Thanks, very interesting. I wonder about “illiberal” as a label, and Futurism as a point of reference. Along with its misogyny and interest in mechanized violence, Marinetti’s Futurism also advocated women’s suffrage, freedom of the press, etc. I think of it as part of the history of avant-gardes, as in Peter Bürger’s book.

What’s most surprised me about Substack literary culture in this quadrant is its nostalgia. I see it not only in the statements and manifestos, but in the choices of writers to study (in my view, that includes the Substack writers who lavish attention on Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, and Victorian authors, as much as on Eliot and Joyce). From my perspective, looking from the history of visual arts across at literature, the entire quadrant is odd. The closest parallels are marginal in the visual arts: Odd Nerdrum’s embrace of a version of the 17th century (propped up by a new definition of kitsch), Vincent Desiderio, Bo Bartlett, F. Scott Hess, etc. But I can’t see a sociological parallel.