June 7th, 2021 - Before the Valley

Dear TNY,

“Before the Valley” typifies modern TNY style:  The main character is the narrator, nothing important happens, and no empathy is made.  Bravo.

I swear to god (pick one, I don’t care; maybe Hera), I have no idea how you continue to sell this shit to discerning readers.  It has to be the largest literary scam going.  One begins to question the idea of “discerning readers” at this point.  And all I can come up with is that whatever academic machinery is pumping out these readers, it has to be busted.  And if the machinery is busted, then the art is busted.  Because who, after reading Flannery O’Connor, would read this story and think, “Yeah, pretty much the same.”  This story, then, is much the same as the academic machinery.  It’s a voice so convinced of its own self-importance that it takes every opportunity to show you as much whilst simultaneously diminishing said voice with each flourish of ego (one could say the same of me; I would welcome that criticism because that would be called “discourse” instead of what this conversation is now, which is “einbahnstraße”).  In other words, the machinery (and I mean world here, really) is teaching people that they are important, what they make is important, and that everyone should pay attention to it.  Which means we have a case of Gusteau misinterpretation from Ratatouille.  Just because everyone has a voice and can write (as in, anyone can cook) doesn’t mean everyone’s voice and writing matter; nor does it mean everything that a great writer writes is good. But I do believe that great writing can come from anywhere. This story just proves the reader won’t find great writing here.

What am I trying to say?  I don’t know.

This story doesn’t matter.  It’s too authorially self-important to fucking care about its characters, their fate, or the heavy-handed agenda it’s carrying.  I skimmed it, at best, and was not disappointed by doing so.  It was a good use of my time, the skimming. Better than reading it fully.

So yeah.  Same shit from me I guess.  TNY, you’re either breaking an artform that wants to be better, or the world has broken the artform via current narcissistic tendencies and you are just making money off of really, really, really thin-minded readers (thinner than my diarrhea) who are looking for their own reflection in everything they read, like Insta-whores (all genders represented when I say whores; and not to be taken as an insult to sex workers, as I feel sex workers are far more interesting and worthy of respect than Insta-whores).

But hey, who fucking cares, amiright? 

Obviously one crackpot, shouting into the void, because he loves something. 

But fuck that guy. He’s not about all the cliquish bullshit and that NY life. He just loves the art for the art itself. And for the love it can create. Nothing worth listening to from that guy. Gross.

Nick