The End of My Career

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This book I wrote is having a nicer July 4th than I am Let’s say you had to write something nice about America. Partly because somewhere deep down you believe it, but mostly because your friend of 35 years was the editorial director of Assouline, and the writer he hired for a coffee table book called “America: The Imagination of a Nation” disappeared, and he was sending the book to the printer in three days, and he offered you a bunch of money.

I have a streak of 2,269 days on Duolingo. That means I’ve spent at least five minutes learning Spanish each day for more than six years. The only other things I’ve done consistently for that long are eat, sleep, and complain about Donald Trump. My Spanish studies have had about the same effect as that last activity. The End of My Career is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In an effort to become an intolerable old person, I’ve written a handful of articlesaboutclassical music. I’ve inveigled my way into becoming friends with a few musicians in the L.A. Philharmonic, which is how I met Vijay Gupta. I had heard that the L.A. Phil had hired a 19-year-old violinist, possibly the youngest person to ever get a job at a major orchestra.

Just do what this dude says to do Please, hold your boos. I have watched the viral videos of graduation speakers getting aggressively heckled the microsecond they mention “generative AI,” and frankly, I don’t blame you. If someone stood up here in a silk robe and told me a soulless data aggregator was my new workplace best friend, I’d throw my flat hat at them too. You have every right to be furious.

Because No One Else Will This is the first thing in my mailbox to make me laugh out loud. And I was rejected by Georgetown. I received a FedEx from JPMorganChase, which made me nervous. Was a studio revoking a contract for a script I co-wrote? Was it a mortgage-related thing? Did I break some rule by opening too many credit cards for bonus points? It got more confusing when I opened it. This was everything inside the box: Did they send this to the wrong Joel?

The Bar for Quality is Now So Low That You're Reading It This is the kid AI created for no reason. The other kids look so little like themselves that I probably didn’t need to blur them. As a man who has spent twenty-five years convincing editors that my unique blend of deep personal insecurity and profound laziness constitutes a “literary voice,” I am deeply offended by how cheap it has become to replace me. The End of My Career is a reader-supported publication.

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In 1997, I discovered a foolproof way to get a script produced. I’d be able to get professional actors, a full crew, and guaranteed distribution. Even better, I would receive very few studio notes, and the ones I got wouldn’t be about my dialogue being too dirty. In the end, I decided not to write a porn movie for Wicked Pictures.1 Mostly because they paid about $300. Had I known it was my last chance, I might have reconsidered. Because porn movies would soon stop using scripts.

In 2008, I placed a call to Abe Foxman. He was the head of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that combats antisemitism but is smart enough to hide that in its name. You have to be pretty nervous to couch your work in terms like, “Oh man, those Nazis sure did defame us.” The End of My Career is a reader-supported publication. This is not a subtle hint.