MediaMonday: Professional Jealousy March 4, 2013
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in MediaMonday.trackback
MediaMonday for March 3, 2013: Professional Jealousy. Discussion media drawn from Alexander Nazaryan’s “Keith Gessen, Nathaniel Rich: I’m sorry I trashed your novels,” in Salon, March 3, 2013.
Excerpt: “Consequently, the reviews I wrote came to bear a stench of bitterness, none more so than one I wrote for the Village Voice in 2008 in which I took on two debut novelists, Keith Gessen and Nathaniel Rich. After comparing them to James Joyce and Ralph Ellison, I proceed to snidely savage their work. It is true: I did not like their novels.”
LitChat 
Jealousy is a terrible thing.
I agree; jealousy when used against a person is a terrible thing. Yet many people struggle with feelings of envy toward others who have achieved what they hope to or never can attain to. I believe it’s good to acknowledge jealousy to oneself, then determine if that negative feeling can be cycled into something positive to benefit oneself.
Totally agree, but it would have been better if he had focused on what he was doing to get published and not compare himself to others because if he wasn’t publish it’s because he’d taken his eyes off his on objective.