Saturday 2/22/25
The term "experimental fiction" is used by people who have no ability to write and are attempting to cover that up while also shaming someone else--a reader who will know their shit for the shit it is--as not being smart enough to get what isn't there to be gotten at all.
The word "experiment" suggests that one wouldn't know the outcome. There's chance involved. The aleatoric.
Whenever you write, you should know exactly what you're doing and why you're doing it. You make choices of intention constantly. I could go through every word of every story I write with someone and tell them what my thinking was in using it. All of the parts of a story. Why there's a paragraph break here, why this is the first clause, why this is the final sentence. Everything.
The more decisions you make in your writing, the better your writing will be. If there isn't reason and purpose behind each component part, then it's not good enough to be there. You can't give away a single word. A single space.
We've talked about Bradford Morrow--King Crony--and Conjunctions before. The guy who "accidentally" emailed me personal insults and once threatened to flagellate me with his jowls. Just kidding about that second part. The first part is 100% accurate reportage, though, with this childish simpleton.
Anyway, sometimes I'll give a recap with a fresh entry, but for now I'll simply call attention to some earlier Conjunctions prose offs in this record. They'll keep one busy enough.
What we're going to do in this prose off is begin with a story in Conjunctions that is, of course, dreadful, of no readerly value, and which no one would ever want to read and would hate trying to read if they were forced to.
I'll preface this excerpt by saying that the story with which it's from goes on and on and on in the same fashion as what you're about to see. In other words, I'm showing some mercy by not subjecting you to more. Because as unpleasant and annoying as this is to try and read, it's but a small portion of the work. The whole thing is 5000 words long. With no relief; it's like being sandblasted with shit for twenty minutes.
This is what these people would call experimental fiction. That's a term people without any ability to invent or innovate use to make it seem like they are so creative, why, you can't even qualify it, you can't even understand it! But as you'll immediately realize, not being one of these people--or hell, even if you are--this isn't innovative; it's just fucking stupid.
And when I say fucking stupid, I mean the writing is so dumb that it gets nothing right. You will be confused from the start, for various reasons. There is, for instance, an image that we need to understand considering it's what the story is supposed to be about. It's the image of a kind of knife, but the writing is so inept that you'll have no idea what this knife looks like or how it's a knife.
But let's just get to it, shall we, and then I'll say a bit more. This is from "The First Knife Ever" by Justin Noga.
We slapped together two clods of oak around a broken bedpan lid and twined them together with a horsetail. Realized then our discovery: the first knife ever. We go to Tony’s. Tony indicates our find—What is that shit?—and he slides us each a prairie fire: whisky, tabasco.
Crab says, Maybe lean forward, Tony, and Tony, doing so, discovers the knife sinking in buttery smooth, right between his ribs.
Why are you doing that, Tony? Crab says to the man, who’s now slung bodily over the bar and pouring forth a real gusher.
Tony, I say, your bar’s a mess.
Tony, it’s not like you to make a mess and not blame it on me and my little sister.
Tony says, Bwah, and his tiny mouth burbles in the spillage—pop pop. It would be a cute thing to watch if he wasn’t always a dick to me.
Against my better judgement, I worry about Tony. Much too pale. I extract the knife. It gushes even more. I plug it back in. Bwah, he says again. There’s no winning with Tony.
So you’re calling keepsies, Tony? I say.
Way of the world to guys like him, Frog. Tony thinks he can just take-take-take. No repercussions. She flicks the knife, a dulcet sproing. This here is how we will make bank, presuming, and she flicks my head, this other thing here doesn’t fuck it up.
How, she doesn’t say, and I don’t even consider the how because Tony’s all Bw-bw-bw. Yikes. I look around the dim bar for anything knife-like, knife-adjacent, hoping to switch out the knife and be on our merry way, but it took so long to discover this one. I break the news to Tony in soft fashion. You try to find one, Tony. See? You just can’t.
Crab touches the blood and tastes the blood to make sure it is blood. Always doublecheck, she says, and throws back her prairie fire and howls from the burn. She tries to jerk the knife out but, shit, it’s stuck—caught deep in bone or already fused to flesh interior. Crab screams, Let go! and wrenches outward in one great heave.
The knife clatters to the tile. Tony’s got another gusher, the worst and last of them. Crab’s already gone. Only me and Tony at his empty bar with blood dripping all over my shoes. White loafers, frilled socks—a favorite combo of mine Tony mocked every night I put them on the stool to adjust the leather laces and lacy frills.
Can you imagine reading nearly 5000 more words of that? Wanting to? Electing to? Of your own free will? Why the would anyone do that? That's like going home and stapling your fingers. It's impossible to look forward to reading this. To plan to do it some night. Think of the things you like. "So excited to listen to that new album." Whatever it is. It's impossible that someone could think, "I can't wait to get home tonight and read 'The First Knife Ever.' It's so good." Shouldn't people be able to think that about what you write?
As I said, you have no clue what this knife looks like or how it could be a knife. We get the phase "two clods of oak." Do you know what a clod is? It's a dumb person, so here we have a clod of a writer in this guy doing this shit and a clod of an editor in Bradford Morrow, which you knew already if you've been following along. A clod is also a lump of dirt. Those are your clod options. Simpleton or lump of dirt. There are no clods of oak.
It's just nonsense. And the nonsense becomes even more confusing with the broken bedpan and then it's pretentious fuck-bag time and we get twining with a horsetail, and you are thinking, "Oh, fuck me, this is so bad, what kind of douchebag writes something like this."
Or what, that's on purpose? "I know what a clod is, but I used that word anyway, that's what makes my description very deep and brilliant, don't you get it? No? Hmmm. Where did you go to school? Maybe reading isn't for someone like you."
So innovative, man: Nonsense, idiocy, a lack of literacy.
You are not fooling anyone. You're not fooling me, you're not fooling anyone who happens to see this, which, granted, means pretty much no one in the world outside of four people who glance at it in this literary fiction subculture of people who are all the same as each other. No one is reading this. No one. There isn't a single person who'd read the whole thing. Anywhere.
You, reading this entry: Go and try and get through that full story by clicking on the link to it above. It's the weekend. Try and make reading that story in full one of the things you do this weekend. You love your weekend, right? It's your time. To do with as you wish. Well, along with those commitments. But you're not at work. So try and read it.
And what's going to happen is you're going to stop before you've made a dent in the story, because it's your weekend and weekends are short and life is short you tell yourself, and there's no earthly reason to make time for this shit.
What is anyone supposed to get out of this story? Are you supposed to be entertained? Believe me, the kind of person who uses the term experimental fiction and says that that's what they write has never entertained anyone. Their work is so unlikable that they've had to make this a virtue. Entertainment would be bad. Entertainment is for simple people. Not super smart people like them who went to this school and this MFA program and pretend to read the shit in Conjunctions and NOON edited by one of our favorites, the totally amazing Diane Williams, not a ridiculous person at all with fiction so bad that it's like the perfect satire of how out of touch with reality these system people are.
Okay. Fine. Let's play along. Entertainment = bad. But surely there has to be something else then, right? Are we being educated? Helped in becoming more than we were? Enlightened? Made more sophisticated? Introduced to higher planes?
The fuck we are. This is a talentless fop doing nonsense and you know that and I know that and there isn't anyone who honestly believes differently.
I guess--I have no idea--this is supposed to be like some street thing, but as with Junot Diaz's slop, you get this forced, fake-ass lingo that is meant to be all streetwise and tough, and then you get the MFA twilled daintiness in the vocabulary.
It's so incongruous. That's because the writer hasn't a clue what they're doing. They don't have a story, they can't innovate with language, they don't have anything with which they're working.
For several weeks now, I've been working on a story called "Five Blocks." It's actually about five blocks. You know--blocks like a child plays with. Then ten blocks and then one block. Sounds kind of interesting, right? How can you write a story about five blocks? This is innovating. Honest to goodness radical newness.
It is, ironically, what these people would think of as more experimental than anything they term experimental fiction, but it's not actually experimental because I know exactly what I'm doing. I know the reason for everything in the story, which becomes this thrilling, human story, though it's about five blocks. A story both personal, as in seemingly tailored individually to a reader, but of universal scope and relevance.
Stories have a kind of architecture if they're any good. A structural manner in which they're organized. In "Fitty," for instance, there's a lot of up and down movement, as with stairs, with stairs themselves being a key part of the story. "Fitty" is oriented in the language--and in the action of the plot--on diagonal planes. The prose and the overall design has a built-in stair quality.
In "Five Blocks," the prose itself has a block-like aspect. There's a stacking both of words, phrases, and a sonic form of stacking, too. If a word repeats, that's by design, for a reason.
Let's do the beginning. Some of this was in here earlier, but it's also changed, so I think that makes us good.
There is a person. One. It does not matter if the person is a man or a woman because nearly everyone is this person so imagine them being who you please.
In front of the person are five blocks. That they are like toy blocks doesn’t make them toys. These blocks represent what the person must do. What the person feels they have to do. The perceived weight upon their shoulders. What they have determined to be their burdens on that day and for that period.
The color of the blocks has no bearing. Nor is the size of the blocks a factor. Whether the blocks are new or old. If the blocks are made of wood, plastic, or metal. If the blocks are solid or hollow.
The person will think, and they will feel, that they can’t handle more than these five blocks. That they could not take on additional blocks. They will state that they are maxed out on what they’re able to offer, say, respond to, lift, put down, because of their five blocks.
Other people will need that person. For help. Counsel. Support. For tasks big or small, the one of which may be the other. To listen. To answer. To come over. To become more alive. More human. To be helped through the process of death. To find a way to keep going.
But the person who could contribute in these areas has their five blocks with which to contend. The infernal blocks. And the five blocks make it impossible for anything else can be taken on.
This is what is believed. A belief is something that is made. It doesn’t just happen. And the person has created the belief.
Ta.
Da.
Then, of a sudden, there are ten blocks. A doubling. These may be more of the same kind of blocks that had already been in place. Or some of the same kind along with some of a new type. Types. Or all the blocks may be an all-new type. Various new types. But there are ten blocks now.
The muddling won’t cease on account of the number of blocks having doubled and a boosting of imperative. The pace will be another version of what it was. A muddle-scurry, allowing the person to believe they’re going as quickly as they can, but which ultimately keeps them from resolving, finishing, and advancing so that whatever they are doing takes the maximum of amount of time with what they consider the maximum of effort. Circles instead of straight lines.
If they took four laps previously, they’ll take eight now and tell themselves they are moving as fast as possible, without progressing, until finally, when the attempting of another circuit is understood—either consciously or not—to be risking burial by attributed block-based avalanche, they’ll take just enough short-line steps to get clear.
Look at that first paragraph of the story. You see how it empowers the reader? And how accessible it is? How eyeball to eyeball? Boom, instant involvement.
At the same time, it's an authoritative voice, not a pushover voice. We have confidence in this voice from the outset. And because we're already empowered, we know it won't be a dictatorial voice; it's a voice that's on our side, even if it's going communicate certain things that aren't strictly rah-rah hooray for us.
We have these emotional swells as well, like when we get to the modulation--really a series of modulations--in the "Other people will need" paragraph; it's like a flower opening up in series of time-lapse images. The paragraph is a true surprise. We didn't see that coming, and yet it fits perfectly. That's what you want to do--have surprises that also make for the perfect fit. It also contains so much damn life. That paragraph alone--in its ordering, orchestrations, language, math--contains more than books. "For tasks big or small, the one of which may be the other." The juxtapositions.
Note the rhythm of the prose. The rhythms within the rhythm. How we're kept moving even as we're going up and we're going down--the prevailing forward thrust. The pulse beat. There is a dominant pulse beat, but we also have instances of rubato.
Then the humor evinced with the insert of a slang phrase of four-letter duration, but cut in two and stacked like--you got it--a couple of blocks. Humor within humor.
We get these qualifications, which are really flowerings of thoroughness. This voice is taking great care. It's not firing from the hip. There's purpose in the voice, which is itself a character. Who are the characters in this story? The voice, yes. The blocks, both in number and in concept. The latter is like this shadow ghost figure hanging over the entire narrative, that shadow spreading the further we go in the story. And you. Us. We are the characters.
There's also the idea--established at the outset--that you need not think this is about yourself. When there's what could be perceived as criticism--which these days is anything that is less than full-on (and usually fake) cheering and praise--we have a tendency to want to think that others are being talked about, rather than us. And the story is set up so that the reader has that option.
But if the story does what it's supposed to do--this is the brilliance of it--then a reader who begins with that position, and who wants to hold that position, is going to come off of that position by their own accordance because of what they end up seeing in themselves with the story and how it personally ends up resonating with them. They're not being told anything about themselves; they're seeing something for themselves. That is a huge, huge, huge difference. And it's also a huge, huge, huge difference when it comes to what we'll be willing to accept. This is what great writing does. This is one of the ways it works.
The wisdom in the story speaks for itself. Here we have the very idea of what belief is redefined and established in a new way which we haven't considered. The invention of new terms with which we can all instantly identity and say, "Oh yeah," like we know exactly what is meant; "muddle-scurry," for instance.
There's no bullshit, "I do experimental fiction and you're not sufficiently intelligent to understand such cutting-edge work." This is actual cutting-edge work, fiction unlike any fiction, with no reader being left behind, or shamed, or any attempt to be conned. It's the true radical stuff. And as always, the gap between what these people do and what this other person does isn't even measurable.
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