August 9th, 2021 - Superstition

Dear TNY,

It is the end of my summer trip and I just read “Superstition” from a hotel room in Atlanta.

I didn’t hate it.  At first I thought it was going to keep going super hard with that late 90s bullshit, but it backed off.  It’s hard to keep a story focused on the characters when it’s brand after brand, especially if the brands are dated (this story wouldn’t make much sense a hundred years from now, for instance; but who are we kidding, heat death will get us by then).  So it was nice to see the transition to a more character-based narrative.

Oh, “hose-drinking boys” is one of the finest lines of characterization that you have published in longer than I can remember.  It’s so good and avoids the drudgery of the tell-not-show that most of your stories utilize for characterization.

But if I’m honest, this story didn’t punch me.  I had a feeling some sort of accident was coming.  I would say that my expectations got in the way.  We had few characters (good) and we had a simple storyline that didn’t require hella backstory (good) and we had basic conflict (good).  It seemed like all the ingredients were there to do a number on the reader, which is what I expected, but, like, it didn’t all add up.  The apartment obsession tried too hard to tie across to the stepmom.  The guilt wasn’t there for the cross, to me anyway.  And the growing and growing made it sound like he had some kind of disease yet it never came to fruition. 

Like I said, I don’t hate it.  I just don’t think it really knocked it out of the park.

Anyway, see you next week.  I am, weirdly, looking forward to it.  This is the end of the trip and tomorrow my sons go home (home being a concept I currently do not have in my life and haven’t for some time).  I think we really got there, TNY.  We really touched the main nerve.  Fuck, we skated around on it like it was as big as anything, dancing around each other and making up fake voices and making so much fun of each other that we cried ourselves dry from laughing.  I’m so proud of these guys. 

Alas, you’ll never care. But you don’t have the wherewithal to understand why it’s important anyway.

Nick