September 9th, 2019 - The Stone

Dear TNY,

So “The Stone” is what we are calling literature now?  Ugh.

Firstly, this story is all (or mostly all) summary.  And you know how I feel about that.  And it’s also fantastical.  That’s fine too. There are good literary stories that involve the fantastical. See: Robert Coover.  Whatever you want to do with your life, though, that’s cool. Each to their own.  But this story is fucking short and encompasses nearly a whole life.  So this isn’t actually literature so much as it’s a parable or a fable.  That’s fine too, I guess.  I guess genre fiction is cool.  Cool cool, TNY.

But, like, how does this push literature in a new direction?  The main character was cardboard and had no fucking name.  Vic had a single characteristic like some Snidley Whiplash fucking villain (read: outdated).  Ted?  Who the fuck is that guy?  No clue because he’s barely in this.  This story is something I expect would be read to children in grade school and there would be a discussion afterward about what meaning did the children ascertain from the fairy tale.  Did they learn something?  Yay!  Everyone drink your juice and go to recess and afterwards we will nap!  TNY, you should be embarrassed.

I was just discussing with someone that this website makes me sound like a negative person.  And that’s fucked.  I’m not that negative.  I would consider myself a devout optimist because I’d have killed myself a long time ago if I couldn’t foresee that shit was going to get better, you know?  But, TNY, your idea of “literature” is just fucking infuriating.  I wish I could say nice things every week.  Christ do I wish I could.  But I can’t.  “The Stone” is junior high-level, amateur-hour bullshit and you fancy motherfuckers living your Conde Nast, New York fashionable lifestyles where your superficial, uppity, dumbshit friends gladhand and congratulate you on your heretofore unseen levels of literary intelligence & merit yet you motherfuckers are just salad-laughing, egotistical, emperor’s new clothes, douchemongers that cannot see the oceans of readers and writers out there shouting for your stupid fucking magazine to change or shut the fuck up because your surgically enhanced cheekbones stick out just that hair too far for you to see over when your nose is turned up that high.  Well, for everyone who reads your magazine every week and is flabbergasted at your mishandling of the arts and for everyone that gave up on you forever ago because they couldn’t stand to watch you assrape samesaid arts…for all those folks:  Fuck you, TNY.  I hope you choke to death on your artisanal beet salad while you’re laughing your narcissistic fucking head off. 

How’s that for optimism?

Nick