MacNuggets

[michelej1]

On this Gawker blog, people criticized Keith Gessen for writing about political writing and compared him to FM. Guess the "Fleetwood Mac threshold" is like "jumping the shark." But in truth, Fleetwood Mac didn't often write about being in a band (although Lindsey has). They wrote more about being in love, which is universal, not something they only know as musicians.


http://gawker.com/391675/why-does-ga...u-keith-gessen

Also? Is his first novel a novel about living? No, it's a novel about writing.

In music, this is referred to as the Fleetwood Mac Threshold: you've been in a band so damn long you can't write songs about anything other than being in a band.

The problem with issuing that same indictment against Gessen is that he's hardly alone in writing about being a writer; there's a Sagan-esque bill-yuns and bill-yuns of books on the same topic. It qualifies as a literarily venial sin (though clearly in Gessen's case, a less than venereal sin).