August 2nd, 2021 - Coda

Dear TNY,

Fuck my face are your magazine’s pages wasted with the horsecockery of “Coda”.

I want to get this straight, so I’ll summarize.  Correct me if I’m wrong, please.  We have a middle-aged/elderly woman taking care of her mother, much older, during the time of the pandemic lockdown, and this main character is reading Madam Bovary whilst developing a “crush” on the neighbor’s caretaker, a Portuguese woman described as “coarse”.  Is that correct?  See what I did there?  I told the whole story completely unencumbered by all the fucking BORING shit that this story is filled with.  The main character?  A “puritanical”, dull, uncomplicated, beige, old white lady.  Color wasn’t mentioned, but it seems apparent in this piece.  The older lady?  A tool used by the author to introduce information to the main character such that something might spice up this story (spoiler alert: it doesn’t); oh, and the older lady is also used to introduce a scenario that will physically manifest the “feelings” the main character has.  The caretaker?  A hollow shell of a character used by the author to focus the main character’s feelings on, who, likely has a far more interesting story than anyone else in this hyperfuckshit story.

And while we are on the subject of describing female characters here, let’s talk about how if a male author spent a paragraph describing this woman with bad skin and calling her coarse, that would be equivalent to him fucking a pig on live TV.  Also, if the same male were to make her beautiful, even in a flawed way, the author would be sexist and obsessive about the physicality of women.  Yet, here, we have a female character basically shredded by the main character, and…that’s okay?  I don’t care that later on she has this “crush” (which is nothing more than the main character’s placing of her own needs onto some object, which is abhorrent when done by men in real life and in fiction, right guys?).  The crush doesn’t resolve the Judgy McJudgerson bullshit that the main character shits out.  Now, are we all judgy?  Sure as the sun is going to come up tomorrow.  What I’m saying is where the fuck is all the body positivity bullshit here?  Where is the cancel culture (I don’t wholly agree with cancel culture as it removes the avenue for forgiveness in certain cases (and I say wholly because we need to cancel the fuck out of Cosby but did we really need to cancel Ansari?))?  Also, it is my opinion that we can pay attention to physicality and we can make people, all of them, ugly or pretty, however we want. I’m saying this “I can but you can’t” is laughable and stupid at the same time. Anyway, I’m a man.  So my opinion is irrelevant, even if it offers up the same type of behavior as offered up by other voices as bad examples of how to be.

I think I’m coming off badly here. Sexist. Maybe misogynistic. I can see that, externally. But internally, this feels more like…anti-elitist. One shouldn’t go around doing what isn’t acceptable when reversed, especially for 1) personal/professional gain or 2) “because it was done to me”. Be better.

Also, what happened to stories about interesting shit?  Like, this story appears to be about people who live completely drab, basic, colorless lives.  Like, where’s the fucking vibrancy?  Have you forgotten that people out here actually fucking live?  They don’t just ponder their own existence from inside a badly copied Norman Rockwell sketch.  I don’t even know what to do with this shit.  Life can be pretty fucking boring.  So how can you sit there, a whole panel of readers, and read this shit and say, “Boy howdy that was really fucking interesting; fuck, I couldn’t put it down.”

I’m pretty sure I’m blocked by your inbox at this point.  I no longer get the autoreply.  And I’ve got to be honest, that really hurts my feelings.  Because it means you don’t care.  You aren’t willing to listen to criticism (or praise, which is rare around here, I know).  It means that, much like the fucking Titanic, you are full steam ahead, driving through the icebergs, no care in the world.  Fuck it, right?  Get out the champagne and toast to these empty fucking pages, furthering the consumption of elitist literary bullshit agendas to elitists, self-congratulating the whole time; meanwhile, alienating and marginalizing the value of all voices not belonging in your tidy fucking approved list, and lessening the artform by ignoring the vibrant tapestry of slushbox gold.

But who am I, right?  I don’t live in NYC.  Fuck, bruv, I don’t even subscribe.  I didn’t spend my life in academia.  And I’m not as soft as a fucking newborn kangaroo, like you lot. 

We are out here, fuckers.  We are out here scraping by, living rich lives, with the courage to fucking build your worlds, raise your families, and document the kind of Art that would boggle your fucking minds.

Oh, oh.  One more thing that I distinctly remember from NYC that reminded me of your magazine.  Everywhere that we went to see modern art, there would be a little paragraph describing what the art meant.  Um, basic art rules here:  If the art doesn’t emote without a paragraph to tell us how to feel, then it doesn’t work.  So if this boring ass COVID lockdown story that’s skimmable, at best, doesn’t work without the author interview, then the story doesn’t work.  That goes for every other barrel-of-castrated-horse-testicle stories you print (just saying that now, a barrel of castrated horse testicles, is interesting; like, where did it come from, how did you get it, what’s written on it, what does it smell like, is there a jellylike film or has it been floated in some kind of brine/broth?)

But pretentiousness is in, right?  Narcissism?  Elitism?  An inability to self-examine? An adherence to an illusion of superiority despite all data proving otherwise?

Seems like our former president and you guys would be superfriends.

Thanks for the morning ragefest.

Nick