August 26th, 2019 - The Loop

Dear TNY,

Wow.  Just finished “The Loop” and I must say, what a fucking turd.

The first five pages (my copy, as you know) are just mind-numbing, throat-clearing on the author’s part.  Is there a lot of information about this character’s past?  Hell yes.  Do any of those details matter?  Turns out that no, they do not.  Because none of what this person’s life was matters at all.  The only thing that is interesting in this story is the missing bedframe.  And maybe the table that appears out of nowhere.  Because those things…something happened.  Is it interesting that this person goes through Groundhog Day over and over again?  Nope.  Not for a second.  It’s an exceptional copout to the end of a story.  Why have a conclusion when you can just loop over and over and over again?!  Oh, because an actual conclusion would be more difficult.  The good news is that if I had to continue experiencing the world through this woman’s head I would have been more upset.  I don’t care about her thoughts and feelings.  Or any of the other near infinite characters in this who don’t actually matter either.  I would like to have seen more of Emily.  I don’t care at all about Celeste or Rose or whatever the fuck was happening there.  I commiserated with the husband for feeling like he was “sprung from a trap”.  I was thinking to myself, “Bruh, I get it.  I feel like I’ll feel sprung from a trap when I don’t have to read this woman’s thoughts anymore”  I wanted to know more about the crazy cartoon character, tshirt-wearing lady.  Alas.  This story was packed full of Bev’s uninteresting and unnecessary thoughts when there was a weird story afoot with a few semi interesting characters.

I wanted to not waste my time.  But this was one of those stories with just enough oomph to get you to read the whole thing, but then when you get there you wonder why the fuck you did that.

Thanks again, TNY. 

Nick