"I’m waiting for an Internet Novel that opens its mouth and speaks with voice of my portal." It sounds like you've got the seeds of that right here, in the preceding paragraphs. And I bet we'd all love to read it.
This is a great essay. I never thought of these kinds of novels as being gothic, but you've definitely convinced me. My impression of the internet is more or less the same as yours. I'd be curious how many people would credit the internet with saving their lives. I think it would be many. Way more than people might think. Anything you're struggling with, there's likely a space you can find to connect with others. If you've survived abuse, or are in the midst of it, if you have some obscure disease, if you have relationship or family problems, if you're grieving, if you have mental health problems, if you're escaping a cult, etc. The possibility for connection and help is well beyond what was available before the internet. I can't think of any novel that really gets into that... Anyway, this essay is a nice companion to your Millennial Novel essay and I would probably buy (but definitely take out of the library) a book of essays about contemporary fiction were you to write and compile enough of them (it'd be worth buying, I'm just cheap and being honest here).
"I don’t feel that I should be elsewhere doing something else when I’m online. And when I do feel that, I just go watch Law and Order.". Brandon, thank you for making me smile today. I confess to being here for all spiritual decay that includes a good soundtrack. Also the voice of your portal.
Totally bonkers how today's media/authorship climates brought about a new gen of Poes, Walpoles, and Shelleys. I really see it in a resurgence of gothic "style"--insincere narrators who think they are smarter than everyone, frames within frames, everything in motion but going nowhere
I don't think it's bonkers! It makes total sense. This stuff is probably cyclical. A friend of mine was saying over the weekend that we exist on an aesthetic and ideological chessboard, and all of history, we've just been making the same moves in response to various stimuli and it's all we can do, haha. But it is fun to point out the resonances that people don't notice at first.
Haha yes it actually does make sense in a way! But the thing about your insights into the internet gothic that is "bonkers" for me is how these recent writings contradict the deeply ingrained idea that digital media has innovated us beyond gothic urges and drives. I think the techno-calvinistic part of the essay helps me to grasp this idea better. Tbh this is probably my favorite part of the essay. I love how your insights build on Fiedler's concepts, but your readings of the aesthetics of belief here are even a bit more fine-tuned than his, I think. You are really onto something!
Ooo. I read and really enjoyed Red Pill. But I admit, I hadn't thought of it in the context of these two books. To my mind, that book is interested in some of the same things, but it's mode is so...different. And then of course, there's the back half of that book which is totally bananas. But I would say there's definitely some obvious Gothic impulses in Red Pill too. Though, that could have something to do with the book's more direct and obvious relationship to Romanticism. I think there's probably something there! I'm going to noodle on it. Thanks for the q. It's making my brain percolate.
Isn't it gothic mostly because addiction is gothic as hell? White liberalism is a certain type of addiction to White Selfhood masquerading as political framework. Makes sense their relationship to the internet also follows that tenor.
I know you wrote this a while ago, but I just saw it today. It's beautifully written. I wish I could write something so articulate. I saw you speak last year and am really glad I came across this review.
I'm very curious about the notion that The Internet Novel is a "white thing." It feels true. And I can't think of a black- or brown-authored novel that is so directly obsessed with the Internet. But this also has me thinking about the difference between our public author personas and our private lives. Among my multicultural friends, I see no appreciable difference in their Internet use and obsessions. Their "content" is different but their methods are the same. So I wonder if brown and black writers aren't writing Internet novels only because we've adopted authorial personas that don't include that part of our lives? I'm always puzzled and amused that at least 90% of successful Native American writers are college professors but very few of them have ever written a word about college life. I guess "English professor" doesn't match well with the desired Native author persona.
Thank you for sharing this. It often feels like it's meant to be a mark of maturity to be completely cynical about "what the internet has done to society," but I can't relate to that. I'm disabled, and internet communities made me both the artist that I am, and the activist. They gave me routes into in-person mentorship and community organising I wouldn't otherwise have had, but they have value in themselves. Online or off, whatever "off" even means now, we save each other, again and again, from the horrors of our time.
This also reminds me that the gothic is about the return of the repressed. If the present online world is a haunted house to some people, then I'm comfortable being the ghost, the rejected relative confined to the attic (such relatives are, of course, often disabled in gothic stories, whether literary, criminal, or apocryphal), but ready to spring out screaming truths to power.
This is brilliant, the best piece I've read on these books, and I've read quite a few! "Because while the world I lived in told me one thing about myself, the greater world, told me I could be something else." - I felt that! And I'm old, so my point of reference is primitive mid-to-late 90s internet. You're so right that these are *not* Internet novels, they are social media novels.
God I agree. These novels (ok I only read Fake Accounts, so idk about Lockwood) kind of overwhelming seem to be positioned as the "experience of being a person on the Internet" when in reality they're about being an extremely miserable, kind of unpleasant person on the Internet. It doesn't have to be like that!! One could simply put their accounts on private and, like, exclusively interact with pictures of your friends babies and food
That would kind of defeat the point of, or at least the initial draw toward, the internet, which I think Brandon captures pretty well here:
"We ran to the internet to be free. To escape the narrowness of our contexts and circumstances, the new democracy of it all, the wide-open space where we were all free to be who we wanted to be. We bought in."
Logging on for most was always about expanding beyond the borders of your own social circle, too. To connect. We've had time to explore a little now, to live and interact online. Some people are happy to restrict their experience by connecting only with friends and family, some continue to look outside for connection, for many reasons. But I don't think that makes the latter "extremely miserable" or particularly "unpleasant" people.
I think that's pretty spot-on. And, I mean, hey, an author is entitled to their subject matter, but like you, I'm interested in asking the questions and seeing what emerges. It's an exciting time.
"I’m waiting for an Internet Novel that opens its mouth and speaks with voice of my portal." It sounds like you've got the seeds of that right here, in the preceding paragraphs. And I bet we'd all love to read it.
I don't know that I have the chaotic spirit or the technical virtuosity of these writers to pull it off, but thank you!
This is a great essay. I never thought of these kinds of novels as being gothic, but you've definitely convinced me. My impression of the internet is more or less the same as yours. I'd be curious how many people would credit the internet with saving their lives. I think it would be many. Way more than people might think. Anything you're struggling with, there's likely a space you can find to connect with others. If you've survived abuse, or are in the midst of it, if you have some obscure disease, if you have relationship or family problems, if you're grieving, if you have mental health problems, if you're escaping a cult, etc. The possibility for connection and help is well beyond what was available before the internet. I can't think of any novel that really gets into that... Anyway, this essay is a nice companion to your Millennial Novel essay and I would probably buy (but definitely take out of the library) a book of essays about contemporary fiction were you to write and compile enough of them (it'd be worth buying, I'm just cheap and being honest here).
oh, now I feel bad for saying I might only borrow and not buy your (imaginary) book. I'd buy it. I read a lot and books get expensive, is all.
Thanks! Haha. We'll see!
"I don’t feel that I should be elsewhere doing something else when I’m online. And when I do feel that, I just go watch Law and Order.". Brandon, thank you for making me smile today. I confess to being here for all spiritual decay that includes a good soundtrack. Also the voice of your portal.
Happy to bring the laughs, tbh. It's the best part.
Totally bonkers how today's media/authorship climates brought about a new gen of Poes, Walpoles, and Shelleys. I really see it in a resurgence of gothic "style"--insincere narrators who think they are smarter than everyone, frames within frames, everything in motion but going nowhere
I don't think it's bonkers! It makes total sense. This stuff is probably cyclical. A friend of mine was saying over the weekend that we exist on an aesthetic and ideological chessboard, and all of history, we've just been making the same moves in response to various stimuli and it's all we can do, haha. But it is fun to point out the resonances that people don't notice at first.
Haha yes it actually does make sense in a way! But the thing about your insights into the internet gothic that is "bonkers" for me is how these recent writings contradict the deeply ingrained idea that digital media has innovated us beyond gothic urges and drives. I think the techno-calvinistic part of the essay helps me to grasp this idea better. Tbh this is probably my favorite part of the essay. I love how your insights build on Fiedler's concepts, but your readings of the aesthetics of belief here are even a bit more fine-tuned than his, I think. You are really onto something!
holy shit
ive read a lot of reviews of both of these books and this is by far the best!! amazing piece
I appreciate it!
curious how you'd think about Red Pill alongside these novels
Ooo. I read and really enjoyed Red Pill. But I admit, I hadn't thought of it in the context of these two books. To my mind, that book is interested in some of the same things, but it's mode is so...different. And then of course, there's the back half of that book which is totally bananas. But I would say there's definitely some obvious Gothic impulses in Red Pill too. Though, that could have something to do with the book's more direct and obvious relationship to Romanticism. I think there's probably something there! I'm going to noodle on it. Thanks for the q. It's making my brain percolate.
Isn't it gothic mostly because addiction is gothic as hell? White liberalism is a certain type of addiction to White Selfhood masquerading as political framework. Makes sense their relationship to the internet also follows that tenor.
I know you wrote this a while ago, but I just saw it today. It's beautifully written. I wish I could write something so articulate. I saw you speak last year and am really glad I came across this review.
I'm very curious about the notion that The Internet Novel is a "white thing." It feels true. And I can't think of a black- or brown-authored novel that is so directly obsessed with the Internet. But this also has me thinking about the difference between our public author personas and our private lives. Among my multicultural friends, I see no appreciable difference in their Internet use and obsessions. Their "content" is different but their methods are the same. So I wonder if brown and black writers aren't writing Internet novels only because we've adopted authorial personas that don't include that part of our lives? I'm always puzzled and amused that at least 90% of successful Native American writers are college professors but very few of them have ever written a word about college life. I guess "English professor" doesn't match well with the desired Native author persona.
Thank you for sharing this. It often feels like it's meant to be a mark of maturity to be completely cynical about "what the internet has done to society," but I can't relate to that. I'm disabled, and internet communities made me both the artist that I am, and the activist. They gave me routes into in-person mentorship and community organising I wouldn't otherwise have had, but they have value in themselves. Online or off, whatever "off" even means now, we save each other, again and again, from the horrors of our time.
This also reminds me that the gothic is about the return of the repressed. If the present online world is a haunted house to some people, then I'm comfortable being the ghost, the rejected relative confined to the attic (such relatives are, of course, often disabled in gothic stories, whether literary, criminal, or apocryphal), but ready to spring out screaming truths to power.
I really enjoyed this! All of it but in particular it got at how I felt reading Fake Accounts: simultaneously in awe and a bit…wanting.
This is brilliant, the best piece I've read on these books, and I've read quite a few! "Because while the world I lived in told me one thing about myself, the greater world, told me I could be something else." - I felt that! And I'm old, so my point of reference is primitive mid-to-late 90s internet. You're so right that these are *not* Internet novels, they are social media novels.
God I agree. These novels (ok I only read Fake Accounts, so idk about Lockwood) kind of overwhelming seem to be positioned as the "experience of being a person on the Internet" when in reality they're about being an extremely miserable, kind of unpleasant person on the Internet. It doesn't have to be like that!! One could simply put their accounts on private and, like, exclusively interact with pictures of your friends babies and food
That would kind of defeat the point of, or at least the initial draw toward, the internet, which I think Brandon captures pretty well here:
"We ran to the internet to be free. To escape the narrowness of our contexts and circumstances, the new democracy of it all, the wide-open space where we were all free to be who we wanted to be. We bought in."
Logging on for most was always about expanding beyond the borders of your own social circle, too. To connect. We've had time to explore a little now, to live and interact online. Some people are happy to restrict their experience by connecting only with friends and family, some continue to look outside for connection, for many reasons. But I don't think that makes the latter "extremely miserable" or particularly "unpleasant" people.
Also I enjoyed this essay. the Internet novel as a Gothic novel!! Brilliant
I think that's pretty spot-on. And, I mean, hey, an author is entitled to their subject matter, but like you, I'm interested in asking the questions and seeing what emerges. It's an exciting time.