March 3rd, 2020 - Kid Positive

Dear TNY,

Well, I’m about to move to another life maneuver and I took some time in the afternoon to read “Kid Positive”.  I gotta say, I only had positive notes as I read, mostly about how I hoped the voice maintained.  So, I’m going to start with the pros.

As stated, I like this voice.  The writing is clean, it’s not verbose, it’s not showing you how fucking educated or self-important it is with it’s vocabulary.  Mostly, the author seems to have chosen and honed a voice that allows the author to disappear, which is nice to see and not typical TNY fare.  I felt that the story was genuine because it had enough quirks and dark and/or contradictory information to feel real.  Specifically, by “genuine” I don’t mean non-fic.  I mean real to itself.  Self-contained reality.  I didn’t have a lot of beef with this piece is what I’m saying.  For the most part.

Cons:  Is this person a psychopath and/or on the spectrum?  Because there are a lot of unknowns that seem to be solved by that conclusion. I don’t understand why he’s so disconnected from everything and everyone (especially emotionally) but also calculating and manipulative.  I don’t understand why he gets to own a sister.  I don’t understand why there’s a huge fucking time jump to the future and why any of that shit in the time jump matters.  I don’t understand why he’d heave kittens through the air.  I don’t understand why he says, “…if you had asked me…” statements and then there’s no real pull-through on the answer.  I don’t understand what the deal was at the end of the hum section.  These things (and others), unanswered, create disconnectedness with the reader.

And because of the above, what I don’t understand, is how you can write such a compelling voice and a narrative that keeps the reader engaged but then shit the bed so hard on the ending that it’s almost a total wasted effort.  I’ve said this a million fucking times…see: “Tenth of December”.  Because that story has a very similar voice (re: the kid) to this story, but at the end of that story, it fucking means something.  And what the fuck is the point of this “art” if it doesn’t fucking mean anything other than to sell what I am sure this author needs to sell?  Because without that fucking transcendence, it’s not Capital A Art.  It’s just fucking product.  Like, you know, a Star Wars continuation novel.  Except this product seems to be pointed at people who believe they are at the bleeding edge of Art. Spoiler alert: They aren’t.

Alas.  Plebes.  Digging around in feces.  Calling it next level.  Totally lost.

Valid fucking piece of data from my life:  I don’t know any author that I respect (and also personally know) that reads your magazine (or any, for that matter) because literature is so atrocious right now they choose to inspire themselves with works of a bygone era.  It’s not clever or cute to end a story without any fucking delivery.  It’s just…you were at a writers’ party, right? You were shaking the hands of the masters who came before you. But then you needed to shit. And afterwards, you didn’t wash your hands after you sent an errant thumb through the TP on the first wipe and subsequently got a dose of the brownthumb, and failed the test of attention to detail. Then you shook a true artisan’s hand. But, you believed you were a peer of said master when really you were and are a fucker, spreading your shitthumb around.  Good news, though!  The master knows about your abhorrent thumb and thinks you’re a fucking asshat and is going to sterilize his thumb with some Listerine in the guest bathroom and leave this party first chance he gets, go home, and read the first chapter of Lolita before having a scotch, and softly crying because he’s an artifact that has been replaced by profit, pride, agenda, etc. But it’s cool, TNY, keep pushing your fucking agenda.  High brow/low brow material is soooooooo clever.  Like, convince them it’s high brow when it’s just some ambiguous/confusing/obscure bumf that the reader gives up understanding and claims they are smarter for reading it.  Well played, TNY.  Pretty sure you’ll be Maury Povich soon.  Jerry fucking Springer.

To the author:  I was let down.  If you can write a story that garners this much of the readers’ attention, fucking finish it with a hammer.  Not a sad fart.  Don’t let TNY tell you it’s done.  They are piles of the foulest smelling feces ever generated on this planet.  I know you know you blew the ending.  Respect yourself. Respect Art.

Nick