July 7th, 2025 - The Comedian
Dear TNY,
It’s the fiction issue again (as with every year of the past eight, YUCK is how I feel so far about fiction issues); “The Comedian” is the story I started with.
The writing is crisp. Not verbose. Some great details. I loved the line about the penlight dying. And the twist with the comedy was alright. I read the whole story. Wished the kid squeezed those dumplings, though. Also, the description of the comedian’s wife’s saggy tits resting in her lap like a pile of mashed potatoes was a nice touch.
But what does it fucking mean, man? Like, what’s the fucking point of it? My sister has this kid whom she tells that he’s good at everything. And he drew me a picture the other day and said, “Did you see the art I made?”.
I said, “Oh, look at that. What is it?”
“It’s art,” he said.
“I know that, but what is it.”
“Sometimes art is just art. I’m good at art.”
“It’s just squiggles, my guy. That’s not art.”
“Art can be anything,” he said, and then he erased it, drew more squiggles, and tried to sell me his snake oil again.
Now, am I against art for art’s sake? Nope. I get it. Totally. But what I am against, and the reason I’m bringing this up, is that you are supposed to be publishing the best shit on earth. And this is kid squiggles, man. This is that flash of blue on a nondescript paper cup in a conference room of a major hotel chain in Roanoke, VA, where a man with a burned face tells us the story of how he blew up on the jobsite, his coworker welding on a live gas line and not recognizing how that could go badly, and, as if blowing up enough wasn’t bad enough, he landed on top of the rig after the first explosion, laying there realizing he was in the middle of a barbecue, roasting like Fourth of July ribs, when a second explosion threw him once again into the air, his scorched body ragdolling across the sky, landing a few feet from the edge of the fire, but on the wrong side of that border, him, trying desperately to roll out, being exhausted after only two logrolls, and then giving up and waiting to die before being pulled out by another coworker. That? That’s the fucking story you should be telling. Not promoting the fucking panache on a goddamn paper cup, just to make plain white paper seem capable of more.
But you don’t listen.
You’re supposed to be so shit hot. But your art is, in fact, kid squiggles. And because the consumer can’t tell the difference, you don’t get called out on it.
I got a letter from Poe Ballantine a couple of months ago, a master of the essay, and he said he fucking quit. He quit writing. Because literature is at an all time low (his words). That’s a guy that chose, of all things he could choose, over and over again, Art. And your industry told him to kick rocks.
What the fuck are you doing with your lives? What a waste of breath and resources your whole industry has become. And your insistence on maintaining the pathetic circlejerk you have created is just more evidence that none of this matters. Art. Empathy. Humanity. None of it. All because when you were a little girl, Debbie, your parents were hard on you and they didn’t love you enough or tell you they loved you enough so you sit on your throne, fingers firmly on the grip of control, believing that it’s enough. When, really, all you have to do to be enough is let go and push Art. Not product.
It is hard, week after week, to fight you. I am exhausted.
I have two more stories to read.
Later.
Nick
P.S. I wrote all of these reviews the day the stories came out, but I sat on them because I don’t care anymore. All the pics associated with them are from my new location in Washington. It’s magical. Your fiction is not.
