July 26th, 2021 - The Theresa Job
Dear TNY,
You’re back after two weeks and you brought us “The Theresa Job”.
I mean, what the fuck is this? It’s a fucking heist story? I love heisty shit. But this, with all this backstory, is…fucking boring. Like, really fucking boring. I started scanning a fifth of the way through. You know why hard-boiled crime novellas worked? Because there is no fucking backstory. It’s not relevant to the action. Which, I guess, is kind of what I’m rolling around in my head. Can a true heist story be literature? By removing all of this dripping backdrop, do you remove the literary merit of the piece? You do in this piece, but that’s not the case across literature. Carver did away with all that bullshit and his shorts worked fine. This has all this extra fucking color to it—vibrancy—for what? I guess if you are here for that, then this story probably works for you. But if you are here for fucking transcendence, this ain’t it. Instead, it would seem this is dressed up pulp fiction. No movement beneath it. No point other than to be pretty for pretty’s sake whilst utilizing a semi-interesting premise. Which is, you know, pointless.
Whatever. I mean, it’s by a Pulitzer Prize winning author who has a book coming out in September. He could have shot a snot-rocket onto a tea cozy and you would have published it.
And, speaking of shell game literature, like “The Theresa Job”, and name-based publishing and stories that will never matter, a couple of days ago after my little jaunt to New York, I wrote a lot of stuff I had to say about you, TNY. Here goes…
***Phew. So we made it to New York. We were there for Tropical Storm Elsa, no less. And, firstly, I want to say that I’m a little disappointed by the fact that your security guards asked us to leave. Rather, told us we could not go any further. So I was unable to poop in your building without going to the observation deck, which (if I’m honest) I don’t care enough about to spend that kind of money (but I did go up to the top of the Empire State Building because King fucking Kong, motherfuckers). Secondly, I was upset you didn’t have a portijohn outside the main entrance with my name on it. That’s some bullshit.
But, no. No. That’s not what I want to say. What I want to say is that I’m disappointed in you. Or sad for you? I’m not sure. Certainly disappointed. I say that often in very different ways on this rant of a website. And in these letters. But, this is heartfelt disappointment. Not because of the stupid fucking poop stuff. Nope. I’m disappointed because, fuck, how should I put this...you’re afraid. And I don’t mean that in the sense of direct fear, fear of sharks or fear of heights or fear of being attacked in the nighttime. No, you’re afraid of being vulnerable. You’re afraid to admit that you might be wrong. That you don’t know what you are doing. You’re afraid to publish Art. You’re afraid of being as beautiful as you could be. And you choose insulation and empty assurances of other insulated voices to ensure you never have to feel that dread that you could be wrong. And that’s, really, what I got from New York. It seems like a place in which the elite (and non) whites are given evidence they are so important on a day to day basis, living in the epicenter of culture, and that culture is…beneath...below…somewhere definitely not near their echelon, but still within reach, but outside a requirement to live it, but these whites never have to take the time to consider what it’s like to actually fucking exist outside their bubble of false superiority…and…it’s all a fucking sham. Yeah. That’s maybe what I’m saying. A sham. At least for the elites. It’s artificial. And not even clean, mind you. And it’s filth makes me feel like you guys think you are connected because you are slumming it. But as Holden would say, you’re a bunch of phonies. We spent a whole day walking around inside the Natural History Museum and my kids just kept saying (in reference to their real lives), “we saw one of those,” and, “remember that time where we saw that,” and on and on. The museum is a collection of, what, the summary of a life? It’s not a fucking life. It’s not the world. What am I trying to say? I don’t know.
I was sitting on the curb with my boys outside of the NY Stock Exchange, right next to The Fearless Girl. And she’s looking up at the building filled with a bunch of fucking shysters playing a fucking shell game with global pieces, completely insulated from the financial results of their actions on the people who will never have what these fuckers make in a week, and I wanted the little girl to be mad. And I was explaining this to the boys. That it would please me to no end if some little girl came along and brought the whole fucking system down, a la Fight Club, and about that time a group of these hyper-elite rich whites were getting their photos taken as a group before going in for the bell ringing (about 15 people, all white, and only 2 women; fuck my face is this idea of equality in America a fucking sham), and they broke up and walked past us. And I locked eyes with the guy that was clearly the manager of all this, his sycophants surrounding him making sure they are seen, yes boss, yes boss, all the money boss, and the motherfucker whips his phone out and takes a picture of me next to this fucking statue, my children on either side of me, and then shows his cronies. And my kids asked why he did that. And I told them I believe he was mocking me as a way to deal with the fact that even though he has more power than God and there was nothing he couldn’t buy, he’d never be authentic. He’d never be real. He was as hollow as the shell game he played with all of our money. And that there was a subconscious part of him that knew all he had was worthless and could never buy a real experience.
A life, TNY. Of richness, not riches.
Fuck, what am I trying to say. That’s you, man. That’s fucking you, TNY. You’re so afraid of the rest of the world, you play it safe with dickshit stories that mean nothing and won’t be remembered. Or you choose the route of divisive stories because you know they get you the readership you need to stay relevant. And in business. But that’s not what literature is about. Never has been. Literature…Art…is about capturing the complexity of human existence, in all its savage beauty, in struggle, ugliness, and strife, in a way that it feels like love. Big Love. So, you should be in the business of curating empathy. If you want good beef, you don’t raise cows, right? You raise good grass. But you choose to raise the cows, my dude. You curate “art”, lowercase and quotes intended. And that bothers me so much. You are McDonald’s. You aren’t the last green chile cheeseburger my father made a couple of years ago, a burger I never knew would be the last one he would ever make for me, the cheese being shitty American slices and the burger burnt, the way he liked them, which I hated, and the buns being fucking Roman Meal. What I’m saying is that like a lot of what I saw in NY, you’ve bought into the insulation, the pomp and circumstance. You’ve insulated yourself from your own vulnerability. You’ve insulated yourself from taking a chance on empathy.
Case in point, see the Slate article about the travesty that is “Cat Person”. You published a story from the perspective of an unlikable, unrelatable (more on that later) character who acts badly throughout the piece and whose redemption is supposed to come through in the act of the male character calling her a whore. Now, that seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, no? That if you act like a fucking douche, karma’s gonna come for you. Hell, the male character didn’t even know how bad it was, how repulsed she was by him. So, at the end we are supposed to feel, what, that all her action was justified because of his action? Nope. It feels more deserved than anything else because if you drizzle diarrhea all over another person and DON’T expect to get called out, you are a fucking monster. But then, deliciously, so many people came forward and said, “I can relate to this so much.” You put that in the world. You gave people a place to validate their fucking obnoxious and pathetic behavior. That’s you, bud. And you did it for readership, not the love of the game. I’m guessing you didn’t care what the outcome was, you just wanted the likes. But that story, that story makes the world worse. As one of my good female friends said, “that story’s demographic is manipulative cunts.” Boomsauce, fucko. And here’s where it gets fucking dark. Not only did you reward that bad literature with pages, you rewarded the author with payment. And a platform. Which turned into a book deal and a fucking movie deal. AND SHE FUCKING LIED AND STOLE THIS STORY FROM SOMEONE ELSE. And not only did she steal it, she made all the repulsive shit up. So she misrepresented herself and the story (okay, I’m not going to get into the debate about literature and autofiction or whatever, that’s dumb; she said this was something that happened to her and it did not; that’s what we call a fucking lie, assholes) and then you rewarded her for it. And the world rewarded her for it. And there is a girl out there who loved a man and they did what sometimes happens, broke up, but they had some real shit and it was snatched up and made ugly and created no empathy, only fucking validating aforementioned manipulative cunts and you want us to believe you love literature? That’s unfuckingbelievable.
Most of the people on this earth will never have the opportunities you do. Most of the people on this earth, and I know this is crazy to you, spend each day working for their next meal. Their rent. Their daily, weekly, monthly existence. They don’t have time to ponder the beauty of this existence, deeply, or the time to capture it. They are living it, much like my boys and I, next to The Fearless Girl. They are living the beauty in that fucking struggle. And for the most part, it’s not their job to record the beauty. But your job, as the fucking purported purveyor of Art, is to get that real beautiful struggle, to curate that empathy, to be the source of Love and Art and Collective Unconscious for all of us. To eschew what doesn’t elevate us or bring us forward. Instead, to choose which shines a light on what we could be, the beauty that we all possess.
Fuck, what am I trying to say.
You’re afraid. “New York” is afraid. America is afraid. Afraid that…maybe you aren’t what you thought you were. Or are. Afraid of being wrong. Afraid of the other. Afraid of Love. Afraid of being weak.
Bub, being weak is the strongest possible position there is.
On this trip I’m on, we stopped into Boston for one thing: The bench from Good Will Hunting. And, it makes you think. A lot. I don’t know why you are afraid. David Remnick, I don’t know what keeps you up at night. Deborah Treisman, I don’t know what your life is like. Fuck, Kristen Roupenian, I don’t know what you fear (I imagine, right now, you are afraid that you are a fraud and all this, which you did not rightfully earn, will be taken away from you; I hope, for your sake, you give it all back and start from the bottom again).
What I do know is this: It’s not your fault. Whatever happened to you, whatever lesser you were made to feel, whatever fear was instilled in you, whatever it was, it’s not your fault. However small your parents made you feel. Whatever made you cry in the closet when you thought no one was looking. It’s not your fault.
No, listen. It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault.
Guys, it’s not your fault.
So, please, for the sake of humanity, start tomorrow with a sense of vulnerability. Admit that you don’t know what you are doing. No one does. Admit that the only thing that matters in this life will be human connection. Cry. Fucking dance with no pants on. And fucking write back and invite me up for that beer, goddamn it. Admit that maybe the world is a better place with all of our voices in it, collectively saying, “I’m sorry; I’ll try to be better.” Get some fucking humility. Come back down from that tower of unearned self-rightousness, take off your fucking designer shit, and sit on the curb with me for a minute. Hear me out. I’ll hear you out. And be fucking real, my dude. Smell the smells. Dig the fucking dirt. Record the fucking humanity that you are supposed to. Fuck man, I love you so much. Love yourself. Respect yourself. Do what’s right by humanity, not just elite fucking writers or “manipulative cunts”.
Be. Fucking. Human.
Or don’t. It’s only the fate of humanity in the balance. No big.
Meanwhile, my tiny little world will shimmer with all the beauty, and no matter how many pictures you take of me, you’ll never touch it. Not once. Until you come sit next to me on this curb. And let go.***
See you next week, fuckos. Because I’ll always be right here. Waiting. Refusing to give in.
Nick
