Hapax legomenon

On literary life and lives

Inspired by recent discussion in Substack Notes between

Julianne Werlin

and

John Pistelli

—itself partly prompted by

Christian Lorentzen

’s superb essay in Granta on a recent work of literary sociology that marries, in a kind of demonic, autoerotic hierogamy, the spirits of a literary academia and publishing industry vying to outdo each other in vulgarity—a old riff of mine on the competing claims of …