Art & Creativity Quote by Michael Musto

Musto’s joke lands because it’s lazy on purpose. “I could just staple ’em all together” is the kind of self-deprecation that doubles as a dare: you think this work is disposable? Fine, I’ll treat it as disposable - and watch how quickly you admit you still want it. The line performs the whole downtown-press ethos he helped define: speed, sass, and a refusal to dress up cultural commentary as “important” literature, even when it functionally is.

The real target, though, is publishing’s anxiety about time. “Resistent” (misspelling and all) makes the gatekeepers sound stodgy, skittish, and a little out of touch. Their worry that “the material dates” isn’t just about references going stale; it’s about the industry’s fear of ephemera becoming record. Musto’s columns, rooted in nightlife, celebrity, sex, and scandal, were built to capture a moment - which is exactly why they’re valuable as artifacts. Publishers often want “timeless” when what readers actually crave is texture: the slang, the moral panics, the petty feuds, the messy edges of a scene.

Subtext: Musto knows his work dates. That’s the point. The quip exposes a hierarchy where certain cultural worlds (queer nightlife, tabloid glamour, gossip-as-reportage) are treated as inherently perishable. His humor smuggles in a critique: if publishing won’t archive the so-called minor stuff, it’s not protecting readers from irrelevance - it’s protecting itself from committing to what it once dismissed.