July 10th & 17th, 2023 - P's Parties
Dear TNY,
Well it’s upon us, the fiction issue; and we start with “P’s Parties”.
Okay, I’ll try to stay positive as long as I can.
The protagonist in this story mentions the smile of a woman from lap swimming that he saw before he met his current wife. That he’d think of that smile sometimes, even while boffing his then-girlfriend and eventual wife. No sin there; thoughts aren’t sins and the smile came to him before he knew his wife. What I’m trying to say is that I think there’s a misnomer about men that it’s all tits and ass when, especially if one has been through bad relationships or no relationships, someone smiling at you is all it takes to feel like a million bucks (or whatever the inflation equivalent is). It doesn’t take the stereotypical gonzo pornographic level attention that one sees in an 80’s action flick. It’s just a fucking smile. And this part of the story nailed that.
And everything else? It fucking sucked. It took 1/3 of the story to get past all the bullshit background information to begin the conflict. Then it spent the next 1/3 of the story being upper-middle class beige plot while mildly vilifying the MC. And the final 1/3 we see an incident which wouldn’t happen and felt manufactured by the author followed by a consequenceless finale in which a character dies to wrap this “good” husband up in a bow. Oh, it was over 10k words and as far as I can tell 500 of them were “happening”. The rest were just…dumb.
I know this is the direction of modern fiction. I know this is what you want to read, TNY. I know this is what the demographic that pays for literature wants to read. I know that they relate to this somehow. I know that these fictional lives are desirable to the demographic. I know all of these things but I don’t have to like them. And I don’t have to buy into it. And I don’t have to stand by and watch it happen.
I would be embarrassed if this is what my art looked like. I would be embarrassed if I published this.
On to the next one, titlickers!
Nick
