May 18th, 2020 - The Afterlife

Dear TNY,

“The Afterlife” is self-important enough that I won’t be able to touch it, unfortunately.  The distance for you, TNY, to see any room for improvement or anything wrong with the story will be too far beyond the end of your upturned nose.

The narrator’s voice is too far away from the MC for the reader to engage empathetically.  There are way too many commas and comma breaks, rendering each sentence into a mouthful of short, semi-related phrases that slow the tone of the piece to a glacial pace (considering so much of the piece is just descriptions of a room, it’s agonizingly slow).  Side note:  For me to say there are too many comma breaks, especially if you have read any of my previous letters, is telling.  And nothing happens in this story.  Rather, a man leaves a bus and goes into a large structure knowing that it’s the afterlife, he is jostled around, shits on Avengers: Endgame, and is eventually pushed into a pool which causes him to wake up on the bus headed to the structure once more, assumedly forever.  Yay!  This story is as sterile as The Afterlife in this story is described.  So why should anyone care?

I appreciated that the story was short.  Thank you.

A quick note on “the common denominator, the franchise film.”  While I am a certain level of elitist myself, I don’t think franchise work and exalted work are mutually exclusive; I also must begrudgingly admit that the individuals supporting a franchise are not always, in fact, the lowest common denominator.  For instance, Taco Bell has been voted the best Mexican food in America.  I mean, come the fuck on.  That shit isn’t even Mexican food.  It has no Art.  No care.  Nothing.  But, under the right conditions am I going to eat it?  You bet your fucking ass I will, and I’ll love it (spoiler alert:  conditions are chemicals).  Bud Light is by far the best selling beer in the US.  And it’s trash.  You hear me?  Fucking trash.  And I don’t drink it.  Blech.  I’m getting grossed out just thinking about it.  And stories printed by you, TNY, are supposed to be “The Best Writing Anywhere.  Everywhere” but they don’t even come close.  Examples abound proving this.

So it’s not so binary as franchise or exalted.  Endgame has its cheese and sentimentality.  It also has its high points, like empathy.  Because a lot of people like it, that doesn’t make it gross.  It’s accessible.  Hemingway was accessible.  Carver was accessible.  Denis Fucking Johnson was accessible.  And their work is Art.

I think instead of categorizing something as franchise or exalted, i.e. mutually exclusive, it would be better to expect a Venn diagram that is individualized to a person.  And to respect the existence of an oppositional opinion.  Like, when I trash your rag all the time, I respect that you have the right to print what you want, to shape the readership and the art (<—non-caps intentional) as you see fit.  I just don’t have to fucking like it.

Oh, also, I was checking IP addresses the other day and saw you guys stalking FTNY in a big way.  Thanks for reading.  Let me know if you have any questions.  I’m currently unemployed and have been for two years.  I’ve worked very hard for this time, thank you very much.  Sacrificed a lot of years at jobs I hated to engineer passive income for this time.  Because time, really, is all we have.  But, I’d be willing to come out of this early retirement if you are entertaining the thought of bringing me on as an editor.  Just saying.  I’d certainly add a different opinion.  Shake things up.  I’ve seen where you have been on my sites, so I know you know how to contact me.  Please do.

Until next time.

Nick