October 21st, 2019 - Are You Experienced?

Dear TNY,

I’m in Colorado somewhere, on the Western Slope, and I just finished up “Are You Experienced?”.

I just don’t get it, guys.  Like, what’s the fucking point?  You’ve got this fucking narrator who is recording the moment that she realized that someone who was unimportant from her past was going to grow up to be just like someone she once robbed.  Whooooo boy.  Interesting. 

There’s just no empathy here.  The MC doesn’t really transform into anything new (although the author was sure to include the phrase “fearsome revelation” in case the less-fit readers got confused as to where the revelation happened) because from the outset it was apparent that this was a fling she was reminiscing about, journal style later in life, that she was going to do a poor job of chronicling (which she accomplished).  So, I wasn’t moved by her.

The Jim Morrison stand-in, complete with an actual rendition of a Doors song, is a piece of shit from the outset.  It’s made clear in the first couple of paragraphs that he was always and will always be a piece of shit and that he’s only beautiful when the MC is fooling herself into believing he’s not a piece of shit.  And he ends the story as a piece of shit.  Oh, sorry.  Spoiler alert.  So, no transformation there either.  I was not moved.

Uncle Rex.  I’ve met a lot of people in my life.  Not close close, but certainly just incidental interaction.  Right?  Haven’t we all?  And I have never met anyone that wouldn’t question why you were in their fucking house waking them up, would instead make you coffee, and then keep talking while you left the room and your girlfriend came in with coffee, and then keep talking while both of you walked out of the house with a box that was most likely extremely familiar as it was filled with all this talking person’s money.  That’s so fucking unrealistic.  And, even still, I don’t feel bad for this guy.  Why?  Because he is not a real person but is, instead, a plot device to get the lame ass MC to have a memoir-esque realization that goes absolutely fucking nowhere.

I’m so fucking sick of your goddamn trash, you fucksticks.  I was thinking about why the stories you select are so fucking terrible.  And I have concluded that there is no truth in them.  No vulnerability.  No honesty.  No blood.  There’s no dichotomy of character.  No ownership of wrongdoing. Every MC is a fucking victim.

Break

I’m reading this over and realizing that most of the stories that I do like from you have main characters that recognize when they are pieces of shit. “Backpack” from last year was good. “Stay Down and Take It” was grand. “Tenth of December.” Etc.

Resume

So this victimhood bullshit got me thinking about that fuck-shit-heap “Cat Person” which is an excellent example of a lack of truth in a story.  A lack of blood.  Because she isn’t responsible for her actions.  In her mind she has done nothing to deserve this behavior from the dude.  Now, does that sound like a real fucking interaction with anyone?  That one person did everything wrong and the other person did everything right?  It’s just not fucking real.  It’s not true.  It’s what I imagine the inside of your brain, TNY, sounds like.  Also the brain of our windbag of a president (I’m leaving caps off intentionally).  Is it true that scenarios like that poorly-executed Tinder story and this fucking bullshit, 70-year-old’s diddle sesh happen?  Yes. But they aren’t devoid of responsibility.  That means this ain’t no raw-ass, bloody fucking literature.  This is the kind of shit that people relate to when they cannot take responsibility for their own actions.  These stories sound like validation of a weaker reader’s hubris.  This is literature for hobbled, pig-fucking, pieces of donkey cock that believe they are the walking embodiment of exceptional human behavior, when, in fact, they are exactly the opposite because they don’t believe in “check yo’self”.  So, if this is literature now, and the requirement to enjoy this literature is to be an unapologetic cock-turd whose narcissism has disabled rational, empathetic, human behavior…well, count me out.

Nice one, you…I was going to call you dick-skin but I realized that would be an insult to perfectly good skin which is diligently doing it’s job.

Nick