“Darya stood firm…’I think art is what makes life worth living.’ The Castles harrumphed, and the waiter appeared with our dessert. We ate the blintzes in silence.” – Lincoln Michel, ‘Metallic Realms’
There is a sad reality behind this blog. One that I have various self-defense mechanisms for, and one that honestly doesn’t bother me too much. So don’t picture me rolling when I type this, but do picture me surrounded by a loving family and cat, picture me with a good amount of friends and not-too-overwhelming social calendar, picture me stoned and well-fed. The sad reality is that no one reads. Not only this blog (hovering in the triple-digit subscribers, not bad for some jagoff with no book), but I mean no one reads.
If you’re gonna be a writer, you need to understand this. No ones reads. Also, if you’re gonna be a writer, you gotta learn how to tell when someone is exaggerating for effect. Plenty of people read (this blog has triple-digit subscribers). The indie and small press scene is lively and producing really exciting stuff—whether you’re a “literary” or “genre” reader. Another exciting thing? That particular made-up dichotomy is mostly fading. It’s a great time to be a reader. It is not, as our book this week shows, a great time to be someone who has too highfalutin an opinion of literature’s place in the wider culture.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
A book full of space adventures, but it never leaves Brooklyn, Vermont, or New Jersey. A book that has a character say “David Foster Wallace killed footnotes,”1 but then uses footnotes to great effect.2 A book that really gives a shit about its characters, even though it’s always making fun of them.3 A book that has a pretty explicit homage to Lolita, but absolutely not the one most people would think of when you reference Lolita.4 A book that you could easily syllabus with Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! if you wanted to teach a class about “writers writing about writers but not in an annoying way.” I’m talking, of course, about Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel.
Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel: if you read this blog, you know that I’ve been a fan of Lincoln’s Counter Craft blog for years. I’ve never read any of his books, though—The Body Scout came out right around when I was realizing that I was personally over dystopias, and I simply haven’t gotten to Upright Beasts yet. I want to read those two books now, because this one rips. Let’s do some scene-setting: every other chapter is from a series of sci-fi stories called The Star Rot Chronicles. These stories are written by the four-person sci-fi writing collective Orb 4, and each member of the collective has a corresponding character on the spaceship Star Rot. The stories are very fun and extremely fine. They vary stylistically. They include adventure, world building, and metafictional interpersonal drama. It’s important to remember that these stories are fine because every other chapter is our narrator, Michael Lincoln. Mike is a dogged scholar5, an unabashed fanboy6, a person who can’t take social cues7, a “barnacle,”8 a “walking m’lady,”9 Nicholas Hoult’s character from The Menu,10 a person who inspires his boss to “mumble something about hygiene,”11 a verified eavesdropper/snoop/bird neglecter, and—possibly, maybe, the text doesn’t say one way or another—an arsonist or worse. Mike is the one who takes us through the semi-rise and hard-falling-out of the Orb 4 collective, and he is every bit as reliable a narrator as Humbert Humbert.12
Mike is stuck in a mind prison of his own making. To read Mike’s words is to be reminded that thesauruses exist, to type that sentence is to hear Mike lilt “thesauri” back at you in your mind’s voice. He is Stan, and his Eminem is Taras Castle13, a writer who reaches his 31st birthday with just a few published short stories to show for it (I wouldn’t know anything about that). Taras writes things besides Orb 4 stories. The other writers—Darya, Jane, and Merlin—also do other things, like creative IG cosplay or podcasting or TTRPG14 writing or even non-genre novel writing (and selling said novel for six figures!). Mike, however? His life is made of unemployment, credit card debt, Kraft mac and cheese straight out of the pot, gin-and-Mountain-Dew nightcaps, and delusions about how big Orb 4 is gonna get.
Here is where we come back to the sad reality that no one reads: Mike’s fantasies about Orb 4 might’ve been possible for, like, a two-decade window in the 1950s and 60s. Literature just doesn’t have that same omnipresent cultural sway anymore. Nothing really does, not even sports or politics. The novel presents a few different ways of approaching this popularity decline problem, if you’re a writer. I don’t want to get into intentionality/reader response arguments—that type of shit is why I dropped outta an MA program—but the novel is playing postmodernist games, so I’m gonna armchair analyze. The author is Lincoln Michel. The narrator is Michael Lincoln. The best friend/idol is Taras Castle, which is also a pen name Lincoln cops to publishing under years ago in the acknowledgments. A Lincoln Michel shows up briefly in the novel, a conveniently-named prop Mike uses to worm his way out of accusations that he’s written Orb 4 fanfic. To me, it is pretty clear that each of these characters represents a different way of approaching literature. Mike is an immature fanboy with a teenager’s understanding and passion. Taras is a genre writer learning in real time how long it takes for a writer to see success, if they see it at all. The Lincoln of the text seems to be a mirror image of Taras, a struggling literary fiction writer. Other characters—the members of Orb 4, people in publishing, party guests—offer their own literary worldviews. None one emerges looking entirely clean. The MFA snobs aren’t quite as snobbish as Mike thinks they are, but they are snobbish, veering on cruel. Jane, who sells an unfinished autofiction novel for six figures, is right to say “it isn’t a life-changing amount of money,” but I would argue she could learn to take a W with grace. Taras, as many suggest, does need therapy, and maybe he’d realize that success can look different than what his ambition tells him. Mike isn’t nearly as clever as he thinks he is, he can be intolerable, but at least he has passion, at least he gives a shit. I’m on the record as saying I have a little bit of Nicholas Hoult’s character in The Menu in me, and I’m not to proud to admit I have a little bit of Michael Lincoln in me, too. The difference between me and the two of them is that I can 1) cook and 2) talk to women. Still, it’s good to care about things, it’s not even bad to be Romantic about things. The trick is to simply not, well…just watch The Menu and read Metallic Realms, and you should see what not to do.
Blog’s going long, here, so I’ll do what one of the Orb 4 writers explicitly says they’re doing with a story and implicate the reader: what does artistic success look like to you? I have my answer. The characters in this novel’s inability to find an answer leads to disaster. What’s your answer?
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Well, real quick, I’ve been bad at promoting the podcasts and stuff here lately! I got new poems in Moist Poetry Journal this week. The Line Break was back this week, just Bob and me, having a blast. The Lazy & Entitled Podcast this week interviewed our dear dear friend, former bandmate, and current frontman for Pinch Hitter, Spencer Blake. It’s all a ton of fun. Let’s listen to some Pinch Hitter, huh? “Compliments Don’t Pay My Bills” seems a good fit for Metallic Realms week.
- The Compact Disc Isn’t Going Quietly by Leor Galil in Chicago Reader
- The Merciless Felt-Tipped Marker of Gordon Lish by Sean deLone in Dear Head Of Mine
- “What To Do If Someone Tries To Tell You Bad News” by Kim Magowan in fractured
- My Pain Is A Product by Dorian Dawes on their Patreon
- “Big Tony” by Alex Miller in Jake. If you ask me, someone should write a new “Scarliotti and The Sinkhole” (one of the greatest short stories ever) every time we get a new president. Alex has done it for the second Trump admin.
What’re you still doing here? Don’t you know that Micah and Brendan have a show?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Based on how he eats throughout the book, may you not encounter any Michael Lincolns.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- he did, it’s true ↩︎
- it’s fun, see? ↩︎
- I’m loathe to call things “satire” because “satire” is maybe the most willfully misunderstood and weaponized-in-favor-of-assholes words in the English language. I also don’t want you thinking this book is as heartless as, say, Martin Amis. Or as above-it-all as Vonnegut/Saunders. If you must find a satirical lineage, maybe Nabokov or Pynchon? I’ve only read Lolita and Inherent Vice, though ↩︎
- let’s just get this out of the way: absolutely no pedophilia in this book. Either read Lolita or listen to Jamie Loftus’s Lolita Podcast, then read this book, and you’ll get what I mean ↩︎
- his view of himself ↩︎
- specifically, about Orb 4 stories, which, again, if they came across the Cotton Xenomorph desk, I would vote somewhere between “what do you guys think” to “yes” on them, and I’m pretty sure that’s intentional on Lincoln’s part ↩︎
- as one of the other writers describes him ↩︎
- as one of the other writers describes him, before helpfully pointing out that barnacles aren’t parasites ↩︎
- as my wife described him when I read two paragraphs out loud ↩︎
- as I came to think of him ↩︎
- the world of this book smells truly rancid, it’s pretty remarkable ↩︎
- Pale Fire is also a big influence on this book. Because I went to college, I know a little bit about Pale Fire without having read it, but also, Lincoln talks about liking Pale Fire all the time on his blog, and half the point of authors having blogs is using said blogs to read too much into novels, right? ↩︎
- hope that makes sense, I’ve never been the biggest Eminem fan, except in sixth grade, when Brendan and I would go to Tower Records and listen to Marshall Mathers LP on store headphones because our parents wouldn’t let us buy Eminem records, and I think age 12 is perfect time to become and then stop being an Eminem fan, and I also think this should be the last footnote ↩︎
- table top role playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons, just in case my parents are reading this, okay for real this time, last footnote ↩︎