Wednesday 12/4/24
We've talked in the past about Narrative Magazine, which publishes the same shit all of these places publish, by the same type of people, for the same reasons, which has nothing to do with the actual writing and its quality, and instead myriad awful things.
Narrative is a scam. A clip joint. They charge like $30--or whatever it currently is--to submit a story, while instead publishing the stories of connected system people, who didn't pay them anything. Sure, they sprinkle in a few others, but that's simply an attempt to make this look like less of a crime, because make no doubt about it, this is a scam and it's robbery.
The work sucks. That's a given. One time, long ago, when I sent a story directly--and I've mentioned this--because there is no amount of crazy you can be to honestly think I should pay you or anyone any amount of money to receive my work which I'm allowing to run in your publication for next to nothing, and which is better than everything in your publication, to the degree that there's no comparison, some lackey--some licker of balls--wrote me to say that I could pay hundreds of dollars to Narrative co-editor Tom Jenks to receive his bountiful wisdom about writing. All I needed was a credit card. I had published like 1000 things by that point. It was probably more. My career dwarfed this fool's. Even with an industry against me, and certainly no one helping.
Do you believe these people? I know--it sounds like I'm making this up. These people are lowest of the low. The dumbest and the grossest, too. Oh--co-editor Carol Edgarian publishes her own work in Narrative. I bet you're shocked. Allowing that you've never seen all of the proof of this world of these people in this journal and you're less than twenty-four hours old.
So how about we do a two versus one prose off with this entry? You can double team me, you frauds at Narrative. Hell, it could be everything you've ever published against a single thing of mine, and we all know how it'd go.
Ready? This is from Grace Bianchetti's "A Happy Marriage," and if you don't know how this works--and of course you do--when you see a title like that from one of these simpletons, what it really means is, "This is not a happy marriage but you see how I used the word happy ironically!" Simple, simple, simple people. So predictable. But more on that in a second.
Justine's anger was petty and she knew it. She tensed up her shoulder muscles, deliberately resisting Steven’s attempts to work the knots out of her back. Objectively, she knew he had done nothing wrong: Steven’s parents had called to announce that they were coming into town for dinner; therefore, the dinner she had planned with Ryan had to be canceled. Her indignation had nothing to do with how much she liked Steven’s parents, whom she thought were much better people than her own. But she felt unjustly thwarted by fate—like missing a school dance in a new dress because of a flat tire.
Her sense of injury was acute and carried a physical pain that was just on the edge of pleasure—a sensation that she wanted to give herself fully over to in private, or at least in silence. Steven was now whistling.
Steven was constantly whistling. Or humming—sonatas, sometimes full symphonies, from start to finish. He liked to have music around him at all times, even if he had to be the source of it. Last night he had asked Justine to sing for him in bed. She had a terrible memory for lyrics, especially when put on the spot, and ended up softly singing “Auld Lang Syne” in a loop, quavering and flat, until she felt his body soften into sleep. Steven was a great sleeper.
Justine logged on to her email and typed out her cancellation message to Ryan, hitting each key with petulant force. She studiously ignored the saucer piled with peeled and glistening orange slices that Steven always placed on her desk with her tea at half past seven. Steven had been careful not to leave even a whisper of the pith—she could not tolerate anything bitter, especially in the morning.
Justine had fantasized about Ryan ever since she’d met him at a literary soiree she’d been invited to by her agent friend Jerry. Ryan was striking, but it was the unapologetic, almost indecent intensity he was directing at her when she first met his eye across the room that had arrested her. He was an animal, and his stare was a challenge. She held out for two hours before she returned his gaze and closed the distance between them.
You know how we talk about the little techniques and gambits these people use again and again because there isn't a single original thought between the lot of them? One of those standbys is the affair story. You see so many stories--that aren't even stories--about affairs. They think this is shocking. And you know that w're going to have a literary soiree and a literary agent in a story. Because we have to have that kind of shit from these people. Literary soiree. I mean, fuck off. Fuck off with your pointless twaddle, your silver spoon garbage, and your total lack of ability and creativity.
Additionally, "quavering and flat" doesn't make sense. It's useful if you're going to be a writer--let alone a writer that system people lie about being any good--to know what words, you know, actually mean. I find that useful, but maybe that's just a me thing.
And the pith of an orange in the morning--because who can deal with that, right? You know how we talk about first world problems? What is this crap? "I was overwhelmed by my breakfast orange."
Relatable stuff right there.
Then we have Randa Jarrar's "A Sailor." The system likes her, because she's good at checking boxes. Got some key ones checked off there. She's predictably awful at writing. Ready? Here we go:
She fucks a sailor, a Turkish sailor, the summer she spends in Istanbul. When she comes home to Wisconsin, it takes her three days to come clean about it to her husband.
He says this doesn’t bother him, and she tells him that it bothers her that it doesn’t bother him. He asks if she prefers him to be the kind of man who is bothered by fleeting moments, and she tells him that yes, she prefers that he be that kind of man. He tells her he thinks she married him because he is precisely the kind of man who doesn’t dwell on fleeting moments, because he is the kind of man who does not hold a grudge. She tells him that holding a grudge and working up some anger about one’s wife fucking a sailor is not the same thing.
He agrees that holding a grudge isn’t the same as working up some anger about one’s wife fucking a sailor, but, he adds, one’s wife, specifically his own, would never leave him for a sailor, and not a Turkish sailor. In fact, he says, she did not leave him for the Turkish sailor. She is here. So why should he be angry?
Whoa...an affair story! These were the two stories I happened to click on. I did not go look for affair stories. You see how they all do the same shit? The same three or four things? And do them badly? We've talked about this before, but when you suck at writing, when you have no story to tell, when you possess no ability, no imagination, you have nothing to interest or give to a reader, what you end up doing, as this last-ditch desperation move, is trying to be shocking. You use attempted-shock as this stand-in for substance.
These are children. Broken children of a disgusting subculture. Without the imagination of a child. But again, simple, simple, simple people. This is a writer who thinks by saying "fuck" and "fucking" she's pushing that creative envelope. Or hoping she is. Because she knows. She knows she's actually working with nothing.
Thus, a Randa Jarrar--like all of these system people--depends on what the people of the system can do for her, will do for her, for other reasons than her bad writing. That is the system. That's how it works. And she didn't pay no thirty bucks to submit that garbage.
Then we come to this other person. Been working on a new one. It's called "Frigid Bitch." Going to be done today or tomorrow. That title may not indicate what you think it indicates. The story involves a woman and the guy who ghosted her, who we think--eventually, but also early on--is actually dead. and he's returned for some romance, finding himself lacking in other options. But as the story goes along, we sense that he may not be a literal ghost, but then again, that's on the table. It's a story happening on these different levels. A story to get the the class to raise their hands and want to weigh in. That's a good thing. You're going for that kind of thing. Get those hands in the air. It is a story about ghosting, what that does to a person's sense of self and self-worth, what it often really means, the hypocrisy involved, and it's also a kind of feminine anthem in prose. You also have a story in which the main character is not the main character, if that makes sense.
He was all in. As in as possible. One hundred and ten percent. No hesitation. No reservations. None of those games. Maybe once, but not anymore. That other guy he used to be was dead and gone. This guy knew what he wanted. And what he had. And how lucky he was to have it.
He followed her around the kitchen, watching her make a pie from scratch as this thing she was trying.
“Wow, that came out perfect,” he said when it was done, sniffing the air. “You’re super good at everything. All of these fantastic activities you do. It’s actually really…” He searched for the right word. “…admirable. Your commitment to growth. You should teach a class.”
He told her that every day of her life there were new reasons to be proud of her. That she was the best. In all the ways. Big and little. Even little ways with her weren’t all that little. She meant more to him than he could say. Taught him how to love and give and listen.
Really listen, which wasn’t the same as hearing words. He got that now. Enough so that it was worth repeating. I get that now. I do.
He couldn’t deny that it’d taken him a while to bring himself up to speed. Longer than he wanted and longer than she deserved. But in the end, he’d gotten there and wasn’t that what mattered?
How could he ever repay her for her patience? Her faith? He walked at her heel just to earn the right to walk by her side.
“Wherever you go, I want to go,” he said. “I mean that. Whatever you go through, I’m going through with you. We’re a team. Team me and you.”
He was prone to these rhapsodic speeches. Such was the expression of his gratitude. His longing. The longing for togetherness. That was what it was all about.
So there he was, every day, this ghost of a guy who had once left her without a word. Returned no calls. No texts. Blocked.
He couldn’t very well tell her now that he didn’t have any other options and it was this or nothing.
But not a single damn thing he said made a dent with this girl, when it’d actually been really easy before. It was literally the most frustrating thing ever, he thought.
He’d been saying all of those right things and sitting through all of her stuff and being supportive and making sure she could feel like he cared and she might as well have woken up and said, “How can I screw with this person? I know—I’ll be as passive aggressive as possible, let’s see how he likes that,” followed by laughter. Lots of laughter.
No rhyme. No reason. No insight. For fun. No—for sport. No—because she could. No—because she thought she could.
He totally didn’t deserve this.
“I think you shouldn’t ignore me!” he bellowed at her, trying to make it sound like he was shaking some chains. The whole thing had been her idea in the first place. He was the one who’d been drowning in options. More options than he could keep track of. He’d even had this joke he did for his friends—and himself—about needing a spreadsheet. And quips. Like, “Use it or lose it,” which had multiple levels of meaning. And “That’s just how I roll,” a line his friends always looked forward to hearing and would laugh at when they knew it was coming, because they knew it was coming.
But he saw only her—chiefly—for a whole quarter of a year. The holidays, no less. Right up until that week after Christmas when her mom got sick and it was like all she could talk about.
And here she was denying him a voice? Yes. That’s what was happening—denying him his voice. Stubbing out his basic human right to not be treated like garbage. To be heard. To count as a person. The very same treatment she’d be a wreck over if it was the other way around. This wasn’t just about a relationship anymore. More like right and wrong, and what side are you on, which was similar to another of his quips. He didn’t even eat pie. She hadn’t thought of him at all.
“I can make things very difficult for you!” he added. “I’ve been known to make a hell of a noise in the pipes!”
That wasn’t true. But still, it’s not like she knew.
We have arrived at the point of the prose off--the post-prose off portion of the prose off--where we all say, "Huh...that really couldn't have been less close." You have virtuosic prose in the last example, but it's in the balance of the sentences, the words; it's in their arrangement, the pulse, the flow, the rhythms. But there isn't anyone who can't understand it. Despite the levels that people read at.
What you also want to have happen is for the reader to apply what they're reading to their life, to both see it in their experiences, and--this is very important--see their experiences in a manner that they'd not previously seen them, thought about them, and feel and think something new about them. While remaining in this story.
These people of this system can't do anything like that. It's not in them, it's beyond the level of their ability, it takes too much work to hone that ability if it exists to be able to do anything of this nature, and they're taught to do a shitty kind of writing that is at odds with good writing, and, even more so, great writing. So you get what you get from them. That's their subculture. Come from money, have no ability, be a dilettante, join the system, partake of its rancidity and try to profit by it in what is ultimately your very limited way. Because whatever awards you're given that you don't deserve, the best of the year lists, the fluffing and the licking and the lying, all of the hook-ups, your work is not for anyone on earth. It has no value for anyone. It's just scrip for the system of incestuous evil and stupidity.
