#1.THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS...

Welcome to the fat cat. Here's what I've been thinking about lately:

POOR ARTISTS: a book of blended criticism, art and fiction, by Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, the wicked duo behind The White Pube. They describe it as 'a fictional quest through the real art-world'.

This is a book about making art, trying to make a living making art, trying to hold on to your soul while making the kind of art that will allow you to make a living, and let you make your real art, and so on.

My own career as a writer has been completely jugaad, in that I decided one day I'd do it, then started studying on my own time, and throwing everything at the wall to make it happen. I feel like I've done an alright job mostly, but the mechanisms of the business of art and literature still feel quite opaque. This book brings them together, but sort of like, if a kinder, anarchist version of Jessa from GIRLS was breaking it down for you. It might be a tad basic if you've spent years marinating in art-institutions, but for the rest of us losers, I highly recommend it. It's also good to get you all riled up about our shitty state of affairs and want to be an anarchist/leftist.

I enjoyed it a lot. Here's some pages: