On getting mad at essays
Don't get mad at Agnes Callard's essay on travel. Get mad at people who are mad at her.
Something snapped in my brain yesterday. The philosopher Agnes Callard wrote an essay for The New Yorker against travel, and everyone got mad. In fact, I only found out that Callard had written the piece because I ran across several responses by writers who were mad at it.
A couple of notable cultural critics said that they were responding maddily to Callard while they themselves were traveling in interesting European locales. This fact is strong evidence in favor of Callard’s argument that people “pride themselves … on having traveled” yet never change who they are as a result of travel. (One might say that priding yourself on something forestalls any change that thing might make in who you are.) These critics were still doing cultural crticism on vacation.
And because they were not just doing what they always do but additionally getting mad about it, they were quite possibly ruining their nice vacations. They lost, and on Callard’s own terms, she won.
Writing an essay wherein you get mad at another essay is a poor use of brainpower. (Writing an essay about people writing mad-at-an-essay essays is normal and good, however.) It’s reactive, it’s tedious, and often, it ends up being defensive and self-justifying (“Well, I know I travel the right way!”). It’s bad for writer and reader alike. And it took the Callard/travel dustup to make me finally realize how pernicious it is. I’m done with this genre, as a reader and as a writer. If some writer gets mad at another writer’s essay, it’s none of my business. I don’t want to know about it.
Look, I have written many essays in response to bigger, more popular essays by better-known writers like Tim Kreider, Karen Rinaldi, Kathryn Schulz, and Derek Thompson (twice!). Just two weeks ago, I pitched such an essay to an editor. She responded by saying that the article I wanted to respond to is not reason enough to write about the topic. And she was right! I am grateful she passed on my pitch. If I want to write about that topic, I will have to work a bit harder to find a reason for my essay. Whatever comes out of that process will be better as a result.
The positive case for writing an essay in response to another essay is that sometimes, an essay is a cultural event and therefore a good essay topic in its own right. The second essay keeps the conversation going. It acknowledges that the first author did not settle whatever questions their essay raised. People will read essay-response essays, and so writing them is a way to get bylines and paychecks, which every writer needs.
If you’re a lesser-known writer, then you can ride the attentional coattails of the bigger name. Sometimes, it works. My essay in response to Anne Helen Petersen’s 2019 mega-viral millennial burnout essay caught the eye of an editor at University of California Press. She ended up publishing my (really quite good) book, The End of Burnout.
Also, it’s just hard to have your own original ideas to write about. Especially earlier in my writing career, I didn’t know what to write about. It’s easier to respond to other people’s ideas. So that’s what I did — and, occasionally, still do.
Easier still is just to get mad at other people’s ideas. But it’s too easy. It’s not a formula for doing your best work. It’s a formula for sounding petty and wasting readers’ time by making them vicariously mad at something they perhaps haven’t even read.
As a culture, we are now unhealthily aware of other people’s thoughts. We need fewer voices in our heads. The people who share how mad they are at essays are probably not going to stop talking about it. So it will be up to the rest of us to ignore them. Let them talk to themselves.
I am sure I will continue to get mad at essays. The temptation to write about the essays I get mad at — in a Substack Note, in a newsletter post, in a full-on essay for some publication somewhere — will be great. I can’t promise I’ll be forever able to resist. But now that I’m finally more aware of the moral danger of writing about getting mad at essays, I actually have a chance to resist. By the grace of God, I hope I will.
I did eventually read Callard’s essay. I liked it. I thought it was thought-provoking and funny. I didn’t agree with everything she said. But that’s fine. I didn’t get mad about it. If I had, though, I would hope I’d keep it to myself.