Finding a New Tribe

On Substack, connection & literary communities in the 21st century

La Rue Férou, Paris 75006, photo by Augusta Sagnelli

Two months ago, I was contacted by Elle Griffin, a trailblazing Substack writer who’d stumbled on my serialized novella and suggested we have a literary back-and-forth about what the modern “Parisian artist” looks like today. Last week, Elle published our conversation, which was met with some incredibly thoughtful comments and dialogue from readers and writers alike.

Elle Griffin came to online literary prominence last year with her brilliant essay about the exploitative nature of the publishing industry, which went viral. Soon after, Elle began serializing her debut gothic novel, Obscurity, and became one of ten fellows in Substack’s coveted fellowship program. Since becoming one of the most promising young fiction writers on Substack, Elle has been featured in Business Insider, Publisher’s Weekly, and Morning Brew, and has also published an impressively researched article in Esquire about Web-3 and literary NFTs, a murky but exciting sea of possibilities for the future of equitable writing.

Being contacted by Elle was symbolic of my Substack experience thus far, which has been a revelation in terms of meeting and fostering a literary community. In an era so often defined by transactional relationships, perceived value, and digital popularity contests, it’s rare to meet people who are generous with their knowledge and vulnerable about their wisdom … rarer-still to meet well-respected writers with busy lives who reach out from across an ocean to have a literary conversation. As a result of our digital friendship, Elle even joined me for a recent session of the Paris Writers’ Salon, a virtual literary salon that I host with my friend and mentor, the prolific author John Baxter.

Many of my subscribers know me personally, but others can only know me through the love story I’m writing about how I fell in love with my now-wife from across an ocean during a global pandemic, or from my seralized novella about wayward twenty-somethings trying to find purpose in Paris via booze, drugs, and casual sex. This is why next week, I want to share a more autobiographical piece about how I got here, about how I learned to live and write well in Paris after twelve years searching for—and struggling to find—a literary community. Suffice to say, in the past five months I’ve found a new tribe here on Substack, connecting with writers like Elle, the French architect Jo Petroni, the poet/philosopher Reena Kapoor, and dozens of writers and readers like yourself.

All of this got me thinking about which “ism” aesthetics may be headed towards in the 21st century, a question that kept me up multiple nights to fine-tune an essay response to Elle’s piece about being bored with dead French writers. The essay that came out of that was about modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism, an idea that could very well be the a new “ism” of the 21st century.

I wouldn’t have written this essay if it wasn’t for the connections I’ve made on Substack. In the literary back-and-forth between Elle and I, which I’ve excerpted below, we discuss contemporary literature, French literature and existentialism, and why the trauma plot has taken over the narrative of so much literary fiction. The ideas that came out of our conversation—and our readers’ engagement and responses—have inspired me in a way I haven’t felt in years.

And so maybe all I mean to say here is, thank you. I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to my paid subscribers for granting me the time to focus on writing, and to all of my free subscribers for inspiring me to connect with readers in a new way. I’m grateful for all of you, truly, and I look forward to reading your own contributions to our conversation down below. Make sure to click through to the link to be able to read the full conversation.

A bientôt,

Samuél

What is modern literature anyway?

A conversation between Samuél and Elle about whether this post counts as modern literature.

Elle Griffin: As I mentioned in my recent essay, I’ve been struggling to find modern literature I like. I think it’s me. I think no one talks the way they did 100 years ago and I’m romanticizing a certain period for its language. 

I also think I’m romanticizing a certain period for its nostalgia. I’ve read that Alexandre Dumas was criticized for writing so commercially—like he was a sellout! But now, 100 years removed from its initial publication, The Count of Monte Cristo is considered “classic literature.” 

I wonder if I can’t see art now because I’m too close to it. Like maybe at the time, no one thought Victor Hugo wrote beautifully because that’s just how they all spoke back then? Maybe today, a social media post written in all lowercase letters with lots of emojis is art. And maybe 100 years from now people will look back and do a whole college thesis on the art of the emoji, and how writers used it in the context of language and literature. And maybe I can’t see this as art because it’s my own time and I’m too close to it?

I know that I still romanticize books as the form. That was how ideas were communicated 100 years ago, but now ideas are shared on Twitter and social media and news sites and text messages. Maybe 100 years from now we’ll posthumously publish the social media posts of some famous person, the way Anne Frank’s diary was published nearly 100 years ago. 

I’m open to changing my perspective. To studying modern literature in its current language and form. I guess we’re calling this current age metamodernism (are we married to that?). But what does that actually mean? What is metamodernist literature and where do we find it?

Samuél Lopez-Barrantes: Thanks for these thoughts, Elle. I’ve been writing in Paris for 12 years, so I also know quite a bit about romanticizing the past. It took me a few years to get past the trope of the down-and-out bohemian who had to be either politically interesting or partying all the time to write something worthwhile, and it was only after a terrible first novel that I wrote a slightly better second novel, Slim and The Beast, which, not surprisingly, wasn’t about Paris, lofty ideals, or crazy parties, but about male intimacy, basketball, and growing up in North Carolina. 

I think we mirror each other’s romanticized literary visions, albeit focusing on different times: whereas you see the transition from the romantic to the modernist era in the 19th century as the pinnacle, I find most of my inspiration from the 20th century transition from modernism to postmodernism (Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, and Salman Rushdie immediately come to mind). 

Read the entirety of our conversation here:

What is modern literature anyway?