male and female lumps on either side of Chicago curly-shock framing California smile and downcast eyes; these three the 826 panel on Writing and Publishing the Novel, though the main draw was the brush with celebrity the McSweenies hosted for just $50 a head.

Never mind that most of the audience never read “You Shall Know Our Velocity”, Eggers’ only novel, or that once long ago the Staggering Genius mined our tender sides with his admissions of guilt about profiteering his family’s tragedy or that serious would-be novelists might have benefited more from an equally expensive but certainly earnest full house had the names of the panelists been unannounced. We’ve got to hand it to Eggers for creating such a valuable demonstration of his business model for franchising himself off the stakes of his publishing and movie contracts. Eggers has discovered precisely the gold mine that helped editorially and financially liberate rap music in its day of popular growth, the legacy of ownership against indentured artistry driven by the recording and publishing industries.

Fuck you. I know hip hop didn’t invent labor ownership. Examples range from United Artists to United Airlines to lately-noticed Ray Charles’ contract demand for his own master recordings. But somewhere between Death Row and Bad Boy rap realized it had something to sell to the mainstream in the very performance of artist-control; you can make money putting out your friends because your fans will buy their stuff. Ideally, you can bring up your whole community, whether it’s a block in Atlanta or your literary web journal. Once you have your own independent house, you can publish yourself and whatever you want, as in No Limit Soldiers, or you can break into other niches, like Rocawear. And the best thing for collared white typists who don’t have even have rek to protect is there’s nothing illegal or unscrupulous about it; it’s not misogynistic if you pimp yourself. Will we see a D. Eggers sneaker line soon? When does Lil Toph get his own book deal?

Again, that’s all well and good. Fuck I can’t wait to do it myself. You don’t have to be a fan of Jay-Z to recognize this artist entrepreneur shit is the way out. What the fuck were you going to do? Sign up with another gallery? Take your book out on tour? Play in that pro sports league forever? I know indy stuff seems kind of faky for capitalizing now but what else is revolution if not seizing power? McSweeneys played a valuable role in popularizing free internet publishing and exploring antiformulae for online literature. The educational programs and charity contributions are a useful product and double as an investment: a literate youth buoys the publishing market. Plus there’s a farm system. By all accounts “Happy Baby” is delightful. And “Rising Up and Rising Down” may be founded on the cheesy golden rule but as a chronicle of contemporary violence it’s the most necessary publication in years. McSweeneys is delivering itself to acclaim probably more swiftly than Eggers planned, but he’s right there with his name behind a book often enough to look convincing. Of course there’s the work with the kids. Building an operable organization independent of the publishing ensures a stable nonprofit to anchor further production experiments. As a web journal McSweeneys is seldom provocative. A smattering of contoured critique occasionally populates the Believer’s pages, amid the clutter of McSweeneys inbreeding and Eggers hustlers-in-league. But there was this one cover back in November…

A full-page John Kerry portrait illuminated by a halo of popsicles. Nine times the size of the usual illustrations, which traditionally share the front with three or four other artists, writers or images on a four-color tic-tac-toe square. The Kerry cover tipped the McSweenies as more than uninventive, adoring democrats, but as peddlers of a mythos in the form of political inclusion for subscribers. McSweeneys front page itself now cultivates pie-throwing as often as anything literary or particularly funny. The web journal is today more or less a synergistic portal to other McSwys/826/Believer ventures and events, the way porn sites funnel you to the paid members-only section. That is, instead of engendering social mobilization, Eggers has aligned himself more readily for mobilizing consumers toward his empire’s expansion projects. This is a structure for resourcing power verily similar to the republican party’s. McSweeneys literally sells itself to its constituents, growing more and more and more entrenched—as omnibroadcast as a political party, devouring its bloc, digesting its own tail with startling efficiency. That is what a political party does; it raises money for its own survival, and in strengthening its reach, empowering its investors, it reinforces its resources, capital resources. None has performed so well or so directly as today’s republicans judging by their swift sweeps last summer. It’s a fucking wonder the party doesn’t give up politics altogether and just get rich hosting fancy dinners, except —shit oh! I fucking forgot its donors want to rule the world. So why bugger Eggers about his attention to which strategies succeed these days? That’s how convergent evolution works. It’s how your favorite NBA team finally gets a title next year. Eggers’ capital is essentially artistic enthusiasm and the McSweeneys platform is awful benign. The most dramatic measure proffered by Eggers so far is a something like volunteer pyramid-building; and even the Kerry annunciation stands for little less than piddly reserve enthusiasm.

So what the shit? Eggers probably isn’t a jerk. At worst he’s a dork with too many people who’d pay to see him talk about writing. Jonathan Lethem, one of the lumps Eggers joined on the novel panel, is a repeated novelist and a Brooklyn product, and even he doesn’t draw SRO readings around here. I should give Dave a break. Fuck, almost all his family’s dead. It’s not like he’s going to shut down half of Manhattan in September or invade a country. But this motherfucker sticks in my craw. I didn’t really know why till I was walking through the park the other day. All those orange curtains were still up, all over the paths, and I heard that whole thing cost the artist more than twenty million dollars … and he and his wife raised all the funds themselves. If the fucking Christos can bring in so much cash just to erect metal poles in Central Park, without charging me a damn thing—Jeanne-Claude pulled the bills by selling copies of blueprints and sketches of the project, and photos and marginalia from earlier Christo works, privately to buyers and supporters—surely Dave Eggers can raise enough money for a literary academy without sharecropping his artist-politic movement to struggling writers who want nothing more than a glimpse of him. That’s how Alex Rodriguez supplements his income, asshole. Knitting a lattice of creative energies to put out ever-widening arrays of art is one thing. Trawling it behind your vessel like a wide-cast fisherman is another. It’s no fun reading hardcovers anyway.