December 13th, 2021 - A Shooting in Rathreedane

Dear TNY,

Another Monday, another story, this time it being “A Shooting in Rathreedane”, and…still nothing matters, you know?

Gist:  While this story has a plot that is interesting and dialog that is engaging and well-picked details (headphone sounds and the smell of shit from the wound), it was overwrought everywhere that wasn’t dialog, there was a scene that was completely out of character for the protagonist (in my opinion), and I fail to see any transcendence from this story, or anything, really, that would deem this “literature” (on second thought, based on your publication record for the last decade, this counts as literature for you, TNY, because nothing fucking happens; in this case, the nothing that happens is the implied story and/or the transcendence story; the surface story has a gunshot response as a “happening”, but it doesn’t work as a tool to support greater empathy). 

Some examples of too much writing:

…The third officer on duty, Sergeant Dennis Crean, had run out to oversee the extraction of a Renault Mégane that some young lad—sober, apparently, just a nervous non-local negotiating the cat’s cradle of back roads around Currabaggan—had nosed into a ditch a half mile out from the national school. The car was a writeoff but the lad had got away without a scratch, according to Crean, and he was a lucky lad, because Noonan knew the roads out that way and they were wicked: high-ditched, hilly, and altogether too narrow; scantily signposted and laced with half-hidden, acutely right-angled turns that it took only a second’s inattention to be ambushed by… (note: this information about the road is totally useless as it was never brought up again, unless its job is to characterize the MC even more professionally than I will bring up later in this letter, further establishing my later point about out of character actions)

…Noonan was at her desk drinking coffee as black as a vinyl record from a battered silver cafetière and transferring a weekend’s worth of writeups from her notebook into the central computer system. The weekend had been unremarkable but busy: a dozen or so minor traffic infractions, a fistfight between stocious teen-age cousins outside a main-street chipper late last night, and a callout this morning prompted by what turned out to be a man’s duffle coat snagged in the weir gates of the Moy river, which was enthusiastically mistaken for a body by a band of visiting American summer students and their professor taking an early constitutional along the quays…

…Pronsius Swift was twenty-four, out of Templemore less than three years, and an aura of adolescent gawkiness clung to him yet; he was tall but disposed to stooping, with an emphatic aquiline bump in his conk, jumpy eyes, and a guileless shine coming off his forehead…  (While 75% of this is unnecessary, I did like “bump in his conk” and was disappointed that we couldn’t have just seen that phrase without all the other shit.)

There are more examples of over the top writing, but I’ll stop here. 

The scene that was out of character was when the MC aggressively confronted the youth on the street for spitting near her squad car.  So we see her calmly answer the phone at the beginning of the story, we see her speed out to the shooting incident with a sense of urgency, we see her calm and cool and collected and attending to the wounds of a man she knows is a lowlife, going so far to keep him talking and conscious, we see her address the perpetrator calmly as well, so the conclusion is she really gives a shit about her job, her professionalism, honoring her position, etc.  She’s “one of the good ones”, a phrase that’s been kicking around recently, almost as an insult.  And then I’m supposed to believe she’s going to jump out of the car and assault a kid (ish)?  Nope.  Not buying it.  Not buying it for her, and not even buying it for her in a state of shock after dealing with a gruesome scenario.  Not buying it for any of the cop characters in this story, actually. So, why put it in?

Oh, there was also a paragraph in which we get to hear meticulous detail about the rank system between the MC and the other male cop that isn’t the young one.  And that paragraph was not only cumbersome and overwrought, it was telling and not showing something that was, as far as I can see, wholly unnecessary, especially considering there was no conflict in all of that. The other male cop treated her well and with respect. 

So if we stack all that shit up, it makes this story read like a crime novel akin to something like Fargo, but devoid of any meaningful conflict (was there a shooting, yep, and was there evidence that it was not self defense, per se (in the way of the shot being in the gut and not the back), yep, but even with the blatant and superficial conflict, there didn’t seem to be any commitment from the author on the internal, deeper, conflict for the MC, rendering the story more like a journalistic recording of the evening instead of art), thereby making it…blank?  Hollow?  Absent? 

This story just wasn’t.  It was a lot of things.  But in the end, it still just wasn’t.

Wasn’t. Was.

Fuck knows, man.

It’s raining really hard outside right now. This right here, this right now, all choices I’ve made.

And there are things to say.  Always things to say.  This incessant need to be heard.  In the form of these letters.  In real life.  In short stories and essays.  In text messages.  In long talks with my kids about what I think makes a great adult and how they can still be kids while adding just a modicum of behavioral changes to their lives now to plant the seeds for growing into respectable, caring, wonderful humans.  All this blah blah blah.  All these words. Adrift, desperate, sad, lonely-ass, wasted fucking words.  For what?

For what?

To feel sorry for myself, I guess.

It was hard to watch my oldest son when he was little.  At the park.  He, all of four years old, constantly buzzing around the older kids, feeling within himself that he was a peer to teens, completely oblivious to the fact that he was unwanted in those groups, they did not want to play his games, they would keep moving away from him, to sneak cigarettes and huddle close, making a full physical barrier to his inclusion.  Him, not sad, seemingly.  Just innocent.  Insistent.  That he knew he had something to offer to the group.  That he belonged.

I love him so much.

I really miss him right now. 

And I miss and love my younger son, too.  The natural-born empath.  The one who would never enter a circle like that as it is obvious from social queues that he is unwanted.

All these words, guys. All these fucking pointless, unwanted, futile words…and it’s likely the wrong fucking circle of people. And whose fault is that? Do I change the words, change the timbre and tone, to find inclusion? Or do I change the group?

My belief is a group change. But after you have been through enough groups and the same thing happens, maybe it’s time to read the room and go. Time to go Home.

It is what it is, I guess.

You can’t kill yourself, right?  Because that’s selfish and stupid and a whole bunch of other harsh, unwanted opinions that come from people who have no idea what it’s like to feel like this most of the time (read: unquestionably credible resources).  Certainly can’t kill yourself because of that.

Keep plugging, I guess. Working that circle. You guys want to talk about diversity and inclusion? Can I bum a cigarette? Isn’t “scene” the best utility for storytelling? Aren’t the stories by authors who are past their prime but are releasing new work and have many notable awards, aren’t those stories the best and totally worth publishing based on their standalone, literary merit? Isn’t it great when we need an explanation from the writer on what the story is “about” and what the writer is “trying to do”? You guys want to play tag with me? Merry-go-round? Get on the swings with me? Will you love me, guys? Will you love me?

Easy to say, really.

Pointless to say.

So, see you next week.

Nick