May 7th, 2018 - The Boarder

Dear TNY,

I normally do not look up the author of a piece for this project, but I happened to note the italicized blurb following “The Boarder”.  I’m going to discuss a strategy that I believe you follow, and try to engage in discourse with you about said strategy without losing my goddamn mind.  I will fail at the second part.  

You’ve done this Nobel Laureate jam recently.  The previous version was the piece “The Dog” by Coetzee. That story and “The Boarder” share similarities in criticism so I’ll talk about them together.  “The Dog” was fucking garbage. Nothing happened. While the author could string together coherent sentences, I don’t think I’m alone in saying that is not the only criteria for publication by you, TNY.  The narrative arc was nonexistent. And unlike the Coover piece you did last week (where the narrative arc was irrelevant because the writing was exemplary), the arc was the only thing that could have saved “The Dog”, and yet you failed to reach out to Coetzee to say, Hey, I know…Nobel and all that…but this story sucks.  

Same thing goes for “The Boarder”. The only difference with Singer’s story is that it had an interesting character.  Melnik was great. Cardboard? Yep. He was the contrarian foil used by Singer to facilitate whatever grand illumination the author imagined is contained in this piece.  All of us are guilty of finding certain types of cardboard interesting. I did this time. The rest of the piece? Huge yawner. Zero arc. Faith agenda, which, come guys, is about as fucking played out as Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, accept the Hero’s Journey can be made fresh again by a few select writers (NEVER NEVER NEVER GEORGE LUCAS).  This piece just felt tired. There were a few lines, though, that I did like (all Melnik’s) that perked up a little respect for me in the author.

But I did not respect you, TNY, because you’re fucking CNN.  You’re Fox News. You’re those people that steal Banksys and sell them in a gallery.  You are not the curator of The Best Writing Anywhere. Everywhere. You’re a goddamn magazine peddler.  You're a headline-monger.  If you had any courage in you, you would pass on this shit because not good. But you either 1) get so scared of turning away a Nobel Laureate that you accept less than “Best” work or 2) give two shits about the quality of work, instead riding the coattails of someone else’s name such that you can ensure your glossed and stapled toilet paper flies off the preverbal shelves.  But you’re disrespecting the author when you do this. No, I can’t speak for Coetzee.  He's alive and should do that for himself. That story was trash and he should have known that and never sent it to anyone. He and I are not on speaking terms at this time so I cannot let him know this. But, you took a dead guy’s story and just put it out there. That seems really fucking unfair considering that he didn’t do it himself.  Of all the possibilities as to why he didn’t publish it, did you ever consider that maybe he didn’t think it was very good and he was still working on it? Maybe he had been for years. Maybe you took something that he knew was complete shit and zinged it out into the world and he’d roll over in his grave knowing that you took something he despised and are using his name to sell your rag with it.  Did you think of that? No, you didn’t. Because you are a selfish douchebag, TNY, and you never think of the implications of your actions. You are too busy appreciating the vile funk you inhale so deeply with your head in your ass.

You know why I haven’t read Go Set a Watchman?  Because Lee knew it wasn’t good enough and she got tricked into publishing it (several different accounts of this, I’m choosing the one that respects the artist’s opinion of the work for 55 years and not the—shudder—industry's).  But HarperCollins leveled some rainforests with that one, ay?

Have you heard of Jean Sibelius?  He threw almost every shred of his eight symphony in the fire.  Because it wasn’t good enough. And he specifically left notes for some of his later work stating that they only be played after he was dead.  Maybe you can take something from that. To respect the work and the author’s opinion of it, especially if lacking explicit permission, you can choose to uphold art instead of selling your shitty magazine with someone else’s reputation.

Until next time, fuck you very much,

Nick