What is the New Old School?
Exactly.
I’m late to Substack but hope it’s still a place where one can “write to figure out what I think.”1 What I’m thinking about these days are old school ideas, ways, materiality, tastes, attachments. And how valuable it can be to revisit them anew.
I am not a traditionalist. I live a relatively unconventional life and am always on the hunt for progressive, creative, inspiring ideas and models. So what does it mean when you start to see the best of those ideas and models in the cultural discards pile?
I hope it doesn’t mean that I am just old and nostalgic. I have a hunch it’s more than that and worth investigating. And isn’t investigating hunches one possible definition of art-making?
I mean… 17 years ago, one year before my first novel came out and at the behest of my publisher, I started a blog. I had no idea what I was doing nor exactly why I was doing it. But I took to it and made it my own; because, as it turned out, that’s what blogging was: Writers sharing in-process thinking and living, not knowing where that investment of time and creative energy would lead, if anywhere.
And here we are again: blogging together. Old school, but new. What’s the “new” part? Why does it matter? Exactly. Stay tuned.
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THE MONEY PART: It’s free to subscribe. The cadence will be an essay twice monthly, directly to your email inbox. The priority here for me is community, conversation, connection. Chats and audio features to come.
If you’d like to support me materially in this creative work (officially as of 2026 I am a freelancer) you will have that option when you subscribe, but no obligation; your reading attention—and sharing my writing with friends/colleagues if you are inclined—are equally your gift.
THE NON-MONEY PART: So if I am writing to figure out what I think, why do I need a platform and digital audience?
Well, frankly, even 17 years later—having published two novels and worked professionally as a public-ish figure—I’m not totally comfortable with digital platforms and online audiences. Still old school at heart.
But I have benefited profoundly from online community. From 2009-21, I was a staff writer and editor at the online literary mag The Millions. Through all that public-square thinking and writing, I met—online and in many cases later in person—smart and interesting literary folk who are also wonderful humans. The Millions was a real people/ real ideas kind of space, a sweet spot for the work of a private-public intellectual; by which I mean I was able to write simultaneously for myself and for readers, in my own voice—slightly sprawling but still rigorous, at times unfashionably earnest or low-culture or minority-opinionated. (Shout-out to Max Magee, The Millions’ founder and an empowering editor).
I am hopeful there is still room in our literary communities to be unvarnished and unpackaged (or—since by definition a Substack newsletter is a package—imperfectly packaged); to work through ideas in an honest and invigorating way, together with wonderful humans.
So please subscribe to The New Old School if you are interested in some drafty but fully engaged thinking and writing about things that used to matter and, IMO, still do.
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If you subscribe, each new essay (6-12 min reads) is sent directly to your email inbox. Twice monthly is the current cadence for new content. For spam-free, ad-free reading, plus audio and community features (coming soon), use the Substack app.
And in case you are interested in the full quote from Joan Didion’s “Why I Write”: I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Also sometimes credited for “I write to figure out what I think” is Flannery O’Connor, who wrote in a letter to her agent: I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again. Also E.L. Doctorow, in an interview with William Kennedy: You write to find out what you’re writing, but it is hard work.
