October 15th, 2018 - The Coast of Leitrim

Dear TNY,

The best part about “The Coast of Leitrim” is the donut I was eating whilst I read it.  From the outset, this story is cliché.  The whole “falling in love with the girl at the café who somehow feels exactly the same as you do about her, but for you, because you may be telepathically connected” trope…I mean, fuck that jam.  Are you serious?  This shit sophomoric as hell.  When they have kids, will those kids go to Hogwarts and then fight off The One Who Should Not Be Named? 

Do these types of crushes happen in real life?  Hell yes.  I’ve had them.  But, like, why should we care in this story.  There is nothing in this story that makes the love more interesting than our own lives.  And if the writing isn’t unique enough to distract me from my own life, I’d rather just be living my life.

Let’s take two other love stories and look at how they are fucking amazing.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the first one.  While it exhibits the same themes that are present in universal love, it doesn’t explore those themes as much as it follow the narrative presented by the bizarre tech that is used to erase people.  This erasing is something that we have all likely thought about, but the film took it to ground in a real way, and at the end, that narrative plot was both interesting AND was leveraged to highlight the universal themes in human connection.  The second is the recently released series, Maniac.  Again, you take a very unique premise that has the same undertones of universal human connection.  And at the conclusion, the connection feels more clean and pure because it’s bolstered by the premise.

But this story, it doesn’t work because it isn’t interesting.  A writing mentor once told me that everyone has a story, but like yesterday’s weather somewhere else in the world…it just happened and didn’t touch you so who fucking cares.  I don’t care about anyone in this story, especially the main character.  He doesn’t deserve this girl, who is completely cardboard and is exactly what all men are looking for which is completely unrealistic.  Oh, don’t love me because I’m terrible and you’re too perfect.  Blech.  Get over yourself, bro.  Nobody cares about you because you’re pathetic in a way we are all pathetic and you don’t fucking grow or develop. I hope this woman sees that shit. Oh wait, she can see in your mind so she knows how valuable you are. YA for adult readers, I guess. Irish Saved By The Bell. 

The only redeeming thing in this entire story is that he seems totally obsessed with her knees, and at the same time he doesn’t like them.  That is something that starts to scratch at the juxtaposition of real human garbage that we all do.  But it just starts to scratch. This is frustrating because it let’s me know the writer can do the work, but chooses not to. Which is fine if the magazine steps up to edit instead of stroke the author’s ego. But, TNY, you have once again failed at your job. Or, what I perceive to be your job.

Also, the cadence of this prose makes each sentence awkward enough that they have to be reread multiple times or skimmed for the gist. 

Overall, TNY, this thing panders to the lowest class of literary reader (maybe; because even the lowest class should be able to identify the flaws).  So it pretty much lines up with your MO, which is: Destroy Literary Art or Bust.

Thanks for another wasted Monday morning.

Nick