January 21st, 2019 - Do Not Stop

Dear TNY,

It’s a Monday and I have been crawling on the floor all day lofting a boat and now I’m eating cod and shrimp and writing to you about “Do Not Stop.”  And I don’t regret reading the story.

In fact, TNY, I would say I enjoyed this story.  The pacing was as frenetic as is needs to be to emulate war.  The inclusion of products, which I usually abhor, was on point for the time/place/confusion of this life.  The objective nature with which the narrator spun the tale was absolutely perfect in juxtaposition to the chaos of battle.  I almost always reject thick block text, also; but in this story I think the pacing is helped by the block format (including the interwoven details that are somewhat the antithesis to rapid pacing).  So the story had this feel of craziness to it that I know from personal experience is very close to combat.  Mad respect for doing that work.

Now, for the downside.  TNY, it’s impossible not to compare this to what I have already read from this specific war area of the genre.  And this story just didn’t hold up to it’s competitors.  Firstly, not sure if you have noticed, but the Vietnam war has been over for some time.  Not that that matters, but it does date the relevance of this story.  Which is fine if it’s solid literature, but this story is going to get compared to 40+ years of literature about the same subject.  And it doesn’t outdo.  The first story that comes to mind is “The Things They Carried.”  O’Brien’s fucking masterpiece is just that; a masterpiece.  While I’m not a fan of his lists, I do believe the lists are a better architecture to develop the banal and human aspects of the soldiers against the atrocities of war.  “Do Not Stop” Just doesn’t do as much emotion damage to the reader (read: me) as much as TTTC.  The next big swingers in this realm are “The Pugilist at Rest” (published by you, crazily enough) and “Break on Through” by Thom Jones (the latter being my very favorite of Vietnam era stories).  Both of those stories shuck the balance of banal vs. frenetic data in text and just put the fucking pedal to the floor.  And they both do so better than “Do Not Stop.”  I guess what I’m saying here is that you have a pretty good story on your hands (INFINITELY BETTER THAN WHAT YOU NORMALLY PUBLISH) but the canon has very much established what the bar is and this isn’t over it.  It’s not terrible.  But it doesn’t really push the bounds of literature.  Which is what your job is.  This, instead, just kind of warms up to the stories it could be but isn’t.  Which, as you should know as a magazine of words, is regressive.  So while I’m proud of you for breaking your shitsack story mold, you didn’t really hit the mark you needed to for this area of lit.

But when do you ever do that?

See you next Monday. Thanks for pubbing a story I wanted to finish.

Nick