September 26th, 2022 - Easter

Dear TNY,

More trash in the form of “Easter”.

I don’t even know what to call this shit anymore.  It’s not literature.  It’s just garbage.  That word, garbage, doesn’t even begin to describe what an affront the stories you publish are to the years of effort that humanity has put into developing an artform. 

Too many fucking characters that are never fleshed out (i.e. lack of characterization).  Too much bullshit that doesn’t matter (who lived with whom, summary of pasts that don’t matter, beige narrative arcs that fizzle into nothingness, etc).  And I know a motherfucker dies, but nothing really happens in this heap.  And we can’t care about said motherfucker because of said lack of characterization’s effect on our empathy.  And there’s an insane amount of time talking about getting high like it’s some kind of fucking magic that no one has ever heard of before.  It’s just getting high.  Jesus. Get over it.

What’s the point in publishing shit like this?  I beg you. Please write back.  Please send me the grand plan.  Let me know what’s going on up there in the fucking ivory tower.  Help me make sense of this completely wasted effort.  Please.  Because from down here it looks like you’re killing a thing I love and it’s maddening.

Also, to that end, it seems your fiction is so fucking terrible that “stories” are no longer mentioned in your slogan.  Now it’s just “Journalism That Matters.”  I think if I were you, Debby T, I’d be a little upset.  That is, if I believed what I was doing was good work and mattered.  But I read your stories every week.  They don’t fucking matter.  So maybe this is David Remnick’s passive-aggressive way of letting you know that you shit the bed on your career.  Who can really know?

But really, who fucking cares.

Nick

P.S. This is a day late because, although I wrote it yesterday, I was too tired to publish it. I put the engine/trans package in the van yesterday and got about half the systems hooked up. It was a big deal. I felt good about myself. By this time next week I should be good to go on starting it. Which is batshit crazy. Like, today’s a day where I feel proud. Because I can do this van work AND I have a better understanding of literature than you do. Not the publishing industry, mind you. That baffles my mind. Because it defies what literature is supposed to do. You defy reason and sanity in that way. Anyway, rambling. Gotta get back out there and button everything up.