Monday 2/3/25
More shooting fish in a thimble--back to Diane Williams and her junk this time.
These people pretend to love Diane Williams' writing. Pure system bullshit. Then she has her own literary journal, NOON, which is replete with garbage that no one would ever want to read and the reading of any of which would make for act of punishment, and NOON is praised because that's just how it works.
It's never on account of the work, it's always the person here. These people want to see someone as talentless, broken, and achievable as themselves. And for them to be monied--come from money--and have gone to this school and that writing program, etc.
What follows is a story from Conjunctions, edited by Crony King gasbag, and one of the most boring humans on earth, Bradford Morrow. He once ran something of mine because I had fiction in Harper's. That was why he condescended to have it appear, but not in print, because that's for his closest cronies.
You can read about his cronyism antics--and even see what his crony running-buddy Brian Evenson had to say about Morrow's reliance on cronyism--elsewhere in this record; we needn't rehash here.
He also liked to "accidentally" send me emails insulting me that were meant for others. I'll paste one in here later in a different prose off and you can see what a witless moron he is, because it's him trying to be funny in order to impress someone else, and it's a nice example of what these brainless tools think is quip which merits them standing in front of a mirror and admiring themselves a bit longer even than usual.
We've seen Diane Williams suck before in Conjunctions, we've seen her suck in Harper's, soon we'll see her suck in Image, and here she is for another sucking-session in Conjunctions with a story called "The Intimate Story of One Woman and Five Men."
I just gave you the link, so you can confirm that what you're about to see is the whole story and that I'm not fucking with you.
Ready for a prose off? Here we go.
She wipes men. Three, four of them are robusta-bodied black or whitish. They’re cushion-like, semi-tender.
Eight or twelve are peppy and stimulating.
She makes a remark which is a thin expansion relating to the back or lower side of her triumphs.
She doesn’t style her hair, try to dress well, or mind her weight.
She has a curvy nose and a tremula punctata face. She pushes and turns men.
Her business is real estate.
Rain has come and not gone. A rodent washes itself on the school roof in the rain.
She wears no adornments. Her teeth are tan. How can she be so successful and too innocent?
The rain covers quickly the windows of her house. The animal on the rooftop wanders. Come back! You hear me? The rain shines. The physical bulkiness of the rain is a fact. Now like an old turtle, the woman has been open to all sorts of advantages. Now like a human, she has followed the drawings, the diagrams, the instructions every step of the way and she has been torresiana.
It's kind of funny just how bad this shit is, isn't it? How bad it always is.
I've seen this garbage for so long, and even still, I am taken aback that this is real, that any of this is real, that you could have an entire system where it's nothing but this nonsense, this writing of no value, no skill. That anyone would do anything so stupid. And that it's awarded, praised.
Is there a bigger What the fuck? than this? Look at these prose offs. There is nothing else out there except more of this shit for me to run out there first. I'm not cherry-picking. Cherry-picking in reverse. (Dystopian cherry-picking?)
There is nothing else in this system.
It's easy to imagine that if we held a contest to produce the worst writing, as some kind of satirical exercise, a send-up of pretentious, anti-reader claptrap, that the likes of what you just read would be produced.
In case you didn't know--because why the fuck would you--the piece is about a fern. I know, I know--what on earth do you mean, Colin? Trust me. I know how these people think. "She wipes men." It's so damn embarrassing. I'd be mortified if this was how I wrote, if I had this little ability. That was meant to be deep and hard-hitting. Yes, I'm serious.
...she has been torresiana.
Oh. That's what she's been then. Brilliant. Another genius here from a system jam-packed with them.
That's Motorollah, Motorollah, Motorllah bad.
Macrothelypteris torresiana is a species of fern. What? Didn't know that? Of course you didn't. Who the hell would know that? And in this world?
And she drops it in casually as the last word, and it's not even the right term.
It's so fucking pretentious. You telling me that is for reading? This story--story my ass (talk about an ass-wiper)--is for reading? What the fuck is this for? For being a douche bag? For proof of douche bag status?
Okay, mission accomplished, I guess.
No one, of course, is going to look up the word "torresiana," and no one but a botanist will know what it means.
And she's been torresiana? Like, what, previously? Back in the day? But no more, huh? The fern isn't a fern? Is it a magical chimera of a fern? A magic metaphor chimera of a fern!
Exciting! Can't wait to read more from you!
Is that how this is supposed to go?
The entitlement is galling. You aren't meant to understand any of this. You're meant to think Diane Williams--pretentious fool--is better than you are. Because she wrote something you didn't understand. That had no point.
But sure, amazing. As always. No wonder Bradford Morrow had to have that story for Conjunctions. And I can't even call him a bigoted pig because pigs are intelligent.
You can't be worse at anything than these people are at writing. As I suggested, it's almost impressive.
If I went down to Charles MGH today and said, "Okay, I'm ready to scrub, get my latex gloves ready!" and I washed my hands and a nurse helped me get said gloves on and handed me a scalpel, I wouldn't be worse at surgery than these people are at writing.
Anyway, let's get on with the inevitable thrashing. This is from one of the six new ones I've written so far this year. Should be done later today or tomorrow.
The person does not remember when they had five blocks instead of ten. They just see blocks. There are blocks here. Understand? Blocks, blocks, blocks. Five blocks was block-saturation. But, curiously, so are ten blocks. That isn’t supposed to be how saturation works. But the rules of nature are not meant to correspond—or at least they don’t—to human nature.
Then, comes a day, when instead of ten blocks, there is now just one block. Life has changed. Matters of life have changed. The worm who went that way has gone this way. The cycle shifted. Laws of averages kicked in. It never rains all the time, anywhere, just as the sun hasn’t ever had reason to think, “Yeah baby, bet I’ll never be obscured by a cloud again.”
Another block cannot be put atop this one block because that second block doesn’t exist. The block is singular. The block might not even be present. It may be in a different room. In the old house in which the person no longer lives. Buried in the earth. Sequestered in the pocket of someone they no longer know. The block may be confined to a dream. The block can still be at the factory. It might just be in the raw materials stage. The block could be nestled within a tree in the woods that has yet to be cut down.
The person will continue to believe that they have no time for that which might might make their lives easier, richer, and of greater value, as well as in the aiding of others and improvement of their lives. They are hard up against it, they say. Always. The pressure is great. Without respite. For there is still conceptual block-ness, and that is all it takes. The idea of blocks. The whiff of blocks. The box in which blocks came. The tasks of these blocks and block fragments and remnants and block-assumptions and the reordering of self and soul to configure to block-projections require the whole of that person’s being and the totality of their efforts and what they call focus, which is instead akin to circling, an essentially eternal game—minus recreation—of round-and-round.
They alter their thinking and doctor their feelings so that every time there is a change in the number of blocks, it’s the same maximum number of blocks to them. A block totality—of absolute quantity—which blocks out what they really are choosing not to see. Furnishes them with excuses. Takes them off the proverbial block-shaped hook with other people and their respective allotment of blocks. They come to think that all blocks are theirs and theirs alone. Other people have something else. Jacks, marbles, dolls—but not blocks like their blocks. These items of others aren’t as important, a belief that is neither questioned nor examined, and yet deepens in the belief-keeper’s convictions over time.
There are very few people who have ever understood what their blocks mean to who they are and the person that they get themselves to become. What they are doing with how they regard their blocks. What they really use their blocks for.
None of this has much to do with blocks. It has to do with the person. For the blocks are really playing with them. Except the blocks are only blocks. They can’t process information, make determinations, appraise, empathize, and act accordingly, decently, keenly, for their own personal good and the good of other blocks. Their fellow blocks. They are there to be stacked. But that, at least, is being in something together.
The blocks have that correct. It is the nature of blocks. The nature of people is to think, and feel, “My Lord, my blocks—my unique blocks.”
Yeah...Again, I can't help but think that that's not very close. This Fleming guy, he writes all kinds of stories, doesn't he? It's never the same story twice. Never the same type. There are no types. Each story he writes is unique to him. There is no one else in the world who could come close to doing whatever that story is. There is no AI that could do it.
You don't think AI could do a better job of being Diane Williams than Diane Williams could? "Hey, AI, write me some idiotic pretentious slop about a metaphorical fern." AI would be all over that. What? You think we'd read AI's story and say, "That's nowhere near as brilliant as the real Diane Williams!"
The fuck we would.
Then again, what do I know? I've not been torresiana. Sadly.
