July 4th, 2022 - To Sunland
Dear TNY,
This Monday finds me in Grayson, Kentucky and I just finished “To Sunland”.
And, meh.
The story is well-written with a consistent voice. It has the same look and feel throughout, so it’s easy to not get pissed off and deviate to make a bunch of comments.
But, like, who cares? This story is antiquated, which I liked. Partly. I liked how most of the sentences were active and there wasn’t a lot of fluff. Felt very clean for its voice, and very old. But that’s just it. Even though the voice was consistent, it’s dated. This story feels like it could fit exactly into a compilation from 1950. So, it begs the question, what’s this story doing to move fiction forward? And I think the answer is nothing. I didn’t see a single thing that pushed the artform anywhere. This is a C paper, you know? We’ve got Gilbert Grape crossed with Lenny and a small, Southern-sounding journey to dump him, and some upstart sister trying to make her way. I just didn’t get into it. Just feels tired. Well made, but tired.
I will say that even tired, this story reads better, from a storytelling perspective, than most of your stories do, week after week.
Anyway, not much to say about this one. No rant really.
I mean, it was a disappointing week in America. I’m actually starting to be concerned for the country that my children may live in when they grow up. We’ve driven all over, you know? We have eight states remaining to complete the set of 50. We’ve met so many people. And the vast majority are nice. Face to face, most people, regardless of what they believe in, are doing their best and are genuinely nice. But as a horde? This fucking country is a piece of shit. When it comes to COVID, it’s wear the fucking masks and get your fucking vaccine countered with the government can’t tell me what to do with my body BUT then we flip to abortion and it’s a woman’s right to her own body countered with you can’t do things to your body because the government says so. With children, it’s we love these little unborn miracles so much that we will preserve their lives at all costs, except when they get their fucking faces blown in at the elementary school, in which we’d like to see looser gun laws please.
I’m just over the small picture bullshit. Yes, all this shit matters to someone. But the big picture is that publicly owned media conglomerates that are responsible for continuing to raise shareholder value, quarter after quarter, are stoking fires and creating conflict for those quarterly earns, rendering these normally pretty fucking reasonable people into warmongering toolboxes.
You know, I don’t say this lightly and I don’t say it often, but I love this country. I love everything it has to offer. And fuck have my boys and I been wallowing in what it has to offer. But I’m sick of her fucking people. Jesus fucking dipshit assfucking Christ, why can’t we just get along? It is harder to fight than it is to drink a few beers and be kind. What the fuck?
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.
See you next week.
Nick
P.S. Wrote this last night and could not get the signal to post. So I was on time. It was Kentucky’s fault. So was the fact that we were invaded by a mouse last night. Don’t worry, I’ll fucking murder him.
