What they are

Thursday 6/27/24

A way to look at the world is thusly: You know that kid in your class at school who was an idiot? He was loud. He wasn't as funny as he thought he was. Didn't want to. Didn't want to pay attention. Put forth zero effort. Had no respect for others. No respect for the teacher who was doing her best at her job. Wanted to be noticed. Acted out. You knew he wasn't going anywhere. Was a pain in the ass. Someone who was never going to grow up.

The world caters to that guy. That person. Everything is set up, devolves, so that that guy can be fine.

That's the meaty part of the humanity curve. And the world is about tending to the meaty part of the curve. He's taken care of by the world. The world doesn't leave him behind. Because then the world is leaving just about everyone behind. This is a metaphor. I'm not talking about that literal person you might be remembering now from school. Or if I am, multiple him by many millions.

You have to think about these things. You have to be aware. A writer has to be aware. And none of them are, because they don't care about readers. They care about themselves. They care about lying to themselves. They care about being lied to.

But they don't actually care about readers, by which I mean, the experience that a reader has in reading their work. Could have. Should have. They're too selfish. Too narcissistic. Too shallow. They have nothing to offer and they know it.

Nor does publishing care about readers as people having a reading experience. It's not about readers having a reading experience. Or getting readers or selling to readers. It's about gatekeeping. It's about "are you one of us." It's about control and power.

"You get to pass because you are like me. You do not get to pass because you are better than me and I don't like that."

These are the stakes and the interests for publishing folk: What pertains to gatekeeping and the ego and pettiness involved therein.

Money is not a criteria. There is no money. Commerce is irrelevant. Business is irrelevant. There aren't readers. Should there be? Why? Modern fiction doesn't give anyone a reason to read any of it. And it's all the same. It's done by the same kind of person who knows nothing, goes to the same school, goes to the same writing program, has the same instructors.

What do you expect here? Originality? Why would you ever expect that? These writers are just fictionalizing their lives. What are their lives? Why should that be of any interest to any of us? Why should we care about your fiction which is really about you at Yale or you being a writer in Brooklyn?

It's not and we don't.

So it's like having a store that sells something people don't buy and people don't want. They're not going to be into any of it. The product is dreadful. The people who make the product are taught in schools how to do so and then teach in those schools so they can make money teaching others to make the awful product.

Round and round and round it goes. They recruit the broken, shallow, narcissistic for these programs. People who are too scared to live life. People like them.

Then those people come to fantasy camp in lying land. Where it's all bullshit. They join up. They get their party card. You don't have to be anything real--you can still be told that you're that thing. You can be nominated for a Pushcart Prize, which means less than being the child who wins at bobbing for apples at the birthday party, and put that in your Facebook bio.

There's no reason for anyone to want any of this writing even if this was something people did voraciously--reading, that is.

Soon I'm going to show you how bad one of the people who was nominated for a Pulitzer prize in fiction recently is at writing. I'm going to show you how hyper-connected they are. I'm going to show you the boxes they checked. The surface level boxes. Not the ability box. How predictable that writing is, too, in the ways that it's bad. (Takes us all of three lines before the first person narrator tells us they're at Yale in the excerpt I'll put up.) I'm going to show you that none of this had anything to do with this Pulitzer Prize nominated author's writing, which is itself a form of nothingness--there's nothing there--however you look at it. And look at it we will.

But the store remains outside of the town where most of the people live. Where the rest of humanity is. The store is way, way out there in the margins. The furthest parts of the margins. Why is it still there? To carry people along who are accustomed to a certain way of living and their privilege. To subsist as long as possible on money from dead people. Money that was left behind. Blue-blood money. Legacy money. Trust funds for the system members. Money from the university. The state. Vanity money.

This isn't business like we think of business. We think of business as pertaining to goods or services that we might need or desire that are on offer to us. We pay money for those good or services because we've determined they're what we want or require. The seller has a nice product or does a great job. This is commerce. It's a symbiotic relationship. Both parties are meant to be happy with the business they do with each other. The happy customer has reasons to keep coming back to that business.

There's no one reading. You don't have reasons to come back to FSG to get another book of Lydia Davis ridiculousness. No one outside of the store in this analogy cares. And the people inside of the store couldn't give a toss about the people outside of it. They just want control within their four walls. A reputation within them. A title. They want to be at the gate and in charge. They want supplication. They don't want to be accountable. They don't actually want to have to be good things for real. But they want to be treated like they are these things. They demand it. Like a birthright. Even if they're the last person on earth who is that thing.

They'll take revenge against someone without that someone even having done anything to them. Here you will find what is really a form of proactive revenge put in practice because of how someone else makes them feel by being something real and good.

The working components of this form of revenge are pettiness, cowardice, clannishness, getting others to join in the locking of arms so as to keep someone else out, no questions asked, but simply because they're also one of them.

And lies. Lies issued, stated, expressed, offered up, as if by a reflex. Automatic lying. From people living a lie, with all of the additional lies necessary for the upkeep of that most fragile form of self.

Let me ask you something. Little sidebar. So I have this book. You've been seeing some excerpts of it. Starts with "Fitty," which I sent to a publisher of mine a couple weeks ago with a heartfelt letter.

You know what a "Hey, man" letter is? Doesn't have to be a man thing. But it's a lean in close type of letter. You're saying, as one human to another, This is serious. Please hear me out. It's not just a business letter. It's like a life letter. You're writing it for a special reason. There's a need. And it's not a personal need. Or it wasn't here. Sometimes it's a "This is really important, it's bigger than the both of us, I'm just asking you to take twenty minutes and look at this" thing.

I've done two books at this press. I'm just being factual here. I'm not editorializing. I'm not putting anyone on blast. This isn't bashing anyone. Okay? But he ignored that email, though the liking of cute animal photos on Instagram is a priority.

You're not dealing with serious people with a commitment to great writing. These are statements of truth. I don't want them to be true. But they are. Even if that writing could do good in the world. Could change it. Save lives. In the case of "Fitty."

That writing could be the best thing anyone has ever done. But it doesn't matter.

In this case, we have a unique writer in a unique situation, with his unique track record, his unique body of work, his unique range. We could be pumping out these books of all sorts, two, three a year. Max out while he's in this situation which a person has to believe he's going to get out of, because it's that guy. There's next to no cost in the doing of what I just said. A big check isn't being cut. There's no one like this artist. It's a special situation. Make the most of it. Dazzle. Blow minds. Remember when he did this book? Well, here's its opposite. Stories, memoir, book on writing, novel, novelettes, shortest works possible, music writing as art, book on literature, personal essays, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The book which begins with this story called "Fitty" about a gay teenage girl who goes by that name and her teacher Carlene is called There Is No Doubt: Story Girls. It's the best work of female-centered art ever created. Among other things. It's by no means limited to a female audience. It's for the world. We'll do some more prose offs with material from it, too. But that's what I believe it to be. It's what I know it to be. And there's nothing that compares to it.

But okay. Let's say you want to rail against that notion. Maybe you're one of these people who want me dead or whatever it may be. Fine. Granted, you want me dead because this is all true, but let's pretend it's just really good. Or better than most books. B+. This female-centered book written by the athletic-looking straight white male sitting here at the desk with the Red Sox hat on backwards right now.

What do you think is going to happen if I take that book to an indie, to a university press, to however low-level a place, one which wouldn't pay me a dime, where it wouldn't have a chance to reach people (or a major--doesn't matter; the reasons everything are done here are the same everywhere), and the editor there has four names, purple hair, all the pronoun stuff happening in her bio, an MFA, loves AWP, etc.

What chance do you think that book has? From the guy who has published in everything and now stands before someone who hasn't done much at all, who gets to decide yea or nay to him. And it's really to him. More than the book, it's about the person with the book with these people. He's published every kind of writing. The fiction guy is the op-ed guy is the sports guy is the music guy is the film guy and so forth. Radio guy. Despite being hated and locked out. That's still what has happened. Thousands of things.

And who looks like I look. Which, amazingly, actually matters. They want you to fit to these molds they have in every which way. Someone who is not one of them. Who is not a member of their sinecures, produces constantly, wrote the longest single work in history (which is a fact) in between writing his actual work of 500 stories, twenty books, who knows how many features, over just the last six years.

Which begs the question, "Holy shit, what would be going on here if everyone wasn't against this guy? Or, gasp, he was being put forward? He had an actual chance?" The guy who doesn't write like any of these people write. Who writes for people. It'd be like a tidal wave takeover, wouldn't it? Where would it stop? What can't he do better than anyone else? What doesn't he know more about than anyone?

Now how do you think it's going to go with that person at the press with me and my work? Be it the B+ or the best book there is? No chance, right? What would have less of a chance?

The answer is nothing. Actually nothing. Literally nothing, if you prefer.

Let's look at this from another angle of their point of view.

My book isn't going to sell any copies because the press isn't in a position to sell copies of books. Nor is that the press's aim. That's not why they're there. What do I bring you, then? It's not money. You're not going to get behind the book. The book won't have a chance. It will exist. But no one--or virtually no one--will know it exists. Something would have to happen in order for its chance to eventually come. With that chance, everything changes. But now we're talking about vision. These people don't have vision. All things are equal in the sense that this isn't going to sell, that isn't going to sell, no one is going to care about any of it. Decisions are then made based upon other things. How that writer makes that editor feel about themselves, for instance. If that writer is deemed to be like that editor: "one of us."

There aren't readers anyway. What readers there are, or could be, are reached through huge marketing campaigns, appearances on The View, blurbs from Reese Witherspoon and the like, pushes in which many, many, many people try to have something happen for a writer. No matter how godawful the book. No matter that no one is going to like it. The push is made. The sales happen. People don't like the book. Some pretend that they do for internet posturing and clout, like they're "so smart," or whatever, but that speaks more to their own emptiness than what they're sitting there reading on a Wednesday night, having looked forward all day to getting back to their book.

That's how books get bought. The concerted effort of the marketing push. With many people and many dollars behind that push. Those books then die, because no one cares about them, they're not any good and they don't offer anything. They don't have legs. That's not why they were marketed the way they were. It wasn't because anyone in publishing thought, "This is good, people should see this, they'll love it."

My book isn't going to sell--right now, until this situation changes, and then we start for real, and it's a whole different ballgame--and whatever other book that place puts out isn't going to sell.

We're not exactly left with an insoluble mystery as to how it's decided what book is getting done.

Do you think that editor is some deep believer in great literature and they're committed to putting the best work out there and trying to do what they can on its behalf, or do you think they want to allow people to pass who are like them? Who are on their level? Who don't make them feel bad about themselves or threatened or inferior or envious? Who are a member of the group? Who fit those molds.

I could give you a name. I could put it right here. I'm thinking of someone right now. There are thousands of such people, but as I've written this, I've had this one person in my sights in my mind's eye. I could then let the above play out as an experiment. I can tell you what is going to happen before it does, just as I can tell you why. Then it would. I'd have the email response from that individual. Or I could say, "She didn't even respond." I could then go to that venue's website, look at the first book of fiction in the new release section that had been approved and put forward by that same editor, and it will be by a writer who has the cats, who has the right look, has the pronouns, is likely to do the skin color thing and/or has the word diaspora in there, and that author will have four career publications at age forty-nine in made-up sounding venues like The Goldfish Bowl Review, Crystalline Tabletop Review, The Soft Moss Journal.

Why do you think it would have gone that way? Because that editor thought that other person was a better writer with a better book? More commercial potential? More appeal? Come on.

Everything here is some form of what I just described. Every award, book deal, The New Yorker, Guggenheim, Pulitzer. It's how the whole system works.

This scenario--which I could turn into a factual result in less than a week and possibly hours or or even minutes--would play out exactly as I'm saying. I can tell you how the email would read before it came. When it did, if you hadn't been paying attention to these pages over the six years' of this journal's existence, you'd think I was some seer. But this is nearly as much of a given as the sun coming up.

Then I could take an excerpt from that book that this publisher did put forward and post it in an entry in this record, and it would be Motorollah bad. Guaranteed. I could then put an excerpt from my book right next to that excerpt. As a comparison. And it would be as clear to me, to you, and to that editor, the difference in quality. That editor would be mortified, worried, stressed. They'd hope that not too many people saw that post. They'd hope it wouldn't start moving up on Google and that the link to that page in this journal wouldn't become the first thing--or close to it--that someone saw about them.

They'd know it was all true. They'd know they were busted. They wouldn't do anything. They couldn't do anything. They wouldn't even say anything. Because they'd know what had gone down and why just as well as I do.

This is how it works. It's all it is. This shit.

Why do you think no one takes me on? Because they don't hate me? Of course they hate me. Not because of anything I've done to them. If you went through my emails over twenty-five years, you'd find the most professional, polite, impressive letters you could ever see. Even ring-kissing letters. They hate everything I stand for and can do. Everything good and just these people will hate. They hate legitimacy. Genius. And look at what they do. Look at how they behave. Look at a Lorin Stein. They don't take me on because they know it's all true.

Back to the store. So what then? What's it about? Why is the store still there? Why are people going to work? As such. Power. Ego. Insecurity. Gatekeeping. Trumped up self-importance. You will have a much harder time faking self-importance somewhere else than you will here. Where everyone is doing it. And there are no standards. No performance expectations. The worst book can win the Pulitzer. None of it is real.

But you have to be aware of the nature of people and what the world is comprised of. People can be reached. And great art can reach them. But you must know people for what they are.