November 23rd, 2020 - The Old Man in the Piazza
Dear TNY,
What a tale I have today about “The Old Man in the Piazza”.
I was thinking that maybe I would avoid the shame of a mistake. But I will not. Because that is the right thing to do. So I’ll admit it here and provide the copy. In the very least, you may laugh. I doubt I have any credibility with you, so I don’t think I’ll be losing anything there.
When I tried to read this story this morning, I was stopped by the paywall. Now, I could see what I perceived to be the whole story beyond the paywall as it had the normal tags at the bottom (the shit about if you want to know more about the whatever whatever…). So I copied and pasted quickly, disregarding the paywall, and read and critiqued that story. That story was only a sample of the whole story; my sample ended at “The show is about to begin.” Later, when ruminating on my paywall sneakery, I realized the paywall might actually, at the base level of loading, completely remove the rest of the story before and after the paywall stoppage. So I checked on that. Turned out to be true. So that means I raged and cried and really went yard on a part of this story, not the whole thing. Boy was I proud before I discovered that. As I am attaching the original letter, such that we can all witness my embarrassing hubris, you will be able to see that I was even bragging about cheating the system when it was I, in fact, that looked like the fucking asshole and not you (but I imagine I always look like the asshole and not you).
So, I am sorry. That was a bunch of misplaced rage. I’m keeping it here for the aforementioned hubris reasons as well as the fact that I ended up writing a long definition of literary theory in there. But mainly, I think, I want you to see that I am not beyond error. I am no supreme authority. I fuck up. Often. And am a fuck-up. Often.
So that letter will follow this one. Again, zenith level apologies.
Now, on to this story, the whole story. And…eh. It’s a preachy parable about language. It’s astutely written. Clean. Smooth. But Christ does it feel really lesson-y. And I’m not sure if it’s defending everyone’s right to disagree (I hope so because that means FTNY is a healthy part of society according to Rushdie) or if it’s defending judgment or not saying anything at all. Or defending saying yes. I believe it’s trying to say that we all have the right to disagree, maybe just don’t throw fists. But I don’t know. I don’t like that I’m sitting here writing to you about what the story is supposed to be saying as its lesson. One, shouldn’t I know that from the piece? And two, why the fuck do I care about some parable that is devoid of human emotion? I don’t feel anything so the likelihood of a lesson being delivered is low. And why should a lesson be delivered from literature? Isn’t literature’s job to provide us with more empathy? I don’t think this story can do that as it never comes close to providing a character I can empathize with. It just feels like a man at the head of the class that has said, “Now children, I’m going to read you a story that has an important message. Listen closely.”
So yeah, eh. Whatever. It’s definitely written with a skilled hand. But you know me, I don’t give a shit about agendas unless the story holds its own. This one, from a fully formed touch the Collective Unconscious kind of way, does not.
So I’ll pass on this one. Not worthy of remembering for me except for my huge fucking mistake.
And without further ado, the village idiot (myself) rants for, like, 2000 words about a story that was only a segment which he believed was a whole! See, as he believes he is right! Watch the man not even know what a travesty he is while he cries for no reason! Look now, dear friends, as the very pillars of his existence shudder and shake, threatening to topple him to the ground for no other reason than his own lack of awareness! Cover your little ones’ eyes lest they be blinded by his buffoonery!
(For reals, I’m so embarrassed. But I can’t hide from it. I’m that guy. I did those things. I said those things. Gotta own it.)
***FIRST VERSION OF THE LETTER (AS BASED OFF THE STOLEN SEGMENT OF THE WHOLE STORY) BEGINS AFTER THIS SENTENCE***
Dear TNY,
“The Old Man in the Piazza” is name-based publishing, and a curator of literary arts (like you purport to be) should be disappointed in themselves for publishing it.
Before we get to the story, I’d like to say how proud that I am that I was able to copy and paste this story into Word before your “You’ve Run Out” paywall was able to load. Ha Ha! Fuckers! I mean, I could have just deleted my history like I usually do when I hit your paywall. But not this time. I showed you. Zing!
Okay. The story. So, I’ve discussed literary theory with you before, but since you don’t read any of these letters I’m sure this information was lost on you. And why would you read them? I know what I sound like. This isn’t the only part of my life that’s like this, so over-the-top passionate. I’ve heard the whispering. I get it. And you know what? I don’t give a fuck about that today. Today, I’m facing down fucking relationship shit. Again. Acceptance vs my idiot brain vs forgetting that no one actually wants my life, that I’m a utility for others, a plaything or tool to put back on the shelf when they are done because my actual life is too complicated and fraught with yuck (and if you fucking correct me here, Katie, goddamn it I’ll shit a brick…I exclude you from this group, as I always have). And my kids’ county is fucking overrun with COVID and no one in the county seems to care. I mean, I’ve had to just give up on whether I get it or not even though I actually do care and I have people that I’m supposed to be looking out for on the other end and will do my best to prevent sickness in the face of very little effort to prevent myself or my kids from getting it and while I’m on that train, my kids’ health train, I’m fucking panicked my kids will suffer from hella health issues as adults stemming from their completely sedentary childhood lifestyle that’s bolstered by Twinkies and Ding Dongs and fucking YooHoo and videogames and they’ll grow up to be like most of America, creating nothing but income for corporations who have advertised to them since birth, and yeah, once again I was forced (internally compelled) to force them to clean their room, which is about an annual occurrence now, and it’s not even my fucking house, you know? But I’m the crazy one. I’m insane. I’m insane because I care and I don’t give up. I care about who they will be as adults. I care about how they treat people. How they treat themselves. How their empathy develops and how their sense of hard work develops and how their kindness develops. And that makes me fucking nuts, right? And the fact that I care about a nearly dead artform and how it can change the world if you just fucking paid some goddamn attention to it, TNY, instead of sold your shitty little magazine, you motherfuckers, the fact that I care so much about that, yeah, that makes me crazy. Yeah, I’m the insane one. Because love. All this love = insanity.
Right.
Back to the story. It’s short. And the shorter a work is, the less “mistakes” it can carry. And I don’t mean typos or grammatical errors. I mean, when a story is this short, every single syllable has to have meaning. Has to support the story off the page. The implied story. Because the author doesn’t have room to fuck around with a single word that doesn’t mean tenfold in the implied story. Wait, hold up.
We’ll cover literary theory. Again. Because, even though you’ll never fucking read this, I believe in it. Even though you have no idea, apparently, how your artform works, I am deeply in love with it. So I’m going to say all this shit anyway.
Storytelling, as a noun, is incumbent on both the writer and the reader to complete. There is no Storytelling if no one is around to hear it, ya dig? This is a sixish step process/path according to yours truly. Imagine an hourglass, each of the two “sections” divided into 3 parts. The first part is the story cloud and it’s at the bottom of the hourglass. The writer, and we’ll go with she here, why not…the writer has this indefinable, intangible thought cloud. It’s a wordless feeling she has, almost like something beyond her is radioing this gigantic, shapeless, big bang style love cloud. It’s massive. Bigger than words. My cloud, TNY, always looks like an old cartoon fight where there’s a dust cloud with maybe a foot or hand flying out of it from time to time (also, it’s in slow motion and smells like rain in the desert and is, strangely, windy but warm). I know there is some sort of conflict in there, a beautiful one, but I can’t hold it all. This cloud, for all of us, is the Collective Unconscious.
The next step requires the writer to word-vomit. She must bravely walk into the cloud and then she must eject all the white-hot heat within (thanks John Gardner) on the page as words with little-to-no editing. It’s got to be feeling. She’s got to puke the words that fly into view when trying to hold the Collective Unconscious. This is how whiskey can be described as tasting like a well-worn baseball glove. She must use associative, knee-jerk, qualitative language that is unique to her visceral and textural experience. Hopefully she can document this bigger feeling in a way that looks something like a narrative (but does not have to).
Next, the third step. She must edit down the vomit into the story that you, TNY, typically deal with (which is not the most important part of Storytelling, at all). That being the words on the page. She must edit those words meticulously because the outcome, on the other end of the hourglass is something called the implied story. This is the story that is off the page, which the story on the page may or may not have anything to do with, which is the only way to get the reader to unlock the big end at the top of the hourglass on their end, that being Collective Unconscious (again, full circle style). Sorry, getting ahead of myself. So in the stage of hardcore editing, she must present words on a page that also tell a story that is off the page. An excellent example of this is “Hills Like White Elephants” by Hemingway. Because the words on the page are a conversation between a man and a woman while they wait for a train. But the implied story, which is never mentioned but is alluded to, is the abortion they are talking about (and the Collective Unconscious isn’t the abortion at all, but this bigger notion of connection v disconnection and love and need and…nope, it got so big I started crying and I can’t hold it with words anymore). And the editing is such that the reader divines this implied story on their own.
And that’s what brings us to the next step of storytelling, which is wholly outside the writer’s control (the two steps that follow this are also outside the writer’s control). Now, the reader has been given the words on the page. And if the writer has done a good job, a fine job, the kind of job humanity would be proud of, then the reader will choose to read these words on the page over every other single life requirement on their end. Because, I feel, most writers forget that no one has to read their fucking ego. It is incumbent on the writer to make the reader forget about real life (not just through plot), and not expect the reader to find the writer’s bullshit as important as the writer does. So the reader reads those words. Good job, writer. Within those words, the reader needs to be given the information to build the implied story on their own. If they do not have to build an implied story (as the story does not ask that of the reader), that’s called commercial writing. The plot gives you everything you need. One doesn’t need to think. It’s just question, answer, question, answer.
So let’s assume the reader was given an implied story. That’s the next stage, to build it. When the reader is allowed to build the implied story themselves, then they have a stake in the story. They built something with a sense of discovery. And that’s so key to Storytelling. Because they are now in. They can now take over for the writer, hopefully, and tell the story to themselves. Their own story. Their own heartbreak. Because it’s coming from them at this point and not the writer. Like, a story about my dead father becomes a story about their dead father becomes a story about all dead fathers becomes a story about all of us, all at once, so beautiful and dancing dancing dancing, a wonder that we ever even got to exist at all. Sigh. Digressing. But the reader can’t do that without the scaffolding of the implied story behind the words on the page, which were meticulously constructed by the writer (and invisibly so, because if the reader sees the scaffolding, the illusion dies because the reader knows the writer is manipulating them into building the implied story (see: sentimentality)).
And the final step. The reader was able to build the implied story. And because they built it, and built it powerfully, they feel it in a way that opens the next story, the Collective Unconscious, on their end (the big end of the hourglass, again), in a way that is as big and powerful and all encompassing as it was on the writer’s end at the beginning. And there, there we have Transcendence. Understanding. Fucking Love, TNY. WE HAVE THE FEELING OF LOVE, AS BIG AND AS BOLD AND AS BEAUTIFUL AS ANYTHING THAT WE’VE EVER KNOWN. WE GET TO GO BACK TO THE HEADY SPACE, PRE BIRTH, WHERE THE UNIVERSE WAS NOTHING BUT GODDAMN LOVE AND SPARKLES AND DUST AND WARMTH AND SO LOUD AND CLOSE THAT IT’S ALL WE EVER WANTED FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER BUT WE GOT BANISHED TO THIS FUCKING PLACE WHERE YOU GUYS CAN’T EVER REPLICATE IT FOR US, YOU SONSABITCHES.
Fuck my face do I care, guys. And it’s obvious that you don’t. Because this story doesn’t care. Because it doesn’t write a strong implied story. And you didn’t care enough to do anything about that. It’s just got words on the page and shadow of a story about the old man’s life as an implied story. Yeah, the piazza is all his life is. That’s…both good and bad. Maybe? We don’t know if it’s good or bad or both because the implied story here is fucking tissue paper and not The Great Pyramid. So the feeling I’m left with, like most of your stories, is who cares? Make me fucking care by letting me tell my own version of this fucking story. Make me want to. Don’t just tell me it’s important because you printed it and it was written by a guy that’s supposed to be important. I’ll tell you what, TNY, you shit out of an ass just like I do. So does Rushdie. And you motherfuckers accidentally shove your thumb through the toiletpaper just like I do and get shit-thumb like the rest of us. So don’t sell me your superiority and think I’ll buy into it. You ain’t no better than us, big guy. You’ve got ingrown hairs on your genitals and you shart with the best of ‘em. When you can get around to admitting that, maybe we can have a beer and fucking change the face of literature for the good. Maybe we can save the goddamn world. I won’t hold my breath.
Back to the point of words doing the work, and cliché as it may be (and sentimental), and overused, these six words work on all levels:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
The implied story we are all telling ourselves could be somewhat different, but it’s big and it’s there and it allows us to unfold the bigger Understanding beyond that.
Other examples:
“Sticks” by George Saunders
“Reverse Suicide” by Matt Rasumussen (This one flattens me every fucking time)
“Why Don’t You Dance” by Raymond Carver (This one has three distinct stories being told, the last of which refers to no matter how hard any of us tries to explain…all of this (gestures to everything)…no will get it)
“In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” by Amy Hempel
“Dundun” by Denis Johnson
“Popular Mechanics” by Raymond Carver
“Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” By Wells Tower
“Voltaire Night” by Deb Olin Unferth
Everything by J.D. Salinger, but I was most affected by Catcher in the Rye
“Everything” by Stuart Dybek
“Viewfinder” by Raymond Carver
“Tenth of December” by George Saunders
"Elephant” & “If We Were Vampires” & “Cover Me Up” by Jason Isbell, possibly our greatest living Storyteller
“Spring 1” by Max Richter
Goddamn it, TNY. I’m crying at this fucking café because I love what you could do so fucking much and you are just fucking it up. Make me fucking care. Make me feel less alone in the world. I know I’m not the only one. Make us all care. Make us fucking feel something beautiful, you faceless corporate pig. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, DO SOMETHING WITH THE FUCKING GIFTS YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN. EARN THIS.
Or, you know, print shit stories by names. Sell copy. Pat yourselves on the back.
Eat a dick.
Nick
P.S. One of my writing mentors used to say there was a special place in hell for someone who writes a critique that is longer than the actual story. IMHO, if hell is for the caring, because that’s all this is, cannonfire of care, then burn my fucking ass to a crisp. But, for reals, if there is a god, the disdain he or she or it will have toward your elitist “literary” fiction vs my (and others’) passion will be apparent upon the Judgement.
