March 17th, 2025 - Techniques and Idiosyncrasies
Dear TNY,
“Techniques and Idiosyncrasies” is today’s bumf.
In a surprisingly pleasing turn of events, this story wasn’t half bad. Just kidding. It fucking sucks top to bottom. It’s egocentric, selfish, and pointless, just like its main character. But boy howdy, you published it, didn’t you. Good job!
How does a person who has been the fiction editor of your magazine for about a fifth of its existence perform this terribly? How does her team let her? Fear? Why does Remnick allow this? Like, seriously, the juxtaposition of the quality of these stories compared to even the most basic human’s understanding of art is breaking my brain. And my brain doesn’t operate well when faced with data that defies understanding. So many of these stories are fucking terrible so data says they aren’t deserving of publication, yet week after week you keep shitting up your magazine with horrible short fiction without recourse. That’s like gravity not working and everyone going along with it.
You know, I’ve got a buddy who’s reading these letters I write, and reading your stories as well. And he’s better than I am because he’s forcing himself to finish the stories. Giving them a chance, if you will. And he can’t even fucking do that! He’s given up on some. This is a guy who has made it his mission to get through your stories no matter how fucking unimpressive, uninteresting, poorly written, and just plain horsecock they are and he can’t even do it!
FYI, I couldn’t finish this pile of shit. I saved myself from it about 2/3rds the way through, which was 3/5ths too late.
What’s wrong with the story, you say? Well, the writing, at the sentence to sentence level, is banal and crafted in such a way that it’s the definition of drab. The MC provides no facets for me to lay my empathy on. The “plot” is a meandering trickle of a stream through her mind-numbingly emotionless consciousness with the backdrop of an forgettable doctor’s visit. There is no fresh language. There are no memorable characters. No transcendence is even attempted at. And the only emotion that is elicited is anger and/or frustration at the quality of writing you continue to publish. So huzzah! You’ve done it again!
On this end, the sick is getting better, I spent some time with my kids this weekend, I lost weight in the snow debacle, which is good. I’m caught up on Severance. Chuck is running great and so is my youngest’s car that we fixed up last summer (also, he’s driving way way way better and it’s really fucking cool). My mental health is on the up because I got to help someone last week and because I’m with my kids this week.
I don’t know what’s going to happen. Other than in a couple of days I start spring break with my boys and we’ll laugh a lot, play disc golf, and mess about. Beyond that, I’m not forecasting much of anything.
See you next week.
Nick
