April 8th, 2019 - Lulu

Dear TNY,

It’s Monday morning and I just finished “Lulu”.  I’m very fucking fragile right now so I’m going to try to be kind. 

Fragile, you ask?  Fuck.  Yes.  An errant cough in this place could break me into a thousand pieces.  Why, you ask?  Oh, a number of personal reasons.  But one reason, strangely, has to do with what you and the other publishers have done to the literary landscape.  I was just at AWP in Portland, OR.  You were not there, I was sad to see.  I would have talked to you and that would have been…delicious.  What I did do, though, was walk from booth to booth.  I looked the people over.  I sat in the center of the bookfair and watched the ongoings.  I had conversations that started with, “Oh, and what are you writing?”  And all I found was…emptiness.  There was only one piece of truth there, for me (I understand that all of life is subjective, experientially).  I had a story printed at a magazine about two years ago.  And I happened to see that magazine had set up a booth.  I walked up and the woman looked at my nametag and said, “Nicholas, so nice to meet you.”  And I reached out to shake her hand and said, “Thank you for caring that I exist.”  And then I wept.

See, TNY, that’s what’s real.  It’s not about a fucking social agenda. What I found at AWP was a fucking product. An industry.  I couldn’t find art anywhere.

Breathe, breathe. Get it together.

Okay, “Lulu”.  This story was mediocre.  I did finish it, though.  I know, I know.  Not my typical approach.  The story I actually wanted to read was the one about the C section in which the family barged in and found the dead mother on the table, the doctors having fled.  God, that’s heinous.  Motherfuckers took the medical degrees with them. Christ.

But I read this story, and I’ll spare you all the things I hated, which were a lot.  But you know my flavor already and this story isn’t it.  The thing that I found interesting, actually, was the agenda.  I wish it had been executed better.  Because a story in which humanity’s “right” (Lulu) is destroyed while humanity’s “wrong” (whatever the fuck dude-bro’s name was, her twin) is celebrated is very apropos right now.  Probably like all your fucking agenda stories.  But you wrapped it up in over 7k words of boring, poorly written shit (like your other agenda stories).  So, the only reason that message got through to me was because of my heretofore mentioned fragility and my desire to fixate on not-my-life.  Oh, and Mr. X. I focused on this story instead.  Also, my kids play video games like they are all that matters and the world is falling the fuck apart around them and it breaks my heart.

So, from what I can see, the author’s agenda is the same as my agenda by writing letters to you:  We both want someone to care about something that we consider to be a terrible injustice.  As my injustice is art, I don’t imagine anyone is reading any of this.  Especially you.

Anyway, I’ll see you next week.  Hopefully I’ll be more fortified to kick your ass.

Nick