November 12th, 2018 - Cattle Praise Song
Dear TNY,
“Cattle Praise Song”. I’ll never get that time back.
I’ll admit, I didn’t even read it all. I skipped to the last page and read that. I would say that the most important conflict in this story is left out. In one sentence the MC’s family are apparently slaughtered. God knows how that went because we only get one sentence. But the MC ensures we are informed that he is unaware of any names that his brother gave to a cow in the remaining two sentences of the paragraph.
Not my biggest beef (pun intended) with this story, though. It is written with the vocabulary, sentence structure, pacing, and rhythm of late mid school/early high school skill. I assume that is either because the original text was written as such in French (yes, I did check that it was a translation) or the translator degraded the original text. Either way, same issue (either author or translator was not up to task), but the fault is still the same: you, TNY, didn’t do your job as editor. Just because a story includes a culture that is not common in published literature, that doesn’t make it “good”. This story, in fact, is bad. I don’t understand why you would publish something that doesn’t push the boundaries of literature just because the story expands that culture’s footprint in literature. Fucking Nabokov wrote in English (some of the time) and killed in English, even when writing about his native Russian culture. We all read Nabokov because the aforementioned failings of this story (I’ll mention again: vocabulary, sentence structure, pacing, and rhythm) are tight as fuck in his writing. We read Anna Karenina because of how well it’s written and the other cultures it exposes us to through great writing. I’m all for other cultures, but this story’s writing is not great. No one deserves a pass in literature because they represent a different culture. Or anything. This is fucking literature. It’s an art form that is supposed to stand the test of time. E.L. James doesn’t deserve a pass because 50 Shades of Garbage sold so many copies. It’s still a fucking trash heap. It doesn’t expand literature or add more culture to art.
What I’m trying to say is there is someone out there telling fucking phenomenal stories above the literary mark from every culture in the world and there is someone out there who is pumped as all-hell to translate those stories into languages to make them more accessible to the world. This story just isn’t that. This story is you, TNY, once again saying to the world, “Look at me! Look at me! I can do culture! I can do world! I can do diversity! Look at me!”
All you are doing is lowering the bar for my children. Your children. Everyone’s fucking children. Because this will add to the other shitty stories that you publish as “acceptable literature”. This ensures we all get a little dumber, a little more accepting of less than fucking exceptional art, a little more puffed up about ourselves when we don’t deserve to be, a little more like the people we despise. And a little more deserving of the vicious criticism thrown our way by those who hold literary truth as a priority.
But hey, you sold some copy, right bruh? Solid. Way to kill the old growth trees. Way to overfish Atlantic cod. Way nearly wipe out the American Bison. Good on you making that buck, you fucking piece of shit.
Nick
Post Script, November 2nd, 2020 - I saw all of you looking at this on my IP traffic. And it got to me. I addressed it in the most recent letter I posted. I hope it all makes sense. I also hope you are well. Sincerely, I mean that with love.
