March 8th, 2021 - The Crooked House

Dear TNY,

Hola amigos!  I’m in SoCal right now and I just read “The Crooked House”.

And aside from using theoretical spatial construction to talk about America’s homeless issues, especially from the “rich people just want a place to put them so they don’t have to look at them” perspective (yuck), this story was alright.

I say just alright because while it was funky, it didn’t really go anywhere.  Did I dig the funk?  Yessir.  I loved the shifting house, the disorientation, Mull following a man who was following him.  All that was great.  The windows that lead out (down) but not back in.  So cool.  And so original.  It was nice to see you, TNY, take a risk on a piece that was less traditional.  Less “NY writer lives a beige existence and complains about things that only matter to pieces of shit”.

But, as stated above, the homeless angle ruined the piece.  The whole thing about the architect?  Um, who cares?  That shit was super boring and didn’t add anything.  I’d posit that no one needs to know, specifically, why the house exists at all.  And the earthquakes?  Who cares?  If the premise was just a man wandering through a tesseract house looking for a woman, what more do you need? All the unanswered questions are what keep a story interesting sometimes.  We don’t need all the other bullshit.  Especially when they don’t add anything to the story other than a mundane revenge plot and a host of unnecessary characters.

And that’s that, really.  I’m not mad at this story.  It was refreshing to read something like this.  But, ultimately, I feel like the novelty of it quickly wears off because of a lack of an emotional impact.  Like, great car/bad driver sort of situation.  Would love to see an edit of this that uses the mechanics of the story to actually get the reader to human connection. Wait, aren’t you an editor? Can you not adjust? Ah yes, that’s my lack of understanding bubbling up to the surface again. Editors don’t edit. They just publish.

Later tater,

Nick