y dont u just submit

Wednesday 10/30/24

No matter how clear something is, no matter how many times you've stated matters, explained them, nor how thoroughly you've done, you can't assume people will understand.

What you can do, though, is always take the opportunity to attempt to get things across so that they are understood.

Just now, having written two new op-eds, I received an email from one "gayumm," aka, "me," saying,

y dont u just submit under a pseudonym to all these places if they're all poisoned against u

so I'll hit on this before I run stairs.

Here's how it works. As if this needs to be said again, but I'll say it, especially as there are new readers here every day.

These people at these literary journals (with their virtually nonexistent circulations) publish their friends. Their cronies. People like them. The pseudonym has nothing to do with it. Or, it wouldn't help. They are looking after their own. They want, too, to look at someone and think, "This person is like me." They don't want to look up. In any way. They don't want to see work any better, let alone infinitely better, than their own.

So there's that.

It's also a scam. A clip joint.

These venues charge money in order to submit. They're pay either no money or very little money and often in contributor copies (one or two).

They are read by either no one or very few people. The few people who do read these places don't really read them. They're people in the same system. They look at things. At most. I mean, look at this shit. Look at the shit that starts these prose offs. You think anyone in the world is actually reading any of the work that kicks off each of those prose offs? Why would they?

People are out there reading Motorollah?

Please.

There is no point for my work to be in their journals. (Which are almost also all that exist, when it comes to publishing short fiction, because these same people have killed off reading, and, more importantly, they've killed off writing; if you're going to write, you go into this system, you write like these people write, and you never become a good writer, which takes endless dedication and the correct methods and motivations to even start to become a good writer, which is different than a great writer, which is not the same as being a more than great wrier, and on it goes).

My work is for the world. Or not exclusively these journals. Doesn't hurt me to be in them. But also doesn't really help me.

But: These people are indicative of the system and how it works. They represent what it's about. The system works this way in all parts of that system. And these same people at these journals are involved in other things. The Paris Review publishes some wretched dreck that race hustles, and the Guggenheim people dish out a grant.

I also have hundreds of available works. So it's not like I only have two or it takes me six years to write something. I got mega-surplus. I can spare some stories to have their first, very small step in the world be with a literary journal few will see and essentially not a single member of the general public. I also have a case to make on here. A public case. It's like a legal case.

I don't just say things. I don't level baseless accusations. I don't react out of anger. Emotion. It's impossible to get me to take bait. Everything is controlled. It's not for one reason. It's for a reason on top of a reason on top of a reason.

Because I am going to take down their system. This is part of that process.

And I'm going to get to the world, with something actually worth reading. Mountains of things worth reading.

Further: If they weren't hooking up their friends and their cronies, if they weren't playing at quid pro quo--because that's how they do just about everything--they are looking at gender. Skin color. Buzz word things.

And everything--and this includes both when they know someone and when they don't--comes back to two fundamental questions for these people: Are you like me? Are you one of us?

Also: Everyone who comes out of an MFA program--and that's everyone in these journals--writes the same way.

When we look at these prose offs, what stands out? The difference quality, of course. But also just the difference. In everything.

Nothing I write sounds like this meaningless, MFA-machined fiction. All things being equal, they prefer meaningless, MFA-machined fiction. It's what they're taught to do themselves as writers, it's what they do, it's what they look for. It's all they know.

But what they're really doing is looking at other things. How do I know you? Do we have the same agent? Where'd you go to school? Do you come from money? What's your pigment? Are you a miserable, talentless, pretentious douchebag like I am?

They want you to look a certain way.

Now, I realize I shouldn't dignify the likes of such a note with a response. And I'm not really. But like I said, when there's an opportunity to spell things out again, that can be useful.

I'm not playing for what's at stake in their little sandbox games. I'm not playing for zero readers. I'm not playing so I can say I've been in such and such. I've been in everywhere. Just about. I'm playing for much bigger things.

And the idea that you're supposed to pay these people money? I'm going to pay all of them? How much should I pay them? A thousand dollars? $10,000? What should I allow that to add up to?

Do you think the people they're putting in--their cronies--are paying them money?

I went to Brown once to meet with Brian Evenson back when he taught there. Sat in his office. Told me that Bradford Morrow, the editor of Conjunctions--where Evenson was an editor at the time--just hooks up all his friends or friends of friends.

I know he hooks up all of his friends and friends of friends. I can read. I have Google. I know these people. I know their careers, their schools, their associations, their relationships.

I know how everyone is getting everything that they're getting--being given. I've done this for almost thirty years. I work twenty hours a day, seven days a week. I know what's what. Into the deepest, in-the-margin cracks of this shit show that is this evil subculture that's "literary" publishing right now. There's no one on earth who has ever known anyone better than I know these people. And Brian Evenson operates the same way.

These journals are taking money--American Short Fiction is a perfect example--from other people--it's theft--because they bring in no money otherwise. You think Jamel Brinkley busted out his credit card to have those two bigoted women in Adeena Reitberger and Rebecca Markovits at American Short Fiction so much as consider his story?

If you are honestly that dumb, I don't know what to tell you. And if people can be that dumb, I guess I just feel sadder still for the world.

So I'm going to use a fake name, and pay money, to be automatically form rejected, and lose money, because I'm not that person's crony, and I don't write this shit, so, in case, what? Best case scenario, the exception of exceptions transpires, they take the single story, for which I've paid them money, I've made no money, no one reads the work, and I'm not exposing these people?

Does that make any sense? Why would I do that? So maybe I could be in the Alaska Quarterly Review? Why? I have the history with these people. They're evil. I've done nothing to them. My conduct is above reproach. And you have examples of their behavior. Imagine the rest of what goes on?

I'm not some MFA schlub looking to be the in the Bottletooth Review so I can brag to some colleague down the hall of my English department.

Let's be extra-thorough. For people who don't know. For the public who wouldn't know about anything that happens in this subculture or the world of publishing.

By and large, the only venues for short stories--to appear individually, that is, not in book form (more on this in a second)--are what re known as literary journals. Do you know what a literary journal is? If you're not in this world, you almost certainly do not.

A literary journal looks like a book. Doesn't look like a magazine--usually. Typically, these literary journals are housed in English departments at universities. Post Road, for instance, is at Boston College. The VQR is at the University of Virginia. The Iowa Review is at the University of Iowa. The Missouri Review, with our friend Speer Morgan, is at the University of Missouri. The Georgia Review with editor Gerald Maa is based out of the University of Georgia.

These journals come out either once, twice, thrice, our four times a year. The ones that come out four times are called quarterlies.

Literary journals are rarely to be found in bookstores. The bookstores you do see them in are likely to be in Brooklyn where so many of these people live. You've almost certainly never seen a literary journal for sale in any bookstore you frequent or have ever been in.

The literary journals are comprised of essays, nonfiction pieces, poems, and stories by people who are in academia in almost every instance. People who went to school, then graduate school for an MFA--meaning that they're a master--which is hilarious--at fiction or poetry or memoir writing--I'm being serious. So where do you find these journals? They're in English departments. Or you order them.

This is what there is for reading individual works of fiction. These places. Then you have The New Yorker. That comes out once a week. So that's a lot of stories each year--over fifty. The Atlantic. Harper's where Christopher Beha--who is soon going to be featured in a prose off (looking forward to that, Christopher?; I'm sure you'll look like the brilliant writer you are; right?)--is. The Sun is a monthly out of Chapel Hill and looks like a cross between a newspaper and a magazine. Feels like a newspaper, but is the size of a magazine. That's where you'll find editor Sy Safransky, who founded The Sun.

Most of the contributors to these literary journals are people who are a product of the MFA system and many of them teach in MFA programs. It's just the snake sucking its own tail. These literary journals have websites, where a limited amount of content is available.

So when I say no one reads these magazines--journals--it's because no one does. They're not for the public. They're for these people. And their reindeer games. Their bullshit. Their power trips. And, of course, their awful, awful, awful writing. Away from prying eyes.

See how insular all of this is?

Stories can be in books as a group of stories by this one author. But these people are so bad at writing, and all of their stories suck, that it's easy for publishers to say, "Not doing a book of stories!" The genius, with the amazing works, gets the trickle effects of the shitty writing of these people. I don't write story collections. I write books. Some of those books have stories in them. But they're books. And none of those stories are like any of the things these people do.

Which is very obvious to anyone who looks at anything by any of them, and anyone who looks at anything by me.

When stories are in books now, as collections, it's almost always a race thing. Skin color. The race hustle. A publishing person says, "Oh, they're [blank]!!!! I should sign this! They do the color thing and use the buzz words!!!"

That's the level of racist you are dealing with.

So I just wanted to be very clear here about the venues. What is out there.

Back to what we were talking about.

The irony is that you can counteract me, offset me--when it comes to you, that editor--by simply playing fair. Or, really, just by not being a bigot. or putting your bigotry aside. You could keep hating me all the while. You get the work that's better than anything you run, and I get what? No money. Those two contributor copies. You're not going up in these pages, because you knocked it off. In essence, you make out, and you neutralize me.

Patrick Ryan and Will Allison could have done that at any point. And that would have been one and done given the One Story format, and trust me, what you saw yesterday is just things getting started in exposing those two. It ain't gonna be one and done. Our friend Raluca Albu, who has a new job for herself--and wait until you learn what it is--could have done it.

That's how pathological the hatred is. This man is as professional as a person can be. He is as kind as a person can be. Decent.

But regardless, using a false name doesn't mitigate against those other realities of their system.

And does that sound like me anyway? Because to me it sounds cowardly. Anonymity. Fake names.

Do I strike you as a coward?

Now, if we're talking The New Yorker, which isn't one of these literary journals, how do you think that works? I'm being simplistic because I'm sure everyone who reads these pages now knows how that works. Or just about everyone. Not just The New Yorker, but let's use them as a an example, because they're not a literary journal.

There is nothing--ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever--that comes in through the slush--as it's called--that they publish. It's all a done deal ahead of time between connected people and the agent and the timed to the book coming out and all of that. They're not plucking something out of the mail by Gaston Gason and putting that in there. That's not how it works. And you know what? Yes, there are bigger circulation numbers, of course, with The New Yorker, and there's some money--though it's not amazing money in and of itself--but who is really reading that fiction? People subscribe to The New Yorker, for the most part, to confer prestige upon themselves.

Because look at the shit they publish. Right?

Want to look at and/or revisit that prose off from the other day again between the story The New Yorker published by Joshua Cohen--Guggenheim winner, Pulitzer winner--and the Fleming story?

How obtuse would you have to be to think that if Joshua Cohen hadn't written that garbage, but I had--which I would never do, because I could never write something that bad, but play along--and mailed it in as Gaston Gason that it'd appear in The New Yorker's pages?

Is anyone actually simple-minded enough to think that's how this goes?

It's there because Joshua Cohen's name is at the top and it's all a fait accompli/rigged/done deal.

Also: How can anyone look at any of the examples in the prose off by these writers and think that that work appeared where it did because someone, or a group of people--editor and/or editors--thought it was awesome?

This work is so bad that it's plainly--I can't think of anything more obvious--there for other reasons. So what that means is this isn't about the quality of the work. Ergo, having great work doesn't remedy the problem. It actually makes matters worse--much--given how these people are. How small they are. How petty. How insecure. How broken.

But at least The New Yorker wouldn't charge you money (or they didn't used to--I haven't checked) to have them automatically form reject you. That's what the literary journals do, as the editors publish the equally shitty stories by their friends and people like them, who aren't paying to submit.

This is about accountability and change and readers and the world. Not paying thieves and bigots.

You want to take something of mine, fine. The things are offered now, primarily, so that they can say they were offered, legally. If someone takes it, that shuts that down. Is that good? It doesn't really help me. No one reads these venues. No one is going to. They don't pay you. But, I have hundreds of stories, so if I "lose" some, not really a big deal. Send me the fifty bucks and the two copies.

The other salient takeaway here is that you can say all that I've said in these pages--the above is overwhelmingly redundant in that it's been covered and gone over time and again--and there are still people who will say the likes of what you just saw. Which is itself remarkable. Predictable, but remarkable.

And even if it wasn't spelled out--which is it, abundantly--the dots are so close together as to be superimposed. Everything I just said is common sense. That wasn't brilliant. That wasn't "Oh, he's doing his genius thing." It was no different than sticking your hand outside and feeling water on it and then remarking that it's raining.