January 1st, 2023 - FTNY, Year Five in Review
Dear TNY,
I cannot believe what I’m about to say, but I’ve got to because I’m looking right at it: This is FTNY, year five in review. Can you fucking believe it, big boys and big girls?! That this here beautiful (and beautifully demented) man, despite a complete lack of contact from you, has fired off more than 250 letters to your magazine, once a week, for five fucking years?! Can you even fathom the level of depression, determination, audacity, and downright self-abuse it takes to fucking try this hard for absolutely nothing? I’ll tell you, it’s fucking soul killing. But, boy howdy, that’s just how I roll.
Anyway, year five. What a fucking doozy. I went back and read all the letters, as I always do, as well as year four’s review. And I think maybe this was the saddest year of my life, that came through in the letters anyway. And I’m glad that I dropped the rating system last year, too. It’s too hard to maintain. But, there are a few facts that I’d like to share as a reader of all of your fiction of 2022. I read 91% of your stories all the way through this year. That is unprecedented for me. That’s so much time wasted! Because I found more than half to be trash. But! I did find a quarter of them to be worth reading (not good or spectacular, just not a waste of time), which is more than I ever have before. Does that mean I have been making a difference? Are you changing your ways? Or, am I getting softer and softer, like an old man’s flaccid dong, shriveled and gross, a thing children turn away from in a swimming pool locker room? I’d like to believe it’s a combo. I’d like to believe you read what I write and consider my opinion. But, nah. You ain’t doing that.
I do want to mention the one mind-blowing story from this year. “Annunciation”. Guys, get your hands on more stories like this one. It had everything. A Vanagon. And life. Yeah, that’s everything. But seriously, it breathed life with every fucking detail. Every sentence. It was so goddamn beautiful. Shout out to Lauren Groff for opening my skull and blowing my fucking brains out like confetti, and then while the pieces were suspended in midair, she paused time and dusted it all with glitter before rewinding the tape to put it all back inside me, where it sparkled and shimmered. Thanks.
Also, this was the year I was supposed to fall apart (mentally or physically, your guess is as good as mine) according to last year’s review. The year in which my brain was supposed to finally fucking implode under the giant heat-death of existence. And I’ll tell you, it almost did. Take a few minutes to go back and read the letter for “The Pub with No Beer”. I was pretty close there in Kingman, AZ. I barely got out of that van to keep going. And this depression is (actually, I’d lean more towards disappointment than depression, as the depression is just the symptom of the disease of being disappointed all the time) because I spend all my time buzzing around and doing my best to show up for others, but the van was once again empty there in Kingman, much to my dismay (and that was on the tail end of some infidelity, which when I explained to my children later why I just stuffed those feelings down and dated that person anyway, because the boys were like why would you keep seeing that person, I said: because it’s happened enough times now, and my life is so apparently undesirable, that it seems like the price to pay to not be alone). That letter was a hard one to write. But, I did it. And things did get better for a while. And then worse. And better. And I guess that’s how it goes. And then a few weeks ago I wrote the letter for “A Sackful of Seeds” and a friend/magical desert gnome blew my spot up. At first I was filled with horror. Because you guys know, these letters are the ramblings of an insane person. But on the other hand, this project is me, the me of all colors. Not that one letter is me, not in whole or anything. ALL the letters are me, holistically. This year had far more personal letters than any other year. And they were brutal. Just out there for people to read. And that Sackful letter was the accumulation of a lot of how I feel all the time. So fuck it. I kept the letter up even though it was blowing up. And people read it and reached out to me. And they were all thankful (except one…she was not, I sense, happy; and I am sorry about that, but not about writing what I wrote). So, what was fear, and is still fear, is tempered by the fact that if it’s not doing something to people’s feelings, the writing, then what’s the fucking point. You could take a lesson in that, TNY. And, like the wizard once said, “You knew it was a snake when you picked it up.” Which is a fact. One that I forgot for a minute or two.
Anyway, back to “The Pub with No Beer”. The PS at the end was something special, to me, because it seemed to represent what would get me out of the slump. And it was prophetic, accidentally. Like, I’m still waiting for her. Soft hands. Patient. But I spent the latter half of this year writing like she wasn’t coming. And the things I wrote, particularly a piece called “The Book of Love”, are solely about revisiting memories through photographs, exactly like the PS says. I didn’t plan that shit. It’s just what’s bubbling out of me. In fact, this morning (<—wrote this more than a week ago; I’m currently in bed in a fucking choice condo listening to the ocean as the sun rises…on motherfucking Kona, bitches!), while I was driving my youngest to his school, I was thinking that maybe these years of struggle are here so that I will do my best to keep the next significant lady in my life. The next soft hands. Like, I need all this pain to learn not to throw people away. WHICH IS WHAT I FUCKING WROTE IN THAT GODDAMN PS (expanding on “I’ll do my best”). And do you want to know what I did this summer? The best part of that giant trip with my boys was one late morning in West Virginia where we walked an unknown trail for a mile to find ourselves at a waterfall that dumped into a cove, water so deep it might as well have not had a bottom, cliffs of varying heights, 25-50+ feet, the sun so goddamn neon and hot it was almost unbearable. And we hucked our bodies, my sons and I, with courage in our chests, and we laughed and hooted and hollered and we fucking flew through the air like angels, motherfucker. Just like the PS had written at the bottom. I made my own shit come true, subconsciously. Hell, I took my motherfucking self to the optometrist this year, queen! Ain’t no one showing up so I’ll bake this bread myself!
Another thing I noticed about FTNY this year was that my writing, overall, got better. There were way less rants than usual, and the negative criticism was more pointed (I know, finally he’s talking about literature, which is the point; sheesh). Which, I’m sure you care about (not). And, I found that the scope of this whole thing has changed. It’s more, just…me. It’s me experiencing your stories. And I like that.
Also, I have been asked how I write this thing without a filter. But there is definitely a filter. The wizard told me that if I didn’t filter, every post would be about anal sex. And…that’s fair.
Overall, I’ve grown more to believe that there are two responses to Art. There is an objective response to literature, or Art, in general. One should be able to look at it and say, backed by a rich collection of knowledge and experience, this is working, and it’s working here because and it’s working there because. And one should also be able to say, this is not working, and it’s not working here because. And from the objective standpoint, there are known good works and known bad works and yeah, maybe some people play contrarian to those too, and that’s fine. What I’m trying to say is that there is a reasonable burden of proof for Art, and we should be talking about that on FTNY. And we do. But, just like Art, this project has become my own window. Instead of looking at life and painting how it reflects and refracts off of my own lens, as is the nature of Art, I’m looking at you, kid, and writing how that is reflected and refracted by me. This is the other response, the truly subjective critique. The whole life approach to picking apart one of your stories. Under that definition, this project has grown more mature, like a fine, stank ass cheese. And I shudder to think what that experience is like from the author’s perspective, because how can you know what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen? What I’m bringing to the table with my whole life?
And I think that’s the whole goddamn point of this fucking useless endeavor that is Art. You can’t know. But what you do know is that I do have that whole visceral experience of living, just like you do. And the moment that the author or editor puts their own experience above the collective unconscious, that story will no longer ring true and I’m here to steamroll that cocksucker.
So, there it is. Am I in for year six? You bet your pampered New York ass I am. As long as there is breath in your fucking abysmal fiction department, there’ll be a David out here to your Goliath. Except, I don’t need to slay your giant. I don’t need to conquer you or take your lands or beat my chest just to beat it. I’m here defending thousands of real writers and millions of readers. I’m here standing up for that moment when you finish a truly astonishing short story and the more you try to articulate it, to yourself or others, you just break down in tears because you can’t even understand how beautiful it was, you are thankful you just witnessed it, and you are sad you cannot do it for the first time ever again. You cry because you poured your whole self into something that an author poured their whole self into as well, and not an ounce of it came up lacking.
FTNY, year five in review, motherfuckers! We did it! Everyone lived!
Peace out, you lovable little meat sacks, the results of your dad creampieing your mom like a gonzo Pornhub shoot!
Nick
