January 1st, 2018 - Whoever is There, Come on Through

Dear TNY,

I will be reviewing all the short fiction you publish in 2018.  Here's why, if you are curious (probably not because, sadface, you never talk back to me).  The first story is “Whoever is There, Come on Through.”  And, I gotta say, I’m not very happy this is the first story.  As you know, I’ve written to you in the past because I get riled up.  That riling is usually based on stories you choose to publish that infuriate me.  Occasionally it’s because the stories are great.  This story is neither good nor bad.  It’s entirely forgettable.  This is a bummer because I’m not used to writing you letters in which my fury is just whelming.  But, forge on we must.  I’ll hit the highlights and let you off easy.

Dialog:  This was not terrible.  In fact, it was snappy at points.  Something I look for in standout dialog is when people talk at themselves through each other.  By this I mean that they aren’t having a cohesive conversation, like two people adding rope to a single line.  Instead, the participants are running two parallel but similar ropes, adding to their own rope in turn.  That’s what we have in this story, this sort of discordant speak, and it is, in places, done freshly.  Pooping on that, though, I’d say that you, TNY, should have cut the total characters down or made the author do so.  More often than not, greater than two characters were speaking at once and simultaneously new characters were introduced.  It’s too much, goddamn it, and takes away from the momentum of the story and this reader’s inclination to admire the dialog.  Do.  Editing.  That’s your job.  And if it’s not, turn down stories like this that still need dialing in.  Laziness isn’t an attribute you can afford to keep leveraging.

Ending:  Nothing fucking happens.  If I remember anything from this story at all, it will not be the ending.  I don’t care that, if random sections were removed, real life has no beginning and end.  That we all just keep living this drudgery and can’t stand the seconds of it until one day we realize that we’ve wasted it all.  Fucking Christ am I wasting it.  Anyway, literature is not real life.  It must do something.  And this story does not.  My empathetic response was immobile.  SPOILER ALERT:  This is the measure of and purpose to literature.  So, WTF TNY?  If it doesn’t do something, don’t put it on your pages.

Yeah, weak effort for the first letter, I know.  But I’ve been around your block.  I know you won’t disappoint.  My completely obnoxious and unnecessary rage will be tapped into all too soon when you publish something fucking awful (like that ridiculous agenda story with first grade vernacular “Cat Person”; be glad that you didn't publish that this year).  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll surprise me with something like “A Perfect Day For Bananafish”.

Here’s to a year of you…you terrible sonofabitch.

Nick