September 2nd, 2019 - To Do

Dear TNY,

So there’re a few things to like in “To Do” but not very much.

Likeables:  It’s one of the shorter pieces you have published.  I really appreciate that.  Because of the heretofore unmentioned “Unlikeables”, it was nice that this story didn’t go on for fucking ever like a lot of your stories.  There are some great lines in here as well.  I felt like the author had some level of skill turning a phrase.  Here’s my favorite:

“Neat trick,” Phil says, buttoning up. “I’ll teach my wife.”

Also, some of the details were nice.  The solo key.  The spoon trick/icicles.  Etc.

Unlikeables:  Like, what the fuck happened?  This was a jumble of high-speed scenes that didn’t connect at all.  So my experience with non-linear stories is that they should be building an implied story off the page.  What I mean when I say that is that there should be a series of seemingly random scenes that, as the story progresses, come together to form a narrative that is not contained within the words on the page, but is influenced by them and is written by the reader in the reader’s mind.  But this story doesn’t do that.  It’s just a jumble sometimes-okay shit that doesn’t really deliver any kind of narrative arc, and by default cannot create any kind of transcendence in the reader.  This, as they say, is horsecock.  Because it renders the time spent by the reader wasted.

For shits and giggles, let’s think about other stories you have published that are non-linear such that the occurrences in the story are apparent, but are poorly written and make me hate your magazine.  Those stories, although garbage, are coherent in what happens, so at least I know what happens.  I might think what happens in the story is a peanut-filled turd, but I know what happens.  Now this story, “To Do”, no fucking clue.  I don’t even get that knowing satisfaction.  I will only remember this story because of the spoons.  That’s it.  Everything else my brain eliminated already.  Like a sieve.  Just like you do to me, TNY.  You just flush me down the shitter.  Week after week.  But one day, bruh, one day something’s gonna break. 

I’ll see you then.

Nick