Friday, January 3, 2014

Feuilletoniste -- pronounced "blog-GER"

If it is so obvious, why does [a certain charming blogger still on the good side of thirty] need to hear it from you? Put yourself in her shoes.
I do, and this is what I get.  I'm a bright, energetic, ambitious newser and citizen deeply concerned about the incredible mess the world is in.  I come of age in a culture which has developed over the last half-century the ability to mercantilize dissent -- "Think different!" -- to absorb and neutralize (and monetize!) critical, bohemian, rebellious, thought and speech.  On the one hand I want to fix things, to be a force for good and so on -- and I see all this corruption around me and I want to expose it.  On the other hand, I REALLY need to pay the rent.

My expectations have been (because I really have not fully penetrated the "groovy Hollywood" scam) that I could do both, but the more I learn about how the infobiz works, and the more utter slimeballs I encounter, it begins to become clear to me that I either have to sell out, get out, or go get a shit job somewhere and resign myself to being peripheral and ineffective.  This is a horrible prospect -- I mean, it is a HORRIBLE prospect, and I can't yet quite bring myself to face it.  That's what her shoes feel like to me.

As it happens, and I know you're not interested, this is the prospect that has faced absolutely every young-and-idealistic Grub-Streeter and f (oh boy...) feuilletoniste since Bohemia was born in the 1840's.  "Feuilletoniste" -- I think not TOO badly misspelled -- a writer of occasional pieces, fairly long -- our nearest equivalents:  pamphleteer, freelance, publicist.

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