December 2nd, 2019 - The Curfew

Dear TNY,

“The Curfew” is the best story you have printed in a while.

I want to get the good shit out of the way. And there was a lot of good.  There are some turns of phrase here that are magic.  I’m going to put some in and why I thought they were grand.

Bring it on, he said, aloud. There was no one else on the street. Blow, winds, and crack your fuckin’ cheeks.

I’m enamored with the last line here because it really speaks to that part of a person that rages at the world to collapse the fucking walls on them because they can fucking take it forever and ever, amen.

There were two faces coming straight at him.

It wasn’t a baby.

That last line followed immediately by the section break is what’s up.  That’s the best kind of storytelling.  It’s not a gimmick.  It’s conducting a symphonic measure such that the reader is in for the whole game.

—You can Google that one, she said. That’s just information.

He liked her. He couldn’t remember what she’d looked like.

For me, the best part about this is the inclusion of the detail that he couldn’t remember what she looked like.  Because there’s almost a weird, liking-her realization that shifts to a physical measure, which denotes this inherent, Freudian sexual context, especially because the dude is a guy, but the attraction comes from a place of respect (see: Dr. relationship and her honesty in his care).  It’s just so plain and so good.

I like that there was a lot of scene.  I like that it wasn’t a sprawling 6700 word garbage heap (was around 3700 from what I saw).  I like that the author kept the story moving forward (mostly).  I like that it wasn’t a bunch of fucking dopey-ass exposition like the rest of your goddamn fiction, TNY.

Now the bad.  The middle of this story, the part about the fucking pills, should go.  In fact, I believe the author knows this.  See the following example:

The leaves were the story. The fact that nothing was happening. The leaves going the wrong way, and the woman with the Teddy bear. They were his stories.

That’s absolutely right.  The pills were never the story and they created this black hole of pacing drudgery in the middle of the story.  Why did this happen?  Well, I believe that the author had an ending in mind to arrive to and as he or she wrote, no matter where the story wanted to go, he or she kept pushing the story to that point.  So what grew from spontaneous collective unconscious ether, the teddy bear and the leaves, was snuffed out by authorial intention.

And that makes me sad.  Because the payoff, with the wife and the information and all that shit, isn’t that strong.  But the storytelling skills and the emotional build ahead of that is strong.  Normally your stories are fucking food poisoning drizzles that never seem to end and then you have to wipe for an eternity to clear the crack just to get super bad swass later (brown swass no less) and then have to either rewipe, shower, or baby wipe until the situation is better.  This story was like a solid shit that convinced you it was a one-wiper (for checking purposes) except the last ¼ of the shit was hot chocolate pudding and you were left exasperated on the toilet as the drippy gruel plorped out of you.  And then you did the same wipe procedure as the previous dump.

That’s all I’m trying to say.  This story was well written, concise, and didn’t have a lot of fucking New Goddamn Yorker Twat Ass Unearned Entitlement From Uppity Agenda Stories.  But it withered.  And that’s sad.  Because this is the type of story I like to see excel because even though it’s on your pages, it’s shitting down your throat. 

Next time, dillholes.

Nick