January 24th, 2022 - What's the Deal, Hummingbird?

Dear TNY,

I am adrift in a sea of “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing” and I have just finished “What’s the Deal, Hummingbird?”

And if this were written years and years ago, it would seem original to me.  But, I swear to God, this author just decided to make “Bullet in the Brain” into a story about COVID.  Also, this rings of “The Things They Carried” as well.  What I’m saying is that it’s a list story.  And that’s what O’Brien’s story is.  And it’s a list of memories.  That’s what the end of Wolff’s story is.  And I think both of those stories are better than this one.

Now, do I like a list story?  Yes.  I actually dig a list story quite a bit.  But I felt the way this one played out, and how it included fucking COVID (haven’t we had enough of this bullshit?), didn’t break any new ground.  I loved all the little details, though.  I loved how much of it was about the women in his life and the sex.  That’s my jam in writing (and life…hey-o!).  I often start writing that content from my own life and realize that no one is interested in the women and the sex I’m having or have had.  But, I’m here to say that I am interested in the subject so those details worked for me in this piece.

And before I get more high & mighty about the reusing of a story, I am absolutely convinced that the two list stories I brought up are not the first list stories ever written.  They are just the ones I know and love.  There are most certainly more list stories available than the two examples I’ve provided, and I’m sure those two stories pulled their structure from previous works.  It is impossible for me to believe that sometime in the last 50 years these two stories set a new type of fiction.  So I’m sure there are readers out there that are more well versed in the canon that would be more than happy to tell me that my two example stories are ripoffs of other stories from old.  I’m fine with that.

Because that’s what I’m doing here, accusing this work of being a ripoff (to a certain degree, but I think it’s a high one).  Because if it doesn’t ring true, as in it’s not breaking new ground, then it doesn’t seem like it’s worth doing.  And the section that really booted me out of this one, convincing me it was a real retread, is that it ends, essentially, exactly the way “Bullet in the Brain” does.  The MC is stuck right there in a warm, bright memory of being a kid, like it’s all gonna be fine, no worries at all. I mean, he’s hung on the fucking language even. Hell, it’s the title of the fucking story.

But, whatever.  I appreciated that this was short.  And, again, I liked the descriptions.

A couple of weeks in a row you have put up some stories that neither infuriated me or made me want to pimp them to friends.  Seems you are on a passionless publication kick.  That, or I have hit a beige time in my life for the big feels, such that I’m not yearning for an opportunity to tell someone I am hurt.  But I think the latter is likely not true.  Because just yesterday I cried when I thought of how an ex girlfriend recently said that “Hot Chocolate Man” has died within me (HCM is a reference to how, when my ex wife was in the hospital after giving birth to our first child, I drove 50 miles one way back to our house to let the dog out and when I was there I whipped up some homemade hot chocolate and loaded it up in a thermos for her as a surprise (because making a fucking human is hard work, bro, and one had best be in awe of it and be as kind as possible) and when she received said surprise she cried, natch), and I cried yesterday because HCM is not dead, he just needs a place to live, a safe place, a place in which he can do the things he has always wanted to do, to care, to please with small tasks, to find purpose and existence in seeing gratitude in the eyes of another.  So he’s not fucking dead, everybody.  He’s just protected. 

I say all that to say that my heart is as tender as usual, so it must be the mediocrity in the stories and not my bleeding soul that’s the problem. 

So, there we are.  Another week in the books.

Oh, and the author is correct (Heller or otherwise):  Life can never return to its previous normal after you have taken your first bra off of a girl.  It’s “welcome to the obsession” after that.  And what a fucking magical ride it can be.

See you later, turds.

Nick