December 4th, 2023 - Incoming
Dear TNY,
What a week of interiority and the examination of one’s own self-centered bullshit (turns out, we are all embarrassing sacks of doo-dungus), and here we sit looking at “Incoming”.
The problem with this story is the gimmick, I think. It feels like the author did the long middle section first and really banged it out. Made it readable and maybe worth a person’s time. Then they just tacked on some other shit and called the whole experiment “avant-garde” or “postmodern”. It’s just not a cohesive unit. I do like the exploration of this foreign (to the family) individual; I thought he or she or whatever was the most interesting character in the story. But if the shit doesn’t have anything to stick to, like a perceptible narrative with at least a mildly achievable transcendence of the plane, then why publish it? But here I am expecting you to be good at this after I have spent six years poring over your bumf looking for gems.
Anyway, these loose pieces don’t create a narrative that is strong enough to support the emotive response in the reader, nor is this story complete enough to create more than a wisp of memory after it has been read, thereby rendering it more grist for the motherfucking mill, as it were. More TNY dumbfuckery. But hey, that’s what has been established as the standard, right? You publish the multi-shaded browns in a mucosa strand as gathered from under the glans of a withering erection, most recently the inhabitant of an…I’m going to tell you the factual story, as witnessed by yours truly, of a man and a woman walking a dog-bone shaped lake trail in winter in Anchorage, Alaska, circa 2010, in which the man, replete with flat-soled, weather-inappropriate shoes, slides his way downhill on a crust of ice, packed snow at its core, from the hilltop to a small catch before the wooden bridge, and then this man turns to his girlfriend, or female companion of some kind as I am seeing now that maybe I was making assumptions, and says, as she begins her treacherous descent, losing traction immediately and skidding into some leafless grey saplings in hibernation, savagely flailing and catching herself, but only just catching herself, he says to her, “You need to clench the anus (and here’s the important part: he pronounced it A-noose…Long A, emphasis on the fucking NOOSE!!!!)…so back to the sullied glans of this erection recently removed of its brief but joyous sojourn into the A-noose, that’s what you publish, the objectively disconcerting (yet, subjectively kinda hot, because it means that some serious hotfuckery was afoot, that those two beasts were doing some realtime grand body art) human grindy gruel and then you expect us to believe that it’s good.
It isn’t.
You aren’t.
This whole endeavor you are masquerading at is washed up.
This is the imposter syndrome intervention you have always feared: Every fucking doubt you had about your abilities, intellect, qualities, skill, and worth are true. You ain’t shit, hoss. Hang it up.
But, the Art still needs champions. How about you do a guest editor every week. Let the masses speak. I’m sure it will be worse.
Anyway.
I spent a week having the best time with my kids. It really was the most fun. But I was sad because I wanted a whole family, you know? You guys know. You read last week’s letter. And then it got worse when my kids left.
But then, she just showed up at the door. And I don’t care how broken I am or how many things need to heal before I get better or all the other twisted up bullshit I have going on inside, when I saw she showed up I cried. I cried and cried and cried. And she held me and said: Oh buddy, I just love you so much, you aren’t alone (in a Midwestern accent, which is weird because she’s never lived there). And I apologized for being human, and was scolded for it. Then we had a grand time. She’s the brightest gem of all.
What I’m saying is I’m human, I guess, and I don’t know shit about shit. I’m not an expert in literature. I’m not an editor of a magazine. I’m not a good father, as it were. I’m just struggling and mostly fucking up. She swept me off of my feet. And that was grand.
But I do feel, even given that information, that you are a fuckpile of asstits having a wankfest and you had best do something about it, otherwise…ah fuck…otherwise, truly, either way, it won’t fucking matter because no one cares about the artform anymore. So do what you want. Rape our braincells away. We don’t care. The world is doomed. Grab your honey and tell her or him or them or it or that fucking shower squeegee your ream your asshole with but hope your relatives don’t note the handle scent how beautiful they/them/he/she/it/shit/shat/shot are. Make one motherfucker happy today. Truly happy. Because that’s about as good as it gets.
Later.
Nick
P.S. I couldn’t be bothered to do this on Monday because I was so busy. But here it is, Wednesday night, after a long ass day, and I’m cranking on you fucks again. I guess maybe I care.
P.P.S. I got nominated for a Pushcart Prize for the second year in a row. I had one story picked up and published this year. Probably 40 or more rejections. One of which was Taco Bell Quarterly, for the piece that was nominated for the prize. So that shows me that the whole industry is head-in-ass. I’m head-in-ass. You guys? Supreme Leader of Head in Ass Clan. But fuck off, dudes and dudettes. Because I can write a motherfucking story. And your moustache is fucking prepubescent.
