Thursday 1/23/25
Oh no, what will become of me? I'm putting up something from a story of mine against a story from Harper's, and if you'll recall, now-former Harper's editor Katie Ryder--who would receive stories from me, lie about having looked at them, then summarily turn each down--said in an email that the competition at Harper's was fierce given that they had so many outstanding stories to choose from.
You got that? We're about to see the latest outstanding story from Harper's that is totally amazing, and isn't there just because it was by a person like these people, who is connected, and so it was slapped up the line because that's how this works, and it's the only way this works.
Sure, we've done this before with Harper's. Maybe those were the rare misfires--come on, play along--from Harper's, because I don't think anyone looked at those stories and thought that a total beginner, or hell, the dumbest person you know, couldn't better than what we saw from the likes of Diane Williams.
Maybe that was the exception to the rule. In which case, the law of averages is probably due to catch up to me right now, and I'm set up to take a prose off beating.
Who are we kidding?
We all know how this is going to go, how much this latest Harper's story is going to suck. Christopher Beha is no longer the editor at Harper's. This happened a while ago. But everything is going to keep happening with Beha in these pages, wherever he goes. Because once you go up on here, you just keep going up. This journal follows you around. And much as you'd like to be, you're never going to be free from the truth. I promise you that.
Harper's doesn't like to leave stories sitting around for too long before running. So it could be that Beha wasn't responsible for the last clump, but that doesn't matter much in a sense, because things don't change. Only names, and I'm certainly under no obligation to give a weasel like Christopher Beha any benefit of the doubt.
The names are just placeholders anyway. How this works doesn't change. Or rarely does it. Takes a person who is not totally like these people and who is willing to be their own person. There are very few such people here, if any by this point.
Out goes one person like all of these other people--such as a Beha--and then it's business as usual. If and when that changes--it's not like these new people have reached out to me--I'll note that.
But all there ever is, in the rarest of rare cases, is people like Christopher Beha--a tiny, insecure, insignificant, talentless, envious little man--and a discrimination-bent liar like Katie Ryder are.
Now that that's cleared up, it's prose off time.
What story should we use this time? I'll just grab another recent one, okay? Want to lay odds on how fast it will mention academia or a writing program? I bet it will be pretty fast. What do you think? A bottle of turpentine has more imagination than these people. Hold on...
Okay, here we go. This is the start of Sigrid Nunez's "Mother-Daughter Story," from the January 2025 issue of Harper's, which is actually handy, because going by the title, at least, it's about a mother and a daughter, and I have a little something about two girls. So we're keeping everything congruously female with this prose off which we'll commence with a story that I'm told by the likes of these people is so amazing that you'd be hard-pressed to come up with anything to compete with it.
Huh. Pray for me, I guess.
How to explain to her daughter.
Back when she was in college, she had taken a literary seminar for which she’d had to read Kafka’s “Letter to His Father.” After the class had discussed it, the teacher gave them an assignment: write a letter to one of your own parents. Moans and groans, the loudest of which probably had come from her. It was the kind of assignment she hated. She hated writing prompts in general. If she had to write something, let her choose what about. And the Kafka—well, she hadn’t known what to make of it.
“It was weird, but not in a good way. You think that because it starts out ‘Dearest Father’ it’s going to be loving, but in fact it’s just one long rant.”
The teacher had laughed and said, “I’m not suggesting you actually send your letter.”
Kafka hadn’t exactly done that either, though it seems he’d wanted his father to read it. He gave the nearly fifty-page typed manuscript to his mother and asked her to pass it on. Did he know, deep down, that she never would? More than three decades later, and against Kafka’s own will—thanks to his literary executor’s decision to disregard Kafka’s instructions to burn all his papers, unread, after his death—it would be shared with the world. By then Kafka’s father and mother were dead.
There was speculation that the letter was in fact not an actual letter but a story.
“You mean like autofiction,” said her daughter.
We can't go so much as a single paragraph--which is a single sentence, which is itself six words long--before the syntax breaks down.
Why are you writing like an asshole? is the question that pops up first in my mind when I read that opening paragraph/sentence of "How to explain to her daughter."
Why? The reader naturally thinks, "How to explain what to her daughter?" and is annoyed, just as the reader who is not used to the typical tossery of these people will wonder if there's a typo, a word missing, rather than this being just another case of that typical tossery.
It's not clever, it's not smart. It's lousy writing. And we're already taken out of the story, which isn't even going to be a story, but simply an excuse for someone like this to be published in Harper's.
Tough to achieve that in six words. Is that the competition we're talking about?
But fear not, because we don't need to go further than an additional clause before we get "college," because of course we do, and then lo and behold, we're not twenty words into the thing and there you have it: Literary seminar.
Ta fucking da.
Told you.
This is what is so hard to compete with, eh?
Katie: What a liar you are. You're a joke. And people can see you for the joke you are. No one takes you seriously after reading these entries. People might hook you up (and maybe they already have--I'll look a bit more into where you're working now), but it's not because they respect you, or think you're intelligent, or you're good at your job, or honorable, or not the moral equivalent of a sewage spill.
It's because they think you're like them, and they're nothing, so you being nothing makes them comfortable. They're not threatened by you. No one has ever looked up and saw you and thought, "I'm not on her level."
And I'm just going to keep putting it out there. It's never going away.
Going to white knight now, Beha? Wherever you're at. You fraud. Wait until we get to your writing. That's going to be quite the prose off.
Who is this shit for? Who is it ever for?
It's for the insecure, talentless, pretentious, egocentric, hollow, dead-inside people who write it, so people just like them can go "Estimable, estimable."
Liars. All liars. Because there isn't anyone on earth--and there never will be--who thinks that's amazing. It's not possible to think that.
"You mean like autofiction," said her daughter.
That's hilarious.
Do I even need to tell you--I don't, but just in case you're still focused on how bad the above was--that Sigrid Nunez has a Guggenheim?
You see what I'm saying about who's nominally in charge? The system hews to its ways. You're always free to prove me wrong if you're in it.
This would be actually hilarious if it wasn't so fucked up. Because this is incestuous evil, the culture of these people. How everything works in their system. How the publications happen, the book deals, who gets the awards.
These stories, these books by these people, they're not for reading, they're not for an experience, they're not for entertainment, they're not for edification. They're not for your brain, your heart, you soul. They're not to pass the time. They're not a diversion. They can't even rise to that level. It's simply like a hall pass for these people in their system. You need to have the work--the story, the book--so they can give you stuff, award you, shortlist you, put you on their Best of lists, because of who you are, what you represent to them, and if you're one of them.
The writing is a formality. There simply needs to be pages with words. That's it. It's just so they can say other things about you and do what they wish to do for you, and often so you can do it for them back. It doesn't matter what's on the page. Just that you have some non-blank pages. The writing is merely the hall pass. So long as you have the hall pass--and anything can be on it, doesn't matter at all--the rest of it can be made to happen. All of the contrivances, the bullshit, the rigging.
Those words on the page are mere formality so that it can technically be said that you have something, and you got that Guggenheim for that reason, and you can be in Harper's, or The New Yorker (Hey! J. Robert Lennon!). Whatever it is. The outside world doesn't care. The publishing system killed off any of the interest of the people of that outside world. Now it's just them. Running their island that no one else can see, no one cares about, sans rules, and minus the interference of merit, justice, sanity.
Or just basic human decency. Lot of Steining going on.
But if that's who you are, someone like a Greg Cowles at The New York Times Book Review is going to make sure you're taken care of.
That's all that's happening here. There aren't exceptions. How many of these prose offs have we done? It's not one or two or ten or twelve. You see how it is. Every single time. This is all these people have. It's all they ever have. They can't write. They don't have anything for anyone.
And look how many of these people are rapists and sexual harassers.
You ready to get this bilge out of your mouth? Ready to let some air in? You want to think about how an actual competition, a fair competition, would play out? You think these people want to think about it? Hell no they don't. And that's why they try not to let it happen. But actual tough competition? Real tough competition? I can give you a taste.
It was then that Doreen would hear the tapping at her window. Weak tapping, and sad. Not angry. But like someone was cold and hoped to come inside, even if it couldn’t be for long. A little time in a warm room could make the difference. A sound of someone who hoped to find a friend—who still hoped to find a friend.
Doreen wanted Constance to be there as much as she thought it was possible to want anything. That is, if there was no going back. If she couldn’t return to the past and be different than maybe what she was after all.
She’d go to the window to see if her friend was outside. Doreen had decided that Constance could have the bed for herself. She’d insist. Doreen would only use the very edge. A sliver. Less than a corner of pillow. The point of the triangle. Where it was pointing.
Or she’d sleep on the floor, though she wanted to be close to her friend. To look after that wrist and make sure nothing else happened and that the skin was healing. A vigil in the night across the expanse of nights. To see that the bracelet was on good and tight—but not too tight—and helping.
Whatever had to be done, Doreen wanted to do, for as long it took. And some day, these days of checking and mending and skin smoothing over skin would be a memory. They’d belong to the past. Better days were ahead. Better days had come. Days that weren’t determined by what had been. Not that it’d ever be forgotten. Doreen would never let that happen, even in her dreams. Long ago would be both long ago and like yesterday. But the friends would have the morning. And the afternoon. And the evening. The tomorrows. The sun. A fresh beginning and continuation both. The “look at us.” The “here we are for another day.” The “what do you want to do” and the “I’m so glad we are what we are.” The light of the new start. Again. And again.
I have a literary anecdote for you, which brings us full circle with what I said back up top about prayer.
Gogol wrote Dead Souls, and then wrote a sequel. He determined that the book was more powerful than he wished it to be--had a life of its own, you might say, which frightened him--and so he stood in front of his fire, pulling out the pages and throwing them into the flames.
A page attempted to intercede. As he did so, Gogol turned on him, saying, "Better pray, boy."
Which is what you'd have to do if you were one of these people and you had to compete with me on a level playing field. But it still wouldn't help you.
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