Thread Man: Seth Abramson's viral meta-journalism unreality

[Mike 03]

3. Readers of Abramson need to keep in mind he attended The Iowa Writer's Workshop

traditionally a training ground for creative fiction writers. Some of our great novelists taught and studied there (Cheever, John Irving, T.C. Boyle).

I really enjoy his writing and have posted some of it here at DU. But I think of it more like performance art than actual journalism. It's very pyrotechnical and filled with connections that may or may not exist. Critical theorists will probably come up with a term to define what he does. It's very novel and inventive. Post-truth semi-truthiness?

To me his value is that he challenges readers to contemplate many theoretical possibilities to explain the corruption that surrounds us. Part of his appeal is that he writes with such obsessive and fierce conviction, but how much of what he theorizes does he actually believe?