August 17th, 2020 - You Are My Dear Friend

Dear TNY,

I’ve tried six times to write a critique of “You Are My Dear Friend” and I just can’t.  I’m so fucking disappointed in you, this story, the literary industry, and all the motherfuckers out there paying for this kind of useless, droll, nothing happens, MC-is-just-a-victim-of-her-own-life bullshit.  Who fucking cares?  Grow up.

More so, I’m disappointed in the youth, for playing videogames instead of reading.  I’m disappointed in parents for being such fucking losers and kowtowing to toddlers.  I’m disappointed in our government for telling teachers how to teach and what to teach and I’m disappointed in teachers for not dressing up like ninjas and leading an army of other ninja-teachers straight into DeVos’ asshole.  Swords out, bro.  I’m disappointed in adults for being such huge wastes of resources and for choosing consumable superficial feels vs developing greater empathy through actual emotional weightlifting.  And I’m disappointed in myself.  I mean, what the fuck am I doing about all this bullshit?

Regardless, now we’re here.  We’ve left a handful of stewards in charge of paying for literature, because this shit is a fucking business it turns out, and it doesn’t care about the longevity of Art, and those stewards don’t know fuckall about the artform.  I’ll try to explain this in a way you can understand, TNY.  It’s like being angry at Donald Trump, that being you, TNY, without recognizing that there are millions of dopes that put him there.  And those dopes cannot be swayed as the more data you provide to show them the error of their ways, the tighter they cling to their misguided ideals.  That’s not to say the other side is better.  I’ve long stated politicians are all trash.  Just give me someone that’s not embarrassing.  And embarrassing is what your fiction has become.  Not the transcendent, humanizing kind of embarrassment, from last week’s letter (embarrassing beauty), like when you sneak out of a family dinner to go cry because your mom and dad don’t know that earlier in the day you discovered that you were pregnant, and you stand outside, hiding just inside an alleyway to stay out of the rain, crying so hard you are shaking, and a man who is walking across the street glances at you, and then fullstops.  And he looks at you, really looks at you; he doesn’t extend his arm; he doesn’t bring his shoulders to his neck to protect himself from the downpour; he just stays there, straight and tall and drenched and looking at your snotted-up, red face with not an ounce of disdain, judgment, or compassion on his own.  He is just…there.  Seeing you.  And you dart back into the house, wiping your face on your shirt as you go, and as far as you know, he could still be there, trapped by the echo of your vulnerability.  Nah, not that kind of embarrassing.  This is more of that hot mess embarrassing, like that couple that got booted from a box store for wearing Nazi facemasks.  Or like that woman that got caught on camera faking an assault to a 911 operator because a black birdwatcher asked her to put her dog on a leash, in the leashed area of the park I might add, and she got mad about it.  It’s the kind of embarrassing where you are embarrassed for them, because they don’t know how yuck they are.

But, I guess just like they say about ol’ DJT, though.  We ain’t getting the literature we want.  We’re getting the fucking literature we deserve.

So fuck y’all.

Nick