June 8th & 15th, 2020 - Pursuit as Happiness

Dear TNY,

The country is falling apart and I just dusted “Pursuit as Happiness”.

And I don’t think I can say I’m pleased.  More this year than any other, I’ve noticed you posthumously publishing work.  Now, previous to my little FTNY effort, I would say that I didn’t care either way about whether an artist’s work was published after they had gone.  But now I can say I care.  And I can say why. 

Let’s take this piece by an author I’m not going to pretend I’ve never heard of.  His name is American literary fiction.  Nobel fucking Prize, my man.  When it used to mean something.  In my opinion, he’s one of the primary engineers behind making literature accessible.  Is he a hard-core romantic?  Yep.  Is a lot of his work guy porn with literary depth?  Indeed.  But the motherfucker worked.  So, naturally, anything you can get your hands on by him that has never been published will do exactly what you need it to:  sell copy.  That and continue to establish your rag as an authority on literature to lesser quality readers.  But, back to this particular piece and posthumous publishing.  Who says he wanted it published?  Who says he was finished with it?  Who says he was proud of it and saw it as fit to be in the world?  Who says you had his fucking permission?  Now, like always, I’m not going to read the backstory on this piece that you may or may not publish alongside this story because I feel a piece should stand on its own, and be evaluated on its own, without extraneous information to sway the opinion one way or another.  So maybe Papa H left this shit to you in his will to be published on this date or when the world was falling apart or whatever.  I don’t know.  Not my job to know.  What I can say is that I definitely now approach posthumous work with the attitude, “would the author want this,” and I don’t think in this case he did.

To put it simply, this piece seems like throat-clearing to get to The Old Man and the Sea.  That he had to write this as fiction or nonfiction, I don’t know, in order to get to what he was trying to say with TOMATS.  So this piece feels inferior the whole way through.  Additionally, it feels like you smoothed out his typical staccato with your intrusive and grubby little editorial fingers.  I don’t like that either.

So what’s the point?  Why are you publishing a story that I feel the author would consider lesser work (because while it was under his control he never got it published)?  Seems like this is just another example of you disregarding Art and congratulating yourself in the mirror.  Cool story, bruv.  They’re just reputations and legacies you are fucking with.  And an artform.  No big.

And to you, Papa H.  Up in Spanish heaven, pulling fish after fish from an unnamed stream, taking breaks in the shade and drinking bota wine with a cured meat sandwich for lunch, and in the evenings getting tight on whiskey and beer, the fresh hand of a lady on your thigh under the table, I love your work, dude.  Not all of it, and not all of the time.  But you told yourself a good story.  And then you told it to us.  Thank you.  I wanted to let you know that even through this piece, I see you and appreciate you.  You did have one line of POV shift in this that upset me (you could not see the slight imperfection…because if you could not, the MC, then no one could).  But maybe these lesser class editors did that to your work, I don’t know.  Either way, shit’s okay down here.  No better or worse, politically, than you left it.  The big fish are gone.  Along with a lot of other creatures.  But we have more understanding about the world now…we just don’t do anything about it.  So you probably wouldn’t have as good a time as you did in your golden era.  But we are still here, us humans.  As beautiful as ever.  And like your era, we forget that we are beautiful most of the time and spend our endeavors on ugly pursuits and waste our time, pretending it will last forever.  Like I said, not much has changed.  Sorry, I’m rambling.  We miss you, man.  It wasn’t just the writing.  It was the figure you cut.  A hero.  A man’s man and an Artist.  Not some soft-ass academic with a trustfund and an overdeveloped sense of confidence.  I hope you’re good, big guy.  And if there is a place after all this, and that place is your Spanish heaven, save a seat in the shade for me please.  I’ll bring a case of beer.

Nick