Sunday 1/5/25
I don't like the term "experimental" when it comes to fiction or any art. It's a term for losers. For people without talent. Who don't know what they're doing. In literary publishing, it serves as a term-cum-method to elevate those without any ability--like Diane Williams, as we have seen with one of the classic prose offs that doubles as redoubtable indictment of what Christopher Beha at Harper's is all about and was up to when it came to me--in the endless game these people play of saying how the fat-assed, fetid emperor who oozes puss from every pour is such a stunningly comely individual decked out in the finest raiment.
For this prose off, we'll circle back to Diane Williams, with a recent story of hers put forward by captain crony Bradford Morrow of Conjunctions, the editor that one of his own editors at Conjunctions in Brian Evenson--someone who also depends on hook-ups--told me was all about hooking up said cronies, as if it's not easy enough to tell.
We'll do a bunch of Diane Williams prose offs moving forward, including one from the pages of Image--I'll be digging deep down into these people and what they're up to--and we'll also feature some quotes from these frauds of the system--we'll put them right next to Williams' awful writing--saying how brilliant she is.
Sound good? Probably going to get a bit embarrassing, but you can always write me--if you're one of these people--and tell me why her execrable prose that I've just made an example of is so great, and I'll post that here because that sounds like something someone could actually do.
Ah! We're doing jokes. Because as you know, if you're one of those people, just as well as I know, that's not an option, is it? Because she's that bad.
You could only pull off this bullshit in this system, where everyone wants the bullshit. Show any of it to anyone out in the world, any normal person--as crazy and unintelligent and broken as people now are--and you get laughter.
Comments like, "This can't seriously be what won such an award" and the like. Because it's the worst shit there is or could be. If we had a contest to write the worst works of fiction, you couldn't do worse than what we often see here as the first examples in the prose offs. Right? How much worse can you be than Motorollah put forward by she whose family hides dead bodies? Or Lincoln Michel in One Story courtesy of Patrick Ryan and the literary debutante ball gang?
Could you write something worse if you tried? Ironically, I may have something worse, courtesy of Ben Lerner. We'll get into that later. But as someone said to me yesterday, "All of this shit is so bad, it's almost impossible to say what's the worst of it."
True. We are splitting one super-fine hair when it comes to saying what's worse than what within and across the collective output of these system people. I guess when you take your dog out for for a walk there are forms of stool you consider better than other forms, so perhaps it's a bit like that.
I invent constantly. New modes of narrative. Stories that represent new forms of fictional engineering. But I don't call anything I do experimental. Do you know why? Because when you do an experiment, you often don't know what the outcome will be. It's an experiment. I know exactly what I'm doing with everything I write and every part of it.
We could go through each word--each paragraph break--in everything I write and I could give you a reason why it's there. It doesn't just "come out." It's by design. For a purpose and purposes. Everything is chosen for a reason. For an outcome. To be part of an outcome and the process of that outcome and outcomes within the larger outcome. This isn't eighth grade science class here. This is the most meticulous design. And reason.
The better you are as a writer, the more choices you make. Conscious choices. "This was done for these reasons."
This entry from November 3 of last year has a couple "walk-through" examples of what I'm talking about as you get closer to the end with the parts about "pool" and the ladder. Take a look back or have a look if you've not seen it. Now do you think any of these people would ever think in those terms or could? Obviously not. They're just slapping out their shit. That's all they're doing. It's all they can do.
Well, they could do more. They could try and get better. But they don't. They have no interest in that. And what would the motivation be anyway? They're being handed their awards, getting their book deals, having their stories put forward by fiction editor Deborah Treisman and her crew at The New Yorker as it is. Because they're the right kind of person. They're card-carrying elite system members.
You could surmise that they might be motivated to create work that could actually mean something to readers, but these people could not give less of a fuck about readers. They hate readers. An actual reader who wants an experience? A life experience? Or just to be entertained?
They have nothing but contempt for such a person. They regard them as being of an inferior class. That's what someone like Diane Williams, Christopher Beha, Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker, Bradford Morrow all do.
Plus, actual readers would expose them for what they are. They couldn't stand up to the scrutiny of...actually being read. They can be pretend-read and bullshit-read, but not really-read.
So then you get the Diane Williams types of their evil, incestuous world of idiocy and pointless writing, classism, lies, log-rolling, and her experimental--that label is partly how they try and make shit like this fly--fiction, like this story from Bradford Morrow's Conjunctions, part of what is termed "A Polyphonic Portfolio of Language-Centric Writing," which translated means, "Here we have pretentious douchebag writing that no one could actually like."
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this will be awesome work from Diane Williams and you'll thrill to it. It's called "Cutting and Dressing."
The doctor said, “Then you have a wonderful night.”
The term wonderful night is used to refer to the inner sanctum that has sex feeling in it.
There is a widespread misconception about the look, feel, and texture of a doctor’s waiting room. The doctor asked me did I want to give him my co-pay now.
For the handover, I wore toreador pants and bone leather shoes with little heels—backless and strapless. I did not bend my knees, but instead stiff-walked to my sitdown in a chair. My feet I kept up parallel to the floor and I crossed my legs at the ankles. Back at home for a cold lunch in my house with a red-tile roof, I sat in my own chair for sitting stiffly.
People are lovely things. People must have seen that my hair was in flat knuckled curls and really inconsiderately arranged. My walls are papered with a moiré pattern. My floor is covered by split brick pavers. I’ve got a tea cart set out with plastic cups, lime green drink, and a plate of dry baked products.
My tot Silvanus—with bad habits and suddenly—we had set the boy free!—pulled himself up onto our lyre-back side chair. Completely frenzied, the chair fell—and, because this child has never been significantly maltreated, he was stunned by the fall and he’s dead.
Round of applause--wasn't that super? That's the whole thing. You wouldn't want to take time in your life to read that? To buy books like that? What? You didn't find it entertaining? Insightful? Funny? What do you mean it was stupid and annoying? No? She's a prose master.
Are you kidding me? Are you sure you got it? Are you sure you're not too stupid to get it? (That's what they'd like you to think.) You have to be joking. That's not genius? They say she's a genius. What about the part where the narrator says he or she has a tea set? That didn't blow your mind? How about the virtuosic syntax of "...to refer to the inner sanctum that has sex feeling in it"? Sex feeling! Clearly the problem is you. It must be you. Must be me, too. She's brilliant. That's one of the best prose artists in the world right there. What is wrong with us? OMG. And what about the tot Silvanus? That's really, really creative isn't it? So gifted that Diane Williams. Wow.
See? What we got jokes today, but nothing like the joke that is this shit. Good Lord. Look at that crap. And it's all she does. We keep seeing it. I continue to show it to you. Beha must have loved that, right? He probably read that and thought, "Oh, damn, wish I could have had that one for Harper's."
Or...he knows it sucks because we all know it sucks. If you make anyone look at this shit and actually read it, they will know it sucks. Whether they're you, they're me, they wrote it, they published it, they sign up the person who wrote it, they awarded it, they said it was from the best book of the year, whatever it may be: Anyone who actually is made to look at this will know that it blows. No? What do you think would happen if you hooked up the likes of Bradford Morrow or Christopher Beha to some magical machine and if they didn't tell the truth they'd endure the worst possible pain and die and you asked them, "You think that's good, brother?" I'm sure they'd say, "Oh yes." Right.
What's worse? The tot Silvanus or sex feeling?
Sex feeling, I guess, but see what I mean about splitting a super-fine hair?
God these people are so bad at writing.
And to them I say: You are lucky no one cares and no one reads. Because if they did and they saw your crap and the stuff you say about this crap? You'd be laughed off the earth.
It's coming, though.
Back to the prose off.
Like I said, I don't subscribe to the use of the term "experimental" because of what it connotes. The lack of control. The lack of intent. Lesser command. But here we have something unlike anything else from the start of a story of mine called "Vernon."
People have these expectations of separation with intelligence that they associate with what is or isn’t granted them at birth (or during the interval directly preceding formal entry into the world). Sizable intraspecies separation. Out comes the one and he’s way down there, out comes the other and she’s on the higher level. Them’s the breaks. The brain breaks. Like you have little to do with your own mental acuity moving forward. Sure, money can get paid so that one may sit in special rooms or what are deemed special rooms where tests will be taken, but a lot of that is simply being able to say after the fact that you sat in those rooms and have the piece of paper to prove that there you once were which few seem to realize also speaks as much—if not more—to where you were not. What no one considers is that there’s a choice involved with intelligence. To some degree, anyway. But it’s a potent degree. The actual range of intelligence isn’t that great because it’s not great for anything within the parameters of what that thing is. Transcendence? Who is going to transcend? Are you? If you’re a raccoon, you’re a raccoon. Regarding a raccoon one would never say, “Well, that raccoon in your yard is on the ball and the other over here in mine is an idiot.” No—they’re raccoons. There may be the occasional raccoon who’s that much smarter than the other raccoons, but the gist is the gist and the gist both holds and tells. It’s not like one encounters this raccoon of raccoons named…we’ll call him Vernon…who was born such that he can get himself in any attic he wishes to—attics that might as well be a fortress inside of a fortress for raccoons without Vernon’s brains and which doubles as his palace—and he eats the freshest found foodstuffs like he’d had them delivered from a restaurant, whereas the other raccoons are dining on what even a raccoon knows is garbage. How would that work? Two raccoons are trying to get into a trashcan and they can’t figure how to remove the lid and after fifteen minutes of cacophonous struggle one of them says to the other, “Damn, if only Vernon were here.”
What does that resemble? Nothing. It's new. What kind of story is that from? Not a kind of story. We have innovation, but it's not an experiment. There's intention and what is intended is delivered. Avant-garde? If you wish to use the term. But clear. Relatable. Memorable. Inclusive rather than exclusive. Bold, fresh, unique, but no reader left behind.
I don't have contempt for readers. The work--any great work--is for them. It's not for me. For its creator. It's not for the ego. It's not for class status. It's sure as hell not for membership in a system of incestuous evil and bad writing.
That's what Diane Williams' writing is for. And, as ever with these prose offs and these things, we have a pretty big and obvious difference.
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