Thursday 1/2/25
We've talked before about Gerald Maa, editor of the Georgia Review. He is a big proponent of discrimination, having no ability of his own and never achieving anything of note or on his own in life, who hooks up people like him, who are part of his insular MFA system, in the magazine which he edits. He told me to pay him money--get that credit card out, Fleming!--in effect to be discriminated against because there was no chance that he'd allow anything of mine to run, me being what I am and he being what he is, and him being incapable of creating anything value and me doing what I do--daily.
Think of how backwards that is: Someone like this won't allow work better than anything they've ran which was so generously offered to them for free, basically. No compensation. "Here, I give this to you, this thing that we all know destroys what you publish, from this person who has done all of these things in his career. Different level things. Not back corridor English department trade-off things." And because it's so much better, and because that person has done what they've done, this soulless paramecium in Gerald Maa has to do what they can to discriminate against that other person. Because that's who someone like Gerald Maa is, that's what they're about. They're not about putting forward the best work. This is all about the fragile ego and making sure that only people like Gerald Maa are allowed to pass by the likes of Gerald Maa.
There is a word for what Gerald Maa is and it rhymes with "spigot"--and for Gerald Maa, that means turning on the taps as high as they go when it comes to the likes of me, someone as far from his level--and the level of all of the bullshit which is the point of his entire existence, which seems too generous a term--as is possible.
You know what I thought today as I finish a new story? I thought: Huh, Colin, I bet if you go to the Georgia Review's site, you're bound within a couple minutes to land on a shitty short story by a system person that is about a writer and has a reference to a writing program very early on that was slapped out there by Gerald Maa.
Do I need to tell you that this is supposed to be the best fiction in the world, according to the people of this system, who do nothing but lie, because there is no one--not the person who wrote this, not a single reader (if anyone actually read this, which they don't) and not Gerald Maa who thinks this is amazing.
This is from the start of a story called "The Assassin" by Maria Kuznetsova.
“All I ask is that you behave,” Roman says as he gets ready to step out.
“Please.”
He is a new lecturer with a one-year contract in the Slavic Studies Department at Alabama University, which has tasked him with coordinating tonight’s Living Writer Reading Series at the art museum, along with a reception for said Living Writer at our new rented home. The only problem is that the Living Writer made a mortal enemy of me last year, so Roman is terrified I will embarrass him with some kind of dramatic confrontation, though I have no such plans. As my daughter tosses apple slices on the ground from her high chair, I stroke her sweet hair, as if to emphasize that I will do nothing to ruin the peaceful home we’ve made here for the past two months.
“Of course I’ll behave,” I tell him, as I pick up an apple slice and pop it in my mouth. Sasha’s resemblance to Roman has become even more pronounced now that, at fifteen months, she has basically the same hairdo, brown locks just covering her ears. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I add, for good measure.
“If you can’t be nice, just keep your distance. Really.”
“I’ll stick with Maya,” I tell him as I wipe our daughter’s face, and we both smile. Maya is his colleague, a rotund Babel scholar who has been obsessed with me ever since she read my novel and handed me her handwritten memoir of her Soviet girlhood, begging me to “give it a glance,” though I’ d rather choke on a gefilte fish bone.
“You do what you need to do,” he says. “I’ll text you when we’re on our way. Let’s throw a good party,” he says, kissing me and Sasha goodbye.
“God, I don’t even remember the last time we threw a party,” I say.
“We had that goodbye thing in Iowa.”
Do you understand the ineptitude here? This is someone who can't even go a line without making a mistake, and Gerald Maa--lover of discrimination, with his need to only publish those like him--is so bad at editing that neither of these people could recognize the mistake made right from the start that is second grade-level stuff. Because that's the same person talking in the second paragraph, which should not be its own paragraph, given that you then think it's someone else.
So right away, we taken out of this story by the writerly and editorial incompetence. These people have no clue what they're doing.
And of course it's about a writer. And what do you know--Iowa! Gotta have Iowa--that doesn't mean the state, by the way, but rather the MFA program. The bell cow of MFA programs! Bow down before your gods and totems of total writing suckage.
You know what's so galling about this, too? There's not even an attempt to fill in some details about Iowa as an MFA program. That's how casual the elitism is, how insular this shit is. To merely mention the state of Iowa, in the world of these people, is to mean the MFA program.
Isn't that incredible? So this is meant for no one else. We know that--this is shit writing with no interest in giving a reader anything. But it doesn't hide that it's just for people like these people.
Do I even need to tell you that this writer's work also appears in the Threepenny Review, thanks to the charming fossil-termagant that is Wendy Lesser? Probably not, but it's okay, I got you covered. Random House put out this woman's last novel. She's an editor of a literary journal herself and a professor.
Well. Have you ever been so shocked in your life? It's almost like nothing here is about the quality and value of the writing and its appeal.
Obviously I'm kidding. We all know how this goes. Every single goddamn time. Because that's all there is here--in the kind of person who does it and in the kind of thing produced.
Do you think anyone wants to read this? But you see how the hallmarks get referenced, though, right? Professor. Check. MFA program. Check. Art museum. Check. Reading series. Check. Novel. Check (better yet, the term "first novel"). Words like "department" and "university," check check.
Later in the story we get Dostoevsky tote bags. I'm not joking. See for yourself. You know how these people love their tote bags. They can put all of their ability in them and have plenty of room left over.
It's soulless, bloodless, lifeless, and boring as all hell. It's meaningless. There's no value here, there's nothing in the language. This isn't anything. Not writing tells more of a story than writing this.
Can a Guggenheim be far behind for someone like Maria Kuznetsova? I bet you it's not. And that's a very useful box-checker of a name, too. That kind of thing is huge here.
None of what these people produce is for reading. There is no reason to read any of it and no one actually reads it to read it. They might read it if they're in this system so they can see shit like they're shit and they like that; see those terms of their empty meaningless lives, as if that makes those lives feel less empty and meaningless (it doesn't; which is one reason they look at me and what I do and hate me like they do before they're exposed for what they are on here).
But the truth is, writing is now not for reading. These people write so as to have what is essentially a passport--a passport of the warped, broken, entitled, insecure, pretentious, arrogant, cowardly, scared, ignorant, classist, and talentless, but a passport nonetheless--to move freely about this system of...what? Games, nonsense, passive aggressiveness, pettiness, stupidity.
It's pretend. No one in the system cares about anyone else's writing in that system. No one in the world cares about it. No one could. That's not why it's done. It's done for one reason: for that passport. For these people to move amongst each other. To live a lie. Closed off from anything. From a world that wants nothing to do with them. But this way, they can make it seem like they're so intelligent, but as we've seen again and again on here, these are idiots. And bad people to boot.
Right, Gerald? What are you doing about any of this? It's all true, right? Of course is it. And this here? It's just going to keep happening. And as people scurry--and there's a good chance I have the IP address and see it--because they were published by Gerald Maa and they must make sure to discriminate against me now in following from something like this, you're going up on here, too. That's right, you there teaching in the Sarah Lawrence MFA program. (That was kind of scary how I just did that, wasn't it? You know who you are. Thought you were getting away with something, didn't you? And not only are you really bad as a writer, but your buddies with Carolyn Kuebler of New England Review, aren't you, and that means I get to use your story from there in a prose off and how do you think that's going to go? So I get to expose you and expose her again at the same time. Handy.)
Now we'll do a little something from one of mine. Finishing it today. A story called "Frigid Bitch." Remember "Thank You, Human--a Bedtime Story"? Well, that's for There Is No Doubt: Story Girls. And so is this one. So much range. And yet, they both belong equally to the same work. "Frigid Bitch" is about a ghost. A guy who ghosted a woman and now he's back as a ghost. Huh. Kind of different, isn't it? Sounds interesting, right? And this ghost has no other romantic options but this woman. And we think it's an actual ghost. As in, a dead guy on the make. "Come on, baby." And he comes out--when we find him in her kitchen as she's baking a pie--saying all the right things, or what he thinks are the right things, to get what he wants.
He has the lines down pat--or so he thinks. But she's not going along with it, and as he's not met with the success he hopes to achieve, for his desired ends, his tune, shall we say, starts to change. Is this an actual ghost? Well, we come to realize that there's more there than meets the proverbial eye. And maybe this is a concept rather than a ghost per se. And our main character--who is this woman--achieves her main character status without really saying anything.
You don't see that very often, do you? Sounds kind of innovative to me. But what do I know--I didn't even mention Iowa or being a writer in the story. Here we go:
She had her game all right. What a game it was, too. A game a child wouldn’t bother playing because it’d be too childish for them. A child would know better. A child would think, “That’s not what I’m about, that’s not who I’m willing to be, I have to live with myself, sorry.”
And that’s a child. Not an adult. Not a grown woman. So-called grown woman.
It was as if she wanted to be alone.
“Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to us? God. It’s so disrespectful. Who is this passive aggressive? So just nothing matters, then? Only you? Little Miss Selfish. I didn’t think you were like that. I thought you were better than this. Just goes to show. Never really know anyone, do you? This is how someone ends up by themselves. Right here. This. What you’re doing. How to Be Alone 101. You could teach a class. Class of fucking one. ‘Teacher, meet your student, student, this is your teacher,’ oh, look, they’re both you. Whatever. I tried. Gave this everything I could. Everything that’s in me. Was in me. Go ahead. Ask me what’s left at this point. But you can’t, you won’t, because you know it’s all true and you know exactly what you’ve been doing. Go ahead.”
And still she wouldn’t so much as open her mouth. It felt like the biggest disparity ever of energy levels. It hurt. A lot.
“You know what? Fuck it, I’m done,” he announced. “I just can’t anymore. I just can’t with you. So not worth it. You’re not worth it. You just aren’t. Sorry, I don’t want to say that and definitely never wanted to think it, but it’s not like I made it that way. No one else is going to care half as much. You’re going to miss me. I’m not coming back. That’s it. I really mean it this time.”
Silence. Not a peep of reciprocity. If he hadn’t been able to see her moving with that quick step of hers, he would have thought she was stone. Petrified wood.
“Are you for real? Are you being serious right now? Kind of ironic that the people who say they don’t have time for games are always the ones doing the most playing. How is this better for anybody? You think you’re only hurting me, but you’re hurting yourself, too. Hello? Anyone home? If you don’t answer me I swear I’ll kill myself. Wait. I’ll do something else bad, something even worse. I need you. Please. Fine. Have it your way. I bet you love this. You get off on this shit. This twisted, childish shit. You know what it is? Needless. That’s what it is. Two people can actually have an honest conversation. It’s true! They can treat each other like adults. It’s not against the rules. Despite what you seem to believe. What’s that? What? What? Nothing? Fuck you then. I’m going. This is me never coming back. Here’s what it looks like, here’s what it sounds like. Remember it, because it’s the biggest mistake you’ll ever make.”
And on it went. Like he wasn’t there at all as far as she knew. Like he’d never been born. Or like he died and someone told her and she said, “Who?” Or didn’t ask at all. Not a word. Not a single quickened heartbeat. The pulse of a marathon winner at rest. One who just started talking about something else. Easy as that. Asked someone if they were feeling better or complimented them on how they looked that morning. A person who would say to themselves, “You don’t know what could happen, so be open” and tried to have that attitude and went so far as to work at having it.
“What a callous whore you are. Dead inside. Heartless. How’s it feel to be so dead?”
The irony, when it occurred to him, stung. “Dead,” he mumbled a couple additional times under his breath, but not like he didn’t want anyone else to hear.
Hmmm. I'm going to say that's not very close. I'm going to say one excerpt is sterile, meaningless MFA-machined nothingness by yet another carbon copy of an MFA-er and the other explodes with energy, consequence, memorableness. Is unique. But a one-off from the person who wrote it, because he never writes the same thing twice and instead invents endlessly.
But that's not some epiphany. It's what's known. It's what Gerald Maa knows, which is why he feels like he has to act like he does. Which leaves me no choice save to document that behavior and the obvious reasons for it. The choice isn't really mine at all, unless you expect me to in essence discriminate against myself. What I do here is really up to you.
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