New Books Network Eileen Myles, "Pathetic Literature" (Grove Press, 2022)
Dec 1, 2025
Eileen Myles, an award-winning poet and writer known for their genre-crossing work, dives into the intriguing concept of 'pathetic literature' in their anthology, discussing its evolution and cultural influences. They explore key figures like Kathy Acker and Samuel Delany, revealing the experimental aesthetics that shape their editing choices. Myles shares insights from teaching and organizing the anthology, touching on themes of queerness, form, and the organic selection process during the pandemic. Their reflections on performance and the emotional facets of 'pathetic' literature are particularly engaging.
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Coming Up In An Avant-Garde Tribe
- Eileen Myles recounts arriving in New York in the 1970s to join an avant-garde poetry community that shaped their tastes and career.
- They describe thriving in a permissive tribe of writers who embraced experiment, performance, and queer-adjacent culture.
From Seminar To Pandemic Editing
- Myles describes teaching a graduate seminar they called 'pathetic literature' and staging a small, chaotic conference around the subject.
- The pandemic later provided time and discipline for them to actually edit the anthology in Marfa.
Pathetic As Resistance To Norms
- Pathetic writing faces a boundary and presses against exterior forces like progress or cleanliness that try to erase feeling.
- Myles sees pathetic work as protecting that tingly, je ne sais quoi quality that resists normative containment.
