January 25th, 2021 - A Challenge You Have Overcome

Dear TNY,

It cannot be overstated how fucking terrible “A Challenge You Have Overcome” is.

I read the whole thing as very shortly after I began, I became committed to being upset about it, and what a waste of time it was. So I’m going to try to take this seriously.  But I may fail. 

First, you have a half-dozen characters introduced right away with almost no way to keep them separate but their names.  Fuck man, if you were to meet six people in real life in a span of five minutes, and then closed your eyes, you could probably describe mostly what they looked like, some mannerisms, the sound of some of their voices, maybe even an overwhelming perfume or two.  But would you remember their names?  Likely not.  Yet this author figured giving ONLY the names would be enough to allow us to keep everybody in their own box.  Christ is that a self-centered view as an author (and terrible editing on your part, TNY, as you were happy to publish this drivel).  It presupposes that the reader has the same history with the characters that the author does—same image in their mind.  But, the reader is coming to this as fresh as a daisy.  So tell me how the fuck am I ever going to connect with these people if the author’s first choice is to basically not give a shit about us as the reader to build that same image within us?

This statement is not hyperbole: My youngest son goes to school in a tiny town with an education system that is…doing its best, bless its heart; the emphasis he receives in that education on character building in the narrative form (in the fifth grad, mind you) is more strongly taught and enforced than what is contained in this bullshit story.

Second, the point of view this story is told from seems to be third person omniscient.  I say this because we can see in the wife’s head as well as the husband’s (I cannot be bothered to remember their fucking names).  This is, in my opinion, the wrong POV for a short story.  Now, a lot of my letters are preference, sure.  And that’s all this is, preference.  But I prefer to see a story with a tighter POV (like third person limited omniscient (specifically, I’m okay watching multiple people because that works from a camera perspective, but I don’t want to see any more than one person’s thoughts, if that; I prefer no thoughts in third person) or first person perspective) because a short story is supposed to be tight (maybe third person omniscient works better in novels, but I wouldn’t know because I stopped reading contemporary novels when they turned into something akin to the sludge-pyramid sticking out of the toilet hole in an overused portijohn that makes one turn right the fuck back around and go from whence they came, still brewing an aggressive shit; oh, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit).  The meandering camerawork in this story, going in and out of multiple character’s heads, never really centers us as the reader on a solid, well-told narrative. We just wander around, and in the case of this story, pay attention to details that seem to have been intentionally selected to ensure that we cannot give any fucks about this story or its characters. But I’m not here to say that it’s not possible to write a tight, third omniscient story.  I’m sure it is possible.  But that isn’t what is happening in this story.  This story is sloppy in how it transitions through time and space as well as how it cuts back and forth through thoughts, so it doesn’t allow me solid footing for any respectable storytelling.

Now let’s address the real problem.  Last week’s letter called you out, TNY, for not providing literature that is more interesting than the reader’s real life.  This week, you provided a story that was more boring than last week’s.  Fucking Christ, guys.  We’ve talked about this so many times:  JUST BECAUSE YOU, TNY, ARE A “WRITER” IN NEW YORK DOESN’T MEAN YOUR READERS WILL BE INTERESTED IN READING STORIES ABOUT OTHER “WRITERS” IN NEW YORK.  This is the whitest, Lifetime-ass shit I have ever read.  No one gives a fuck about “writer” husband and his inability to move forward with technology in his industry. Are we supposed to believe he’s standing up for what’s right? That standing up for the written word is right?  I mean, do you understand the fucking irony that abounds when you publish a story in which we are supposed to feel for this guy who can’t move past a publishing industry that has left him behind and yet you never fucking respond to me?  HAHAHAHAHAHA!  And of course the son doesn’t listen to his fucking mom because she’s a goddamn nag about everything.  Karen, as we are going to call her, is a superstar, motivated, caring and efficient counselor at a high school who has to put up with her slovenly family as well as the ghost of her mother-in-law in her brain?  Who gives a fuck, Karen.  Grow the fuck up.  Where were you brought up that you learned that everyone had to listen to you?  What fucking authority do you have over your son’s future as a grown ass man?  Or your husband’s job?  Motherfucker spends most of his waking hours doing shit he doesn’t want to do anymore and then has to come home where you’re eyeballing him over some goddamn birthday cake and maybe for the first time in a hot second he gets some spirit back by writing a resignation letter and you are there to crush his goddamn dreams and send him back into hell?  He’s lucky he got fired.  Because you can’t fuck with that, Karen.  Goddamn forgotten anniversaries and sons that won’t listen and husbands who don’t know where the clicker is and colleges that won’t give your son a chance because he’s upper middle class, male, and white and goddamn birthday cake and mother-in-laws and Halloween candy and dishwashers and every other fucking thing.  WHO GIVES A FUCK.  You are an insignificant flicker of life amongst 7 billion others of equal value flying across an infinite universe on a ball of matter being held together by something no one really understands.  It’s not meant to happen for you, Karen.  Nothing is meant to happen for any of us.  We don’t get what we want.  We don’t even get what we deserve, good or bad.  Shit just fucking happens so get over yourself you fucking entitled dickbag.  Maybe grab a beer and fuck off for a minute and get out of everyone’s business.  The world is hard enough without someone else telling you what to do all the time, or worse yet, what you are doing is wrong.  Chill the fuck out.

But make no mistake, TNY:  What you are doing to literature is wrong.  And I will not chill the fuck out.  Because, weirdly, these letters are one of the only things I control in my life.  Everything else is subject to the forces at will, whose life shitstorms are delivered indifferent to us all. But I can come back here to FTNY, week after week, and have a laughable level of authority over a passionate endeavor which will ultimately result in zero changes on your part. And I’m about that struggle.

Ugh, just mentioning life shitstorms, though, caused me to get hit by a wave of anxiety about a property I’m trying to buy.  But, that right there is a first-world problem and I’ll keep it to myself.

So until next week when you’ll surely disappoint me again, fuck off.

Nick