October 14th, 2019 - Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God
Dear TNY,
Another Monday, another story. This one is the overly-long-titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.
And it blows.
You know what I did like about it, though? Fucking dialogue. That was a nice change-up to see some characters interacting with each other for most of the story. This is different from your usual schtick where we get a summary of those characters interacting from the narrator or some other bullshit.
Just quickly, because I feel like it, I’m going to say something about summary. Summary is like when you are at a party and there’s a guy telling a story about this amazing trip he took to South Africa and swam with the great whites while they were feeding on seals. And no matter how good of a storyteller he is, he’s still summarizing everything for you. He’s not trying to put you in the cage, he’s trying to fucking tell you he was in the cage. In that way, the story is not about the fucking sharks. It’s about him. And that’s what summary is in literature. It’s a way for the author to cheat and not have to be so close to the story they can pause it at any time and tell the reader every fucking detail about what’s happening so that the reader can be in the cage. They just tell the reader what happened to the narrator. And those stories that contain way too much fucking summary, those stories are about the narrator or the author. Sometimes that’s intentional, in that the story is actually supposed to be about the narrator. Fine. Not my preference, but whatever. Sometimes it’s unintentional. That is what I believe most TNY stories are. And my theory is that you, TNY, are a self-absorbed douchemonger AND unable to self-check whether you are a piece of shit. This has led to a weekly curated voice that is likely really similar to your own inner monologue (i.e. the stories relate subconsciously to the mind of someone who thinks like the guy at the party who wants you to know he was in the cage). Now, that sort of self-absorbed bullshit in writing actually robs human beings of empathy, not fosters the creation of it. So the lasting effect on humankind will be to make us worse, not better. Yeah, summary v scene is that important. The single greatest accomplishment a writer can do in a story is to fucking disappear. Because great art is not about you, the egotistical bullshit artist. And all artists are that, on some level (myself included). Great literature makes the reader feel like they are there, not the narrator, and then they develop their own emotions about what’s happening. As if they experienced it. That it was real to them, not just a guy at a fucking party. Instead of knowing the information, like Wikipedia or some shit, they lived it. Intimately. And the other half of the story, the wordless idea/understanding/transcendence of the story was written by the reader. In the reader. And that’s magic. That’s how literature works when it works.
So, like I said, I like that there was some scene in this story. It was refreshing.
Here’s what wasn’t refreshing:
- A million fucking characters with a million fucking diseases and there was no way to care about any of them because the human mind can’t do that level of actual care.
- Someone trying to push me into making the world different/better or just to be aware bad shit is happening. Yeah, I get it. Shit is fucked up and bullshit right now. And I have kids. I know it’s not going to be the best life for them because humans are fucking terrible. But this kind of agenda story doesn’t bring in more people to care. It only validates the beliefs of the few who already care while alienating the many who are the real workforce you need to make a difference. This type of story, in fact, is a lot like how Donald Trump won the Presidency. See, he said a bunch of shit that validated a number of people’s unsaid beliefs. But definitely not everyone. Those die-hards voted, though. Most statistical analyses of turnout of eligible voters say about 50-60% showed up to vote. So that means that old DJT won less than a quarter of all eligible voters votes (as he won less than half he actual votes cast). So we have a situation where there is, by all accounts, a self-absorbed guy telling a story about sharks at the party and he is surrounded by people who validate his grandiosity AND he is unable to self-check whether he is a piece of shit. And less than a quarter of eligible voters voted him in. Now, that’s our fault as a people. We have all failed there. But you’re doing the fucking same thing to literature. You. That’s your fault. Maybe, for once, care more about the canon than you do about selling magazines or some other fucking agenda. Care more about humanity than you do about your reflection or the feedback from this privileged & hyper-unwoke culture around you that you go around calling “woke”. Rouse the interest of the apathetic readers out there, don’t fucking alienate them. Recognize that they are apathetic because you stopped publishing real fucking lit ages ago. Realize that you, too, can be a piece of shit, as you are doing right now, and that you can change. Try printing magic instead of self-congratulatory garbage.
- The concert scene was so muddled with characters, diseases, a whole bunch of fucking description about faces while music is being played, and was way too long that there was no way this reader was every going to care as much about whatever gravitas the scene was supposed to carry as the author did.
- The shit I had today, which a direct reflection of my poor choices in life. But I will say that shit was more refreshing than the aforementioned items in this list while still being a heinous crime against a toilet. That should place things nicely for you, TNY.
Anyway, fuckers, I’m done.
Hey, maybe write back once. Let’s start a correspondence. I’d really dig that. Say something. Anything. Tell me that you get high at your desk after everyone leaves and secretly read these letters and laugh and laugh and that you wish you could change but the corporate machine has made that impossible and you have to keep driving this train off the cliff so that your kids can go to a good college. I’d get that, bro. Maybe we could team up and break the whole system together. Fight for art until we fucking die. Fuck, dude. Say any fucking thing at all. It’d be nice to hear from you.
Until next time,
Nick
