Slap fighting with Life at 160
21 May
Life at 160 isn’t too happy with me. Which is fair because I probably said some mean things about him on the radio show. That’s the Internet. Someone does something. And we rush in to comment on it. Then there’s a response and a lot of people running around calling each other out and suddenly there’s *drama*.
It’s high school all over again but without the cool kids. We’re all just angry insecure nerds hyper-analyzing everything. Myself included.
It used to be exciting. The *drama*. Now it exhausts me. To the point where I have trouble dealing with it. Which is probably more reflective of my own issues than anything Life at 160 has written but still, this story hit me, and left me shaken.
I’m not talking about any of the points he brought up. I’m not talking about how it was written, or the intent or the truthfulness. I don’t understand why anyone would want to admit that they did that to another person. Whether the act is rape or illegal blackmail, the sort of casual disregard for another person shown there scares me. That’s what I was reacting to on the radio show.
And that’s what bothers me about his response as well. He writes (emphasis mine):
Sarah actually emailed me about a month after the incident and attempted to restart our relationship. She was extremely unstable and had an unfortunately low self-worth. She was no longer of any use to me, but I did respond to her email.
I guess the Internet is where empathy and compassion go to die.
I’m not holding myself out to better than Life at 160. I’ve done some truly horrible shit in my life. The kind of stuff that keeps me awake at night. I’m not being dramatic. By the time most of us reach 30 the regrets have started to pile up. We’re haunted by the things that we wish we would have done. And by the things we wish we hadn’t. Some of us will move past it. We’ll find a way to square the person we are today with the person we were then. I haven’t found a way to do that. And that’s why I don’t put it on display. Because we’re talking about real people here and while I’m willing to exploit my own life in my writing, I’m not willing to exploit anyone else.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe Life at 160 has found a way to square what he did then with the person he is now. Or maybe he’s the same person and truly sees nothing wrong with what he did. His comment “… she was no longer of any use to me” in his response makes me wonder.
The ironic thing is that I like Life at 160. I’ve spoken to him online and he extremely charismatic. It’s the same charisma that comes through in his other stories and it can be very compelling. But when you write:
I wrote the story because I thought, if I executed it correctly, the story could be pretty powerful. Obviously, you are supposed to read the story and say, “I fucking hate Life at 160.” The guy in that story showed no remorse or guilt about blackmailing a girl into a month of sex. It’s a fucking terrible thing that I did.
There’s something else going on there. Especially when I essentially have that reaction and get called out on his site.
Cutting through all the bullshit going on here, what this is is a shitty story written by a shitty guy for nothing more than attention. If anyone can tell me anything else to gain from all of this, I’m all ears.
What I was drawn to in Corman’s writing, from the very beginning, was the his innate level of emotional honesty. Good or bad, the stuff he wrote about entailed a very real personal element that drew from a well of vast potential, because it was him, and it was real. I don’t know a whole lot about Life at 160 (I’ve gleaned that he’s a self-absorbed pretentious lawyer, if I’m on to something), but his story brought nothing to the table other than a jackass doing a shitty thing to a helpless girl. That’s it? Jesus, NEXT.
It’s because of Corman joining Subtle Dig that I found Life at 160. I’ve always liked Ben’s writing because it’s retrospective quality and how he used writing as a way to sort out his life’s happenings.
I also enjoyed 160’s post in question. Though it is now some years later, he wrote as though it were the day after he blackmailed the girl. He retained his same thoughts and emotions and portrayed them elegantly. That’s what made it powerful. Had he drenched it in regret, it would have lost it’s value.
I think “slap fighting” pretty much sums this up.
My last year of undergrad I took an upper level fiction writing seminar. Three times during the semester you’d be in the hot seat, with the rest of the class discussing your writing for about 30-45 minutes.
Rule #1 was that you were supposed to be quiet and not defend your work. You could answer factual questions, such as whether a certain word choice was intentional, whether the work was supposed to allude to some other work, etc. But, you couldn’t speak up to defend against criticism, because that gets in the way of processing it, and also just ruins the discussion.
If L@160 was just clarifying what he thought the legal issues were, that’d be fine. But defending your writing style is lame. Let the writing speak for itself. If people don’t like what you wrote, either get better or stop caring.