November 9th, 2020 - Ghoul

Dear TNY,

Another week, another story; this one is “Ghoul”.

I can’t remember the last time a new story, of any publisher, broke my heart.  This story did not either.  Maybe I have become too hard.  Standards too high.  I discussed this matter with another writer recently and he said he often feels the same.  That the lack of breathtaking literary short fiction is, in fact, our fault by expecting each and every story to be spectacular.  He likened it to Gordon Ramsey.  As you likely know, he is notoriously an asshole, especially about garbage food.  But, he explained that once you have had the very finest food prepared exactly perfect, garbage food is an affront to your pallet.  Maybe I have become this?  Certainly I expect the very best in everything and have issues stomaching anything otherwise.  God, TNY, you wouldn’t believe how this has sabotaged my relationships.  While I know for a fact that relationships cannot be those first, heady nine months for the next 20 years, I expect that they will be.  And I’m let down when they aren’t.  And those are real people, man.  Real, beautiful, tender, skin-clad, meat-bodied women with consciousnesses exactly as visceral and real as my own who suddenly no longer hold my excitement because it’s not spectacular anymore (to me).  Jesus that’s horrible.  I’m a fucking monster.

Speaking of real people, I’d like to talk about “Cattle Praise Song”.  Last week that particular letter on FTNY was visited over 40 times by different people all over Africa. I could imagine a person finding it, being appalled, and emailing it and then three people reading that email, also appalled, and emailing and on and on.  And I waited with sick in my guts.  I waited for my own email.  The, “Hey, BTW, you’re the villain,” email.  And I’ve got to be honest with you, half the time I think I am.  On one hand, I feel like what I wrote in that letter is correct.  And that has nothing to do with the author, in my opinion.  It has to do with you, TNY, for publishing subpar literature.  But on the other hand, I highly doubt that any of the authors of the stories I have eviscerated over the last 3 years won’t take it personally.  Which fucking hurts.  Because I don’t want to hurt anyone.  And it forces me to ask myself, have I become a cyberbully?  Is it any different to bully a magazine as opposed to an author?  Is it any different because I’m defending what I believe is right?  At this particular café in Fruita, Colorado on this fine Monday morning (where I’ve had this brilliant (sarcasm) idea to write a nonfic essay called “Embarrassingly Male” in which I regale the reader with real life examples of how I’m a terrible fucking person, like the time, in this very café, while I was visiting my kids (they no longer live here), that I wrote a note on the back of the receipt to the waitress who was at least a decade younger than me and that note said I thought she was spectacularly beautiful, amongst other things, and left no phone number or any way to contact me, so it was, at least to me, not predatory, but then upon a revisit to said café (somewhat predatory) she waited on us again and said something to the effect of, “I really appreciate the note you left the other day and I don’t always feel beautiful, but you made me feel that way,” to which I smiled and nodded, so far only medium level embarrassing because who am I to just arbitrarily give unwanted superficial attention (particularly male; yuck), and then afterwards, when I was drunk and sad after having flown somewhere far away from my kids not knowing when I’d see them again, as I did in those days, emailed the restaurant and offered my phone number like some kind of fucking pig, some inhumane, desperately lonely, pathetic, shitheel (it should be noted she no longer works here; and yes, I feel so sorry for myself that I’m sure I had something to do with it))…anyway, in this here café, I can’t see any difference from myself and our moronic president (sic).  Both people believe they are right.  Both people treat other people like shit in a public forum.  I just have a way smaller platform and no power.  But today, he and I seem uber yuck together, not much more than sad little boys who want to be loved and lash out at the world over a lack of it or an inability to feel it.

So, to those of you who read the “Cattle Praise Song” letter, and anyone else who has read these ridiculous letters, I’m sorry if I have hurt your feelings.  I care about you as humans.  Truly.  But, sadly, human care and short story care are two tectonic plates in my head that grind against each other and create earthquakes.  Honestly, I’d like to have a beer with you and bullshit about your life (authors, not TNY; to be clear, I still think you guys are fucking blowing it as a steward of an artform).  I respect that you write, that you chose writing or it chose you, and you are doing it.  And no matter what I think of TNY, it must have been a pretty big honor to get published there.  Congratulations. 

I hope we can be cool, the authors and myself, about this whole absurd project.  Some days I don’t know.  Some days I wish anyone would write back, good or bad. Most days I think that desire is pathetic. I started this whole thing because TNY didn’t listen. Then it slowly became about how isolated I felt in general. Now it’s a place to go where I can say anything, much like a journal, and almost no one ever writes back. It’s like making wishes and chucking coins into a well. Maybe Sean Astin will chuck one of my quarters back one day. But, if I’m honest, I’d want it to be Kerri Green, and I’m sure all I’d get would be the letterman jacket on an empty bucket. 

You know, being a human could be such a noble endeavor but often it’s just dumb as fuck.

Back to “Ghoul”.  Of course I can’t ignore that it’s Saunders.  It’s very reminiscent of his CivilWarLand in Bad Decline stuff.  I thought it was super creative and I appreciated the edges of the scaffolding I could see in the story, as a writer.  Like, how every action, every character, was doing at least double duty if not more.  I appreciate how the world he created was absurd enough to be weirdly interesting and adhered to its own rules so successfully that it existed without question while simultaneously being somehow familiar to life right now.  That’s a feat.

But it didn’t break my heart, as I said.  And maybe that’s because I know he has written “Sticks” and “Tenth of December” and “Escape from Spiderhead”.  Maybe it’s because I’m a fucking cyberbullying asshole who has no right to do any of this shit.  Maybe it’s because the story just doesn’t break hearts.  Today, I don’t know.

I don’t know anything, TNY. 

Wait.  I do.  Contrary to what it might seem, I know that I have so much love to give.  And as Quiz Kid Donnie Smith once said, “I just don’t know where to put it.”

There.  Now I did it.  I broke my own heart.

Until next week.

Nick