Friday 11/1/24
We've spoken before about Michael Ray, the editor in chief of the literary journal Zoetrope, and we're going to keep coming back to him.
I had anticipated that the next entry pertaining to Ray on here would also involve a Guggenheim and Pulitzer winner, The New Yorker, and an ex-editor of The Paris Review, but as it turns out, this entry is happening first. That other one will be occurring shortly.
Because who doesn't love a prose off?
Michael Ray, as I've mentioned, once emailed me--thinking no one would find out about this--saying that nothing I had ever written in my life was close to being good enough for Zoetrope.
In other words, never have I anything that rises to anywhere near the level of greatness, of brilliance, of what you're about to see from the pages of Zoetrope, and what we've seen with those Zoetrope-related posts in the past.
I don't need to tell you to keep that in mind, but do keep it in mind--those very words.
Not close to good enough.
Every part of a story tells me a lot about the ability of its author and the quality of that story. The title, the first line, the final paragraph, every part of everything in between. And I mean everything. The balance and byplay of lengths, sounds, what occurs in the space of the break of a paragraph.
I'll have the first page of a work of mine up on the screen. I return to that first page often as I'm working on a story, because I'm going through it again and again. That page begins the story and there it is in front of me, as the one page that is visible right then and there.
I can look at that page and see mathematical perfection. it's in the angles. The very angles of the sentences, and the shapes their different sizes make for in conjunction with each other. It's in the paragraph breaks. The flow. It's in each of the word choices. If a word repeats, it's discernible in the clear and efficacious reason for that word repeating. It's in not seeing the same word twice--or more--when there's no need to. It's in that balancing.
I see these first pages and they represent math at its highest level. And music. And sculpture. Design. Engineering. It is swoon-inducing to me, this perfection. You will almost never encounter it in the whole of your reading life, even if you read a lot.
That perfection is in service to the story. It wouldn't be perfect if it wasn't. You want instant buy-in from a reader. How instant? The title. The first few words. The first sentence.
There has to be buy-in or there is no point. The buy-in must be immediate and it must produce immersion. We are off and I am in!
There you go: More value in what I just said than anything anyone will ever get in an MFA program. And it was free and took a minute to read.
So let's begin. This is the first page (and a touch more) of Patrick Dacey's "O Despot! My Despot!"
I listen from my room below, as my despot weeps in his above.
Such torture!
But what can I do for him? He does not respond well to leaving his comforts. Yet leave he must, or else be forced out, along with myself and the few loyal nationalists who remain in the Great House, who keep guard and order, though I suspect even these proud men and women will in short time dismiss their fidelity and make themselves subjects of documentaries, like so many before them, reclaiming their love of country in the face of our great despot’s fall from grace.
In the morning, he will address the nation one last time, and it has been my job these past few months to prepare him for this address. This, he’s been told, will be his best chance to revive his legacy, to prove that he is healthy and fit, and leaving of his own volition.
Oh, how did we get here, my despot? I ask in silence. Sometimes, I do feel that our minds are one and we can hear the other without speaking.
He would tell me that this is nonsense. But I perceive, in his cries and his hacking coughs and midnight howls, a man who blames only himself.
Wasn’t it you, my despot, who once said, long ago, that we must be as vigilant as the earthworm, so that when we are cut we can regenerate still, and dig and furrow and provide for our land?
Yes, I grew up having misunderstood the true meaning of sacrifice, and I saw my parents give their lives away to ideas and thoughts and dreams.
It took time for me to realize what it meant to be grateful.
Many beatings and lectures. Many sprints and cold showers. I was poor and flabby. You, my despot, made me rich and lean.
Each night has been worse than the last.
My despot can’t sleep.
“I won’t sleep!” he cries.
What terrible nightmares he has when he closes his eyes.
“Pieces of me began to fall off, Dalton. First my ears, then my nose, lips, arms, and nails. All that was left were my eyes, so that I could see how terrifying I looked!”
I try to calm him by bringing him warm milk and singing a lullaby, but he won’t repose; he drinks his milk and paces around the bedroom. I begin to doze, and he wakes me with a kick to the gut.
“More milk!” he demands.
For fuck's sake.
Why do all of the writers like this need to suck so much at writing?
You can't even try to write something worth reading?
Or is this trying?
Seriously?
How does someone write the likes of what you just saw and think, "Hot damn, people are going to love that!"
How does someone write the likes of it and think anyone is going to keep reading?
Let me ask a very simple question: Why would you?
What could anyone like about the above? Is it interesting? Absorbing? Exciting? Impressive?
Or is it just stupid?
By the way: The link above--which you probably didn't want to click on, and I don't blame you--takes you to the story in full, lest anyone thinks, "Well, maybe it's just stupid at the beginning, and the author's technique is to get their stupid stuff out of the way early on," but no, it's stupid all the way through.
These stories always are.
This isn't for readers. This isn't for reading. There's no entertainment value. There's no artistic value.
And I have Michael Ray telling me I've never done anything close to as good as what you just saw?
Could someone say a bigger lie?
There wasn't anything he believed less than that. But he didn't like me, he thought he'd try some fuckery, and no one would be the wiser.
Someone reached out to me yesterday and they said that they know how every prose off is going to play out before they click on it. Just as they understood that I don't cherrypick. I don't look for the worst work. (I'm glad they said that--it's important that people know this.) It's all the worst. For the most part, I just happen to use what I land on.
But knowing that all the same, this individual said that still check out each of the excerpts from those other writes with an eye for finding something that someone might find likable. They told me that they realize can be really bad, but there could be something someone out there likes about that bad thing.
Then they gave me this analogy about of all of these bad comedians they come across, and how they're not funny, they're cringe-inducing, you're embarrassed for them, but you can see that they have this one bit, and the subject matter might strike a chord, in theory, with someone.
They continued by bringing up the idea of subjectivity. That you'd think everything is subjective when it comes to things of this nature.
Then they said this:
"But I have never seen anything in my life like the shit from these other writers. It defies subjectivity. It is impossible for anyone to honestly like it. It blows me away that all of these people are this bad at this thing. And then you have these other people in that industry just hype them?"
There's really not a lot for me to say when people say things like this to me. I can respond, "I know," but that's about it. Then this person touched on Motorollah, because of course.
But let's continue with the prose off, shall we? Here's the first page of a recent one of mine, called "Go and Come Back." It's a story about a girl who's had a very bad experience at school and in life and then she walks in on something she's not supposed to see, which is bad enough, but what it really represents to her is much worse. She's lost her best friend--who wasn't only a best friend--and her parents are trying to have a second child before it's too late. Almost like the girl isn't enough. Or that's what she thinks. The mother is more committed to this than the father, but he's going along. He tells himself that he'll get there, but without any conviction. It becomes this story about the things boys do, why they do them, the people they hurt, and the people who have to pick up the pieces and help with the healing while trying to heal themselves.
A girl of thirteen entered her parents’ bedroom, tried to suppress a scream, and fled.
She’d been sick. Violently sick, throwing up four or five times. Her first real boyfriend—and the boy she’d told herself she loved her entire life—had broken up with her at school two afternoons before and she hadn’t gone back since.
The boy was her oldest friend. She could say they were friends practically before they were anything else in the world. Had she sworn to God ten times that it was true she wouldn’t have bigger cause for worry than if she brought home straight A’s on her report card or just honestly did her best which was what her parents cared about the most anyway.
No memory of other friends predated her memories of the boy. They stretched back further than before she started eating French fries and went to the movies and wore her first dress that she loved or decided what her favorite color was. The two of them played in yards together. Got the skin on their knees stained with grass right through their pants. Favored the same middle swing at the playground that would take its occupant higher than the others, despite neither of them knowing why. They could have told someone else but preferred to keep it to themselves. Besides, it’s not like the swings on the sides were that much worse, simply not quite as good.
They’d despair when the other was called home at dinnertime or because it was raining—and sometimes it seemed like such a small amount of rain—from a house down the street, a mom or a dad standing outside the front door, booming out the victim’s name, after having worried that they’d be called first. But it wasn’t better either way. The girl had read somewhere that tomorrow never comes fast enough until there are no more tomorrows left to come. It was something like that. Greater care went into picking out the boy’s birthday present than anyone else’s. The girl’s mother would ask, “Are you sure that’s what you want to get him?” after she’d made her final final selection at the store, and she’d say, “Wait,” and think for another minute or two, taking an extra look around, to be extra certain.
How infected with hate and prejudice do you have to be to send that email that Michael Ray sent to me, a person who had never done anything to him save offer stories that were infinitely better than what Michael Ray publishes at Zoetrope?
What and how much has to be wrong with you to behave and be like that?
So this Colin Fleming guy has never come close to writing anything as good as "O Despot! My Despot!"
You think if Michael Ray's life--because his whole life is putting forward a dozen shitty stories like this "O Despot! My Despot!" one each year, by the right people--was dependent on him answering which of these two works he thought was better he's picking "O Despot! My Despot!"?
Of course he isn't.
What could he possibly answer if you asked, "What makes that good, brother?"
Can you even imagine how ridiculous someone would sound trying to answer that question?
"Ummmm...ahhhh...ummmm...you know...the exclamation points?"
You wouldn't even try if you were someone like this.
You'd just hide like a coward and badmouth the person who knew the truth about you to your incestuous circle.
And it's obvious. We all know that that first story sucks. We all see the difference in quality. So does Michael Ray.
But yeah...not even close to the level of "O Despot! My Despot!", Colin.
Not.
Even.
Close.
Again, I ask you: Could someone be more cartoonishly prejudiced than Michael Ray?
I'd be mortified if I was like Michael Ray. And if someone was exposing me for being like that? Of course, actually being that way would be what was worse for me, as someone with self-respect, who'd want to be a better person, not someone acting out of prejudice. And if it wasn't true? Someone would have a problem.
But you know what Michael Ray is going to do? Nothing. Because there's nothing Michael Ray can do, because guilty is guilty, this is all true, and there it is.
That's discrimination. It's not "I honestly think this is better." It's simply and plainly discrimination.
By a publishing system despot.
And like I said, this isn't even the next Michael Ray entry I had planned. Wait until you see that. It will be part of our Guggenheim series.
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