Q: Today is ten years since you started firing 1s and 0s into the unpeopled void. Publishing your books online in real time.
A: In The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture, Andrew Keen argues that the Internet lowers standards by not providing professional editorial judgment.
I say that the professionalization of writing lowers standards by excluding independent voices and the Internet keeps diversity alive by offering an alternative accessible to people frozen out by temperament and inclination.
I’m not an amateur. I’ve been at it for ten years.
And I had 25 years of training before that in the small presses and mail art.
Keen’s book is an update of neocon Norman Podhoretz’s “The Know-Nothing Bohemians,” attacking beat writing.
Would you rather be Norman Podhoretz or Jack Kerouac?
Q: When’s the last time you invented a generation?
A: Exactly. I’d rather be me than Andrew Keen.
That guy’s so out of it he squeaks.
Q: Happy anniversary.
A: Thank you. Thank you very much.