I started writing on Substack in February 2022,
and
was one of the first Substack writers to reach out to me to start a conversation:June 23, 2022: Hi Samuél, I just discovered your newsletter today and am instantly obsessed. I am writing a piece right now about French literature and I wondered if you might be interested in writing an article together? Specifically, I'd love to have a back-and-forth conversation about what the modern "Parisian Artist" looks like.
Our connection only deepened from there.
We wrote a letter exchange about modern literature1, which I followed with some of my thoughts about the current artistic “ism” we’re living in, metamodernism, a movement I learned thanks to another Substack writer, who also happens to be the saxophonist from my college funk band,
.In that essay, I disagree with Elle on a few points she made in her article “I’m So Over Dead French Writers.” I’m grateful for her willingness to engage in a conversation and force me to put my literary philosophy down in words (it’s a long read, best enjoyed over a cup of whiskey or coffee).
Elle writes about utopianism
for the simple and admirable reason that “if even our best literary minds cannot imagine a better future, how are we supposed to create it?” In another collaboration, we discussed how best to do this and how to cultivate genius in the 21st century.2
She is a thoughtful writer and a skilled researcher, but more than anything else, Elle has been an inspiration and a cheerleader for Substack writers since the beginning, and
remains one of the most popular essay/fiction Substacks around.And so a few weeks ago, I sat down with Elle to catch up and have an informal chat about subjects ranging from life in France to utopianism to why we’re both sick of traditional publishing and are so grateful for being able to write differently on this space.
Enjoy. The next Finishing the Hat episode is philosophy-heavy, featuring one of the most outspoken and thoughtful writers on Substack, Castaliaby Sam Kahn.
PS — This is the 102nd post I’ve published on Substack. I wanted to celebrate the 100th post, but then life happened. Alas. With any luck, there will be at least 100 more.
All this to say, if you enjoy this space, remember there’s a lot of other writing you may not have seen.
In the 100th post for if not, Paris, Episode 2 of Finishing the Hat, thinks of his Substack as a living book, which I love.
Just because something isn’t impossibly new (as soon as something is “out,” we tend to think of it as old—it’s exhausting) this doesn’t mean it isn’t still relevant, like this short story about September 11, 2001, or this saga about my Journey to Los Angeles, or the story of meeting my now-wife, in a dive bar in Paris one week before the world shut down.
7 Elle Griffinisms from Finishing the Hat, Episode 3
On Convincing Readers to “Go Paid”
“I tried to do my own version of tough-sell for a month, and I got ten paid subscribers from it but I hated it. I didn’t like doing the hard-sell. I’d almost rather gate my content and say, you like what I’m reading and you get to a point where you like to read more? Great, then pay for the writing. Don’t pay because I’m being aggro towards you.”
On Humanism
“The best we can do is see that there is suffering in the world and try to better that. And that means helping other humans on earth. Not because we need to get to heaven or something, but just because that’s the thing that needs help more than anything else.”
On a Salary Cap for Humans
A: “That was the whole premise of my essay “An Alternative to Tax the Rich.” I basically argued for not a salary cap but a tie-the-bottom-to-the-top, so the top earners of an organization cannot earn more than ten times of the bottom earners of the organization. The problem isn’t that people aren’t too rich, it’s that other people aren’t getting rich enough. If we tax the rich, all of the tax dollars in the US go to the poor, the old, and the military. Whereas in a Nordic country, if you’re taxing the rich, it goes to everyone. Nobody in America wants to be taxed because they think, none of that money is going to come back to me.”
On Burning Man
“Burning Man started as kind of an anarchist experiment. And what happens to anarchy? Originally everyone said, let’s make art and bring it to the desert. And then what happens? People want bigger art and better art so they need funders, so they get big tech companies to sponsor them to make this art so they can have this crazy installation. And then the company wants to show that it was from that company that art is possible. And now Burning Man is as capitalist as they come.”
On Making Money off of Art
“You can have pure art that’s not seen ever by anyone and you can have pure art that’s funded. But no matter what, the artist needs some kind of support to be able to create whatever they’re creating. Did Burning Man at some point become not for artists because it became capitalist?”
On Publishing Writing on Substack vs. Writing for Ourselves
“I think in written form, writing for an audience forces me to come to a point. When I used to journal, not for a public audience, I would just have a bunch of random thoughts and not come to any conclusion or solution. They didn’t go anywhere. And that wasn’t helpful to me, to write I’m feeling emotional today, or sad today, and then wonder what am I going to do about it?”
On Traditional Publishing
“I don’t see the value in a traditional publisher at all. It’s social validation, but that’s all it is. [As for literary agents] even if you get one of the Top 5 literary agents in the world, and even if that Top 5 Agent secures you a Penguin publishing deal, and even if that Penguin publishing deal pays you $100,000—which, just to get to this point, you're already in the top .0001% (it’s like 3 books every 10 years)—then your book will still sell 5,000 copies, maybe 10,000. That’s still nobody reading it. I’ve had articles that have reached 100,000 people. So why would you pay all of these people all of your income and they’re not going to get you a better result?”
Finishing the Hat w/ Elle Griffin