September 5th, 2022 - Café Loup

Dear TNY,

I know I’ve said this before, but here we go:  Another Monday, and you’ve brought me “Café Loup”.

Fuck does it feel like I’ve been doing FTNY forever. Like, this is all I fucking do. Yet, weirdly, it takes a couple hours one day a week and I feel like it takes up all my time. But I’m glad for it, because even though I dislike most of the stories, I do end up reading about 50 stories a year, which equates to maybe a couple books of short stories a year, which is about all the fucking reading I’ve been doing for a while because I can’t find anything good to read anymore, because, you know, literature is in the toilet. Maybe just living is in the toilet these days. Fuck does it feel like it would be nice to have a break from living.

I don’t know that I know how to work hard anymore.  I’m saying that outloud.  Here.  Maybe just for me.

It’s not that I don’t know how to work hard, it’s that I don’t put a lot of hours in anymore.  That I’d rather be sitting.  Jesus, I’m only 41. 

Actually, these days, I see myself going for walks more, in my mind.

See, that’s this story.  It’s just random shit that a guy is saying (in fucking New York, twats).  And I’ll grant you that random shit can be good.  I’ve heard that Virginia Woolf was good at that.  I don’t think so because I don’t like her work.  But Christ, some people fucking swoon over it.

Another guy that idles in moments is Nicholson Baker.  I do like his work.  And I think the thing that I like about his idling is the content (or his voice, or the way he looks at shit, or whatever he is doing, I like that).  I don’t know how he makes turning a t-shirt inside out interesting, or the proper way to tie a shoe, but he does.  And in The Fermata, where sex, one would figure, comes with its own level of interest, he makes the sex less interesting than the quirks and kinks and little details around it.  He’s a wizard at this type of writing.

But this story?  Meh.  The only thing good in this piece are the smells that overwhelm the main character in the end.  Specifically the ones about his daughter.  The rest of this is, to me, uninteresting.  I get the premise right away.  We’ll be doing an interior piece.  Cool.  And then it just goes on and on and I don’t care about it. 

Maybe it’s just me.  It certainly could be.  Because you know who else writes crazy interior pieces of noodling and idling and wonderment?  Me. And I still can’t find a way to like this piece.

Maybe I’ve reached the end.  I don’t care about what anyone else has to say anymore.  It’s just me.  That’s the only person I want to hear.  Pure fucking narcissism.  Sweet, God.  Thanks for that one.  Since you don’t exist, then really the only person I have to blame is me.

Either way, I don’t really care what’s happening in this guy’s head while he’s choking on steak.  Whether that’s because I’m a narcissist or because this piece doesn’t have the touch, I don’t know.

But the smells were cool.

Well, off to save the world.

Thanks.

Nick

P.S. I am alive, but I don’t think I’m where I’m supposed to be (I think I’m supposed to be home, to go home, I just want so badly to go home but I don’t know where it is) and slowly but surely I’m being swallowed by the monsters in my mind and soon enough I think it will kill me. I am not okay. Lovology. I’m Sorryology. Forgive Meology. That’s about all there is inside me right now.