Wednesday 2/14/24
Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if a journalist interviewed some of the people who run literary magazines and the like. It could go something like this.
Q: Why is it so important to you to only publish fiction that sucks? That seems like a strange goal.
A: Well, Nancy, it's true, we only do publish fiction that sucks, but that's not our directly stated official goal, though it is important, and it's pretty fucking obvious, right? LOL. Good thing no one is paying attention. LOL. What matters to us is putting a certain kind of person forward, someone without any ability and who doesn't work at getting any better. A connected person who has the right kind of background and knows the right people. That's what we're really about. You could say it's a bonus that everything they write, and which we publish, sucks. We're really insecure, comically limited people. And so when we see something that sucks by someone like us, we find that comforting. And besides, no one really cares, so who's going to object? We've helped kill off reading! Ha ha.
Q: What about if someone has something that doesn't suck?
A: That's very bad. It can be quite frightening and then you have to go to the therapist even more and spend extra time cuddling with your cats while wine guzzling and it's so hard to find that time with everything that people like me don't write--because I'm a writer, too, don't forget!--and all of the things we never do. Ugh. No one wants to feel worse about themselves. No, we like to stick with what sucks from the right kind of person.
Q: What about if someone has won a lot of awards in publishing? Does that make you feel bad about yourself?
A: Oh, no, because we're not threatened by that person because it's not like what they write is great. We could do what they do, is how we feel, so that could be us winning those awards. And if we get back to writing, maybe someday it will be! Plus, they're super special because that's what everyone in our subculture pretends, and when I lie and tell you I love that person's work, well, it's like I'm super smart and maybe others will think that, too, because I understand these smart person things, and in actuality, I'm so fucking dumb, and this is how I have to pretend. We call it win-win.
Q: Can I submit a story?
A: Sure! We're not friends and going by your questions which haven't included a lot of taint-tonguing I know you're not the right kind of person for us--and I saw where you went to school, and I don't think you come from money, which is also important, but here, let me check...Oh, dear, that's a plastic spoon I see and we prefer silver LOL, the kind of person who lives in Greenwich, not just drove through there once, if you know what I mean double LOL. So what I'm going to have to ask you to do is pay us $3 so you can upload your story and some loser on staff who's like a junior version of me can automatically form reject you, because the truth is, the only way we can make any money is with our scam where we take $3 from everyone, when the people who are going into our exquisite journal that no one reads because it's all just work that sucks are sending that work to me directly, and I'm not even fucking reading it, they're just the right kind of person so I slap their meaningless shit in. We take several different kinds of credit cards. Thank you. By the way, don't forget to tell your readers that we've had a bunch of stories published in Best American Short Stories, because you wouldn't believe how important that is.
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