June 27th, 2022 - Mitzvah

Dear TNY,

What has gotten into you, because “Mitzvah” is the kind of shit you should have been publishing all along.

Now, I will say I wasn’t moved into some higher plane of transcendence, the angels didn’t find me and swell their aria at the exact time that I (also) did not blow my literary load (in the jizz sense, not in Keret’s “taking a shit” sense), and no tears were formed.  But, I enjoyed this read.

The pacing was right.  There didn’t need to be all this fucking backstory like your other rambling, boring, pointless stories.  The details in this, and there were many, were the right details.  Like, they were the details that the MC would have picked out, further characterizing who he was.  The arc of the narrative was simple.  It didn’t take years to play out, weeks, months, etc.  It took seemingly less than an hour.  Or maybe an hour.  And I’m fine with that.  It’s a short story.  What’s the deal with all your shit covering a lifetime?  Get these novel writers out of your fucking magazine already.  And I like the fucking material.  This isn’t some dumbshit academic with some dumbshit first-world problem in some bland-ass fucking setting where nothing fucking happens.  Dude got his shit kicked.  He prayed for reasons that do not really appear on the page, but you can feel why he did it. And a man shit so hard it sounded like someone throwing a brick in the toilet.

What it felt like, really, was the confusion of youth.  The author captured that sense of rebellion yet fear in this. That feeling of having one foot in childhood and the other in adulthood.  And that feeling of being very unsure of oneself.  Who one is.  What this version of this human would do at any given time.  That feeling…it’s magical.  It doesn’t return that often when you get older.  It was nice to read it.  And, from a craft perspective, I think it really shines in this piece because of the plain language and a plot that doesn’t meander.

Oh, and nothing is better than that first time that you sit with a pretty girl.  It’s like a shooting comet.  You can’t even believe it’s real.  It’s only later that you see that it was a comet, because when you are in it you don’t see the moment beginning or ending.  That happens when you get older, when you know more.  That first time it’s just bright all the sudden…and confusing and joyful and mesmerizing and like in The Holiday, only the good notes.  It happens later, the same feeling.  But it’s different.  And always a little sad because you know it’s a comet.

Still, heady stuff.  Something worth living for.

I have a small collection by the author in my possessions somewhere out in the world.  It’s got “Fatso” in it.  That’s such a good story.

Also, I have been copying/pasting these stories into Word for this project for more than four years now.  You know what I’m tired of?  Those little links you put in after a paragraph or two that say shit like “The author talks about writing guilt in wartime”.  How about, and this is a bizarre fucking concept, you just let us figure it the fuck out?  I know the legions of Karens out there that read your trash need this shit spoonfed to them so they can feel meaning in their otherwise empty lives, but art is about individual interpretation.  It’s not about you telling us what the author was trying to do.  It’s about what the author actually did.  And that is determined by each and every person that reads your publication.  So don’t be a dick.  Let me be a fucking adult.

Anyway, back on the road today.  Two days of van work.  I’m glad it’s done.  But it was a lot, but it was also manageable. And if Captain Ron was right, which I tend to think he was, if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there. So onward and upward.

Later, tater.

Nick