May 17th, 2021 - Children of the Good Book

Dear TNY,

It’s a beautiful day in May and you gave us “Children of the Good Book”.

I wish you’d take it back.

Storytelling first, everything else second.  That’s my fucking argument, bitches. Junot Diaz is an exceptional storyteller.  This means that he is able to take the reader into his world, his culture, no matter what the reader’s background is, and get them to care.  That’s storytelling. Dave Chappelle.  Compelling storyteller.  Brings us all along into his culture, the way he sees the world, because of the storytelling.  Fuck man, J.K. Fucking Rowling.  We may not respect her views on trans women or her abysmal prose, but her world-building and storytelling is on point (in the way that Stephen King’s storytelling is on point).

This story is the opposite from a storytelling point of view.  As in, it’s fucking trash.  It’s very apparent, TNY, that you are flexing your “diversity” muscles by publishing this story, but the storytelling is such that, I’d imagine, no one fucking cares.  And if no one fucking cares then no empathy is made.  So, by default, aren’t you just setting up the literary community to not care about the culture represented by the story?  That’s my take anyway.  If the storytelling is so fucking hot-garbage that the reader doesn’t have empathy, then everyone who worked to put it out in the world is misusing the fucking point of literary fiction:  To affect a reader whose guard is let down because, subconsciously, they don’t have to care about something that didn’t happen; subsequently, when they do end up caring and making empathy within themselves, they are rewriting their understanding of the entirety of the human species for the better, one story at a time.  And if the reader reads enough exceptional stories, it’s possible they can grow enough empathy to make this world a better place.  So, yeah.  When you print shit that is anti-empathetic, you teach the reader to not give a shit about what they just read, thereby rewriting their understanding of what it represents in the real world.  You make people worse, you dumb motherfuckers.  You make the world worse.

Yeah, I think I just made the case that this type of story, done this poorly from a storytelling standpoint, actually adds to racism.  Do I want to stand behind that?  Sure.

Caveat: When I make that statement, I mean that the culture that the story represents has more to offer than this bullshit story, and this story doesn’t do that culture the justice it deserves.

Now, it sounds like I’m ranting. And crazy. I likely am. But I’ll try to give some examples of bad storytelling so that we are clear where I am coming from.  You have five characters in the first hundred words.  None of the characterization given to them ever brings any of them to life, so they are cardboard people acting out the author’s agenda (which cannot hide because there is nothing to hide behind when nothing in the story seems real).  The motivations behind every character’s actions seem hollow.  Specifically, why the fuck did the beatdown happen?  Was there a scene of defiance?  Yep.  But at what point did we believe, as the reader, that there was enough motivation for a full, tied-to-a-tree beatdown? Not justification, as there will never be that. Just the motivation.   Oh, what’s with the italicized interruptions?  They add exactly zero to the story.  And at a line editing level, why does this fucking story jump all over the goddamn place, making it impossible to track.  It feels like floating around inside a dream, in which we are pulled and pushed from place to place with little to no understanding of what’s happening, such that we barely remember, upon waking, that we dreamt at all.  And finally, how fucking cliché is it to use pussy as the main motivational factor for the whole conflict (and I say that word, “pussy”, in the derogatory sense that was defined by this story’s usage of Sonya as clickbait for one of the characters starting with the letter “I” (everyone knows that you don’t name characters similar names, fuckers))?  I mean, how fucking “woke” is that shit, using the female sex as a plot point?  Spoiler alert: it’s not. 

Anyway, I’m sure I’m cancelled. If so, I’d like it to be known that I’m cancelled for caring enough about humanity that I refuse to suffer its disrespect via bad representation through shitty “literature”. All of this existence, all at once, is fucking breathtakingly beautiful. And if you are printing stories that don’t accurately represent that, then you mar the face of all this gloriousness.

Now I’m going to enjoy this sunny day in the PNW and maybe do something worth doing. 

Later.

Nick

P.S. The date of this story is my mother’s birthday. I don’t know how old she’ll be. We currently aren’t talking because she believes that she can be as shitty as she wants because Jesus said I need to honor her. Now, do I strike you as the type of person that is going to listen to ten arbitrary rules in one fucking religion that seem like they were written by a group of old white dudes that were afraid to lose what they believe they earned? Nah, bruv. Religions are the antithesis of benevolence. Why am I bringing this up? Because you’re like my mother. And I don’t have to respect or honor you if you just keep doing shit that makes me lose respect for you. Earn it, motherfuckers. It’s not a given. I’m in no position to change the world. But you are. SO FUCKING DO IT.