A Jim Shepard story in The New Yorker, publishing's classism, the endless lies to self, an Alex Cora truism, tips for watching bad horror movies

Friday 6/27/25

I looked at a Jim Shepard story in The New Yorker today called "The Queen of Bad Influences," which comes from his story collection of the same name.

What that means with these talentless people is that this story is supposed to be the best in the collection. In other words, when you see that story and it sucks, you know that everything else in the book is even worse. As if you can tell when it's just across-the-board nothingness.

It floors me--it shouldn't, but it does--that there is no attempt made not to bore a reader out of their mind. There isn't anyone in the world who could thrill to this story. Any of these stories. Feel excitement for them or because of them. Have passions aroused or awakened or born.

Who the hell is this for? is what I ask myself. And I know the answer. Someone with no brains at all, who is entirely about appearance, and who wants to say they have a New Yorker subscription because that's how they pretend that they're smart.

And it's how people in the publishing industry pretend that they're sophisticated. You look at prose like this, and it's not Motorollah, Motorollah, Motorollah or that godawful, cringe-inducing Emily Nemens shit we talked about the other day, or that "I let her infest" unintentional hilarity that we saw yesterday from The Threepenny Review, but it's just white paint drying on a white wall.

But, what? Props for sentences that can be read? That's not a standard. Shouldn't there be some standards somewhere in publishing? Like, if you say you publish the best fiction in the world, shouldn't it actually have to be, you know, good? It should be great, right? Dynamic, impactful, unforgettable.

Is that beneath these venues? Having something be compelling is déclassé? That's how these people act. They act that way in part because none of them and no one amongst their ranks or in their world and their incestuously evil subculture can write anything that's great. You see how they make it about class? They always make it about class. "This is what refined people like me value." Here's the start of the Shepard story:

Throughout her childhood, Constance called the gorse that grew on the hillsides above her house “honey-bottle,” and gathered fistfuls of it despite the spines, so that her hands would smell of it, a smell that seemed to combine oatmeal and hot metal and sun. The smell was somewhat a solace when it came to her devastating shyness, a shyness that so galled her mother...

And it's like, Fuck me, because you know exactly how this is going to go...and go on, and on, and on. Droning, and droning, and droning and there will be a shitload of labored metaphors about thistle and brambles and gorse and again, Fuck me...

In addition to being a bigot, The New Yorker's Deborah Treisman is incompetent at editing at the level of the sentence. You have the word "so" twice. That's a mistake. That's not by design. This is as basic as i gets. How the fuck do you not correct that? How does that appear in print? You have "of it" twice and in close proximity. Mistakes. How is the smell a solace to her shyness? How does that work? These things are unrelated. We either must be able to make the connection on our own, because of where the writing has led us, or the writer has additional work to do. You can't just say whatever. That's not how writing works.

That's lazy writing and inept writing.

But hey, when no one truly gives a fuck, and all of this is pretend, and nothing is real here, and no one is actually reading a story to read a story, then sure, you can say whatever. Because it doesn't matter. Nothing is vetted. There are no critical eyes. Real reading isn't happening. There is, at most, status symbol reading. People reading--that is, saying they read something--for membership in a class. Or simply having the subscription set to "auto-renew." This is the auto-renew kind of reading. Which is to say, not reading all. If real reading was happening, someone like Jim Shepard would have no chance.

And she didn't call it "honey-bottle." No one called anything honey-bottle, champ. You're not clever, you're not poetic, you're not being evocative, you didn't coin anything, you're not working with any real ability, and no one gives a damn--not really.

Imagine if your writing actually had to be compelling? Where would these people be then?

"I use AI as a learning tool, like a teacher, not something to do all of my thinking for me."

No you don't, chief. Anyone who uses AI uses it to do all of their thinking for them as they become less and less able to think at all about anything, no matter how simple.

And everyone who is like this--which is fast becoming the majority and will eventually become almost everybody, such that you will never meet a person who is not this way--says words similar to the above, or would if they were pressed.

Self-awareness doesn't exist anymore. Self-honesty is close to becoming extinct, too. People have an unlimited capacity to lie to themselves.

People will find a way to think favorably about anything that allows them to do less. That is the goal of most humans in life: Do less. Try less. Be less. But still have stuff.

You'll see this in publishing. Someone will be a monster or a moron or both. But that monster or moron or both will publish First Name Last Name's work. First Name Last Name will think they're a good person, make excuses for them as a result. First Name Last Name can't create the required separation to see the monster or moron or both as what they are. Even people who aren't horrible do this.

We talk about human nature. But the thing is--and I'm not sure anyone else know this--is that you have to be better than human nature.

Intelligence has been cancelled by society.

Can you really not see that?

Where is it welcome? Where is it encouraged? Where is it economically viable? Where is it admired? Where is it rewarded?

But I think that's how I'd put it, and I'm not overstating matters in the slightest. Intelligence itself has been cancelled by our society.

Wrote an op-ed on Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush--which was released 100 years ago yesterday. It will be in the Chicago Tribune on Saturday, I believe. The piece is really about abeyance. Nothing I write when it comes to nonfiction is really about the nominal subject. The nominal subject is like a trampoline in the backyard. You look through the window, and there it is. But what the piece is actually about is the gymnast on the trampoline and what she's doing in the air. In this metaphor, those are the ideas, the insights beyond the scope of the apparatus, the language. My things are never about that nominal thing. But you will also learn more about that nominal thing than you will anywhere else and be made to be interested in that nominal thing more than with anything else even if you had never heard of that nominal thing before. And in all of this, I am unique.

More work on "Just Pants" and "Still Good." We are very close now to being done with both. They're so different from each other.

Red Sox swept by the Angels. Doesn't it seem strange to you--allowing that you have any feel for these things--that Alex Cora has managed to stay around so long despite not doing very much winning? He's been here a good long while now.

Let's say the Red Sox didn't win in 2018. Or, if one prefers, Cora first became Red Sox manager in 2019. Would he still be the manager on June 27, 2025? He wouldn't be, right? So Alex Cora is the manager right now of the 2025 Boston Red Sox because they won the World Series when he was their manager seven years ago in 2018?

That's crazy, isn't it? But there it is. How is that wrong? I don't see how someone could refute what I just said. What their points would be, or a single point. I've just put matters a different way.

Because the Red Sox are losing without Rafael Devers, Red Sox fans will say that they are losing because of Rafael Devers because people aren't intelligent enough to know or remember that they had stopped scoring when they had Rafael Devers and only won the games they did because of their pitching which was going to naturally revert back to what it is. That happened, and the low-scoring wins became losses. Sports fans have terrible memories. They have no historical awareness, because people only know what they're around for. And they know very little about that, even when it's happening, let alone after the fact, or two weeks after the fact, or two months, or two years.

I wonder how much of a chance there is of Bregman re-signing with the Sox. Fenway is a good fit for him, but players usually go for the most money they can get. Also, I suspect he wants to win, and could you think that this is a place where you would win or any winning is going to be done any time soon? He's getting on, too.

I feel like you may see a lot of busts from the top of this year's NBA draft.

I'm a little surprised that people don't make more of the violence of late in the WNBA. It's also violence with racial overtones.

I wonder if people can accept that Caitlin Clark might not be nearly as good as she's hyped as being. What if she's just pretty good? Or kind of good (there being a difference)? She's very inconsistent. Very hit or miss. She needs a lot of shots to get her points, and she has some stat lines that are the stuff of the worst games of your career, but aren't that uncommon for her.

I like her and root for her. I think she handles herself well. But I'm not sure she's all that great. For someone whose (partial) claim to fame is her shooting, she has a lot of nights where she doesn't shoot that well, and even when she gets her points, it's usually because of high-volume shooting rather than precision-shooting.

Many of the players in that league clearly hate her, too. It's plainly personal because of the attention she gets on account of the media being full of morons without souls who care nothing about content and quality but only clicks and who are too stupid to realize that that's why their product has died with nothing to do about it now because there's no cavalry of good writers and smart talkers that can save the day since everyone is now this way.

In order not to be that way, you'd have to go against everything. No one would ever encourage you, praise you, award you. You'd deal with envy and resentment. So, in addition to having been born with more talent than other people, and working non-stop to develop that talent, you'd have to be strong in ways that people aren't. What are the chances of anyone being all of those things? Having all of those qualities? There's basically no chance.

Did 100 push-ups and walked to Charlestown on Wednesday where I sat outside of the Monument, hoping it would open, despite there being no stirring of life. I was pretty much the only person on top of the hill, the flags weren't flying, and no rangers were present. A sign wasn't even hung saying the Monument was closed. I guess the weather spoke for itself. (The heat index was 92 degrees and the Monument closes at 87 degrees, but I guess I was hoping the mini-museum at the bottom would still be open and maybe a ranger would let me do my thing anyway.)

Another 100 push-ups yesterday and three miles walked, and this time the Monument was open so I did ten circuits.

Watched 2014's The Devil's Woods. Isn't it remarkable just how bad that bad things can be? Like there's no attempt to make that thing not suck, or as if the effort that is put forth is to have that thing suck. I find that when watching really bad horror films it helps to say--and one can even do this out loud--"You had it coming," no matter how innocent the person may be, or "Get over yourself," as the screams of terror play out and right on through the final complaints capped by the delivering of the mortal blow. Then the horror becomes one of "What is wrong with me?" and you can then ruminate--wryly--on various existential questions as greater entertainment.