December 21st, 2020 - Our Lady of the Quarry

Dear TNY,

Nearing the end of another abysmal year from you, and you match that quality with “Our Lady of the Quarry”.

I don’t know, man.  I get so tired of writing all these negative reviews.  Did this story make sense?  Yes.  Did something happen?  Yes.  But it doesn’t matter.  Like, at all.  It’s got the ingredients for all the sexual tension in the world, and I could find no tension in the story.  I finished this story because, yes, I did want to know what happened. And that it was only 4k words.  And it turns out not much happened.  Bad things happened to characters I didn’t care about (and was given no reason to because the story is told from the “we” perspective in which every “we” hates them); these bad things were perpetrated by characters I didn’t care about either as they had no redeeming qualities. Two dimensions all around. No depth. Long paragraphs summarizing what happened. Story told with the craft (yucky word, I know) level of a midschooler who is unaware of nuance or depth.  The bus driver seemed nice, though. 

I just don’t know anymore.  Goddamn it.  It’s like everyone just decided to stop giving a shit about quality. In writing, sure, but in everything else as well. As humans we seem to have the highest level of confidence over what?  Complete disregard for critical thinking about our arts or anything other than the superficial (if that)?  Because everyone is a snowflake? Because we are afraid to offend?  I am afraid to offend, certainly.  Terrified.  But we take risks for what we care about.  Where were the risks in this story?  Where are the risks in your fiction?  I will grant you that publishing stories like “Cat Person” is risky behavior, but only in that the risk is accidentally validating a large swath of humanity that has no personal responsibility, thereby enabling further buffoonery instead of empathy.  But, what risk does this story take?  Is this a modern parable meant to remind us not to pray to the weird gods to hurt our want-to-be lovers?  Does this capture the essence of youth?  The volatile and uninformed nature of it?  Or is it just sad, petulant, jealous junk?

Fuck knows.

I’m not even mad.  I’m sitting here hot off the toilet from my sister’s nuclear shrimp salad, feeling like I might have a limp from that effort, and just wishing that you, TNY, were a better friend to literature.

But you aren’t.

In other news, I’ve seen a recent uptick in my readership.  So, hi everybody.  Welcome.  I hope you can see the passion and humor in this instead of deciding I’m some asshole.  And I am an asshole.  But everyone is an asshole.  Especially the people that think they aren’t assholes.  They are the worst kind of asshole. I’m talking about you, TNY.

Hope all is well and that when you guys are done finalizing my contracts with Condé Nast, you send them over.  I’m eager to start my new job.  Curator of Human Empathy.  This is a new position, recently funded, as the position of Devaluer of Art Via the Commercialization of So-Called Literature Above Actual Literature has been vacated.

Whatever.

Nick