How dare he: Reading truths

Friday 8/28/26

I read quite a few accounts of the teaching life from teachers. Today I was reading about evaluations, when someone comes into the classroom to observe how well the teacher is teaching.

These are largely farcical, but also telling about where we're at in terms of a post-reality, post-truth world where there's no discernment. People aren't capable of discerning what anything is, having made themselves this way, and then made certain to ensure that can never change, which fosters and results in these other systems of falsification in which untruths are made to stand as de facto truths, unchallenged and, because of how people have become, unchallengeable.

We see it with publishing. The Guggenheim, the Booker Prize, the rave, pre-arranged New York Times review. None of it is real, nor based whatsoever in what that thing--that writing or writer--is but is instead meant to suggest/hold the place of a real thing in the form of a proclamation, a ruling, if you will, of lofty level of achievement, quality, and worthiness.

The actual truths are intended to be obscured, gotten around, by the series of smokescreens that are in turn meant to be these indicators of veracity. That is, "It won this award, it must be good." And "This eminent venue said it was amazing, it must be." Then, when no one reads, no one thinks, no can discern if they even wanted/tried to--which they don't--these falsifications become the "truths."

They are then reinforced by apathy and the absence of critical thinking, which is practically an act of villainy and cause for gang-up style attack in today's society. The falsified "truths" of the publishing world, which is a sizable portion of its foundation, are ironically bolstered by the literary crisis. It's to the system's advantage, in terms of its upkeep and the maintenance of those would-be truths, to have people not read at all and also be unable to comprehend what they read, to know it for what it is, if and when they do.

Ideally, the system wants books to be bought but not seriously read. For books to be owned and nothing further; that is, owned to be owned and not owned to be read. Owned as some kind of symbol. A status thing. Like with a non-reader reader (which I think is an invaluable term) giving themselves a back clap for owning that book by a person with a different skin color than theirs and a trending cause (or gambit, shtick, con), as just one example.

Not only is there nothing to challenge what are meant to be "final word" truths, there isn't anyone able to see anything at all. Thus, the intended final word truths become way of being told what to say as if what you said was what you actually thought. It's trained behavior. Default behavior. It also plays on people's lack of self assurance in what they associate as more cerebral zones than what they're accustomed to back in their normal comfort zones of Love Island, Marvel movies, Netflix binges, doomscrolling, sports, etc. Who are they to question some august body, some famous award committee, especially when it pertains to something they know, deep down, they know so little about, that being literature, writing, or, if you want, "being smart."

The evaluator in these classroom situations "evaluates" what we can call the dashboard metrics. They aren't astute enough to comprehend whether the teacher is teaching a good lesson. They often won't know the material themselves, regardless if it's a third grade classroom, because, again, almost everyone is uneducated in even the basics. They won't be able to evaluate the teacher's approach because, once again, that would take some thinking/processing. Discernment. And people can't discern.

So the evaluation is based on the dashboard metrics. How many kids raise their hands to engage with the teacher/material. It's an observation potentially divorced from the meaning the evaluator automatically thinks it signifies. Or marks down on their form as such. Just like the kids sitting there, not raising their hands, doesn't automatically mean they aren't learning and engaged.

See how this is the same with publishing? We look at the absolute garbage from "name" writers, with all their awards, all their hype, all their industry support. I put that under the microscope here in doing what no one actually asks anyone else to do--and that's look at the writing for what the writing is, in the only environment designed to do that. None of the bullshit. None of the attachments. None of the distorting lenses. Let's simply look at the work.

Then we see how laughably bad at writing a Booker Prize-winner like George Saunders is, and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors like Junot Diaz and Joshua Cohen. There's no one who can read those examples--which are wholly typical of the work of these people--and say, "No, Fleming! You have it wrong! That's genius! And I'll tell you why..."

If you're of a mind, have at it. By all means, you should take something like any of those examples above, and use examples from that fiction by those three writers to show me how remarkable their writing is.

That's a laughable proposition, isn't it? I mean, look at that writing. It's an impossible thing to do. And rather than say, "Oh, shit, this stuff all sucks, what kind of system is this, what are we doing here," I am the hell spawn. Because I'm not illiterate and immoral? I'm not a moron? I'm not a liar? A grifter? A racist? A sexist? I care about writing?

And saying that that writing by those three is remarkable is a massive a lie. People like the word "literally," so let's indulge them. There is literally nothing you can say in support of a cited textual example from that writing to argue or illustrate that it's any good, let alone a work of genius.

No one has ever even tried to rally to the defense of any of it here. You don't think these people--the embodiers of envy, boosters, water carriers, frauds, rapists, embittered hags, plagiarists, country club members, jackboots, heiresses, classists--wouldn't love to if they could? That should tell you a lot.

If you're one of the good ones, fight the good fight. It's a sinking ship anyway. Wouldn't take that much if people worked together to make a much more seaworthy vessel. It doesn't have to be like this. It isn't some act of God. But it will be like this, and get worse, if nothing is done and it's just more of the same. There won't even be writing.

We're practically there now. In the rare instances at this juncture in which the writing--and it matters not the venue or the press--wasn't done by AI, it might as well have been because there's nothing to suggest in the writing itself that it wasn't produced by AI. It's time to accept where we're at and how things are, and do something. You know who you are, one way or the other. The bad and the good. The better ones are nodding along as they read this and not taking it personally, because they understand they're not being included in that rundown of system types in the paragraph above.

People often give themselves away by what they'll take offense at. What they leap to take offense at. What they knee-jerk take offense at.

But "good" doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot if you're not acting on it. When there's right to be done and you don't do it, that's a kind of wrong. Whether you're a country that chooses to remain neutral when atrocities are being committed, or you're pretending not to see what's transpiring when you're on the subway and someone is being harassed, or when you're a decent sort in publishing who turn a blind eye to very bad things on the moral level, the writerly/readerly level, and the cultural level.

A further word about this: Were I to see a statement from someone that read, "Writers aren't even good at writing now," the last thing I'd do is take offense. They aren't, for one thing. Truthfully, they seldomly have been throughout history. Nothing is harder than writing well, save writing great work. It takes so much ability and then endless dedication. The variables and what can go into it are endless.

We can talk at greater length about that later. But it takes more than what only a few humans will ever be capable of. You aren't doing anything else. You're working at this. It requires the ultimate level of commitment. And that's if you had ability in the first place. People think that ability is mostly, if not entirely, about putting words together. That's such a small part of it. You have to know how people are. How humans are. You have to know the answers behind it all.

Then you're using language, which can't only be language, or primarily language even when it retains the shapes and signs of language, to convey these ideas such that they feel personal to each individual reader, and are also universal. There's just too much for a human to be able to do and master. Very few have any idea what writing even is, or maybe I should say, what it can be. You can't dabble here. You can't just work at it ten hours a day. It isn't like anything else.

It's funny because how many hours a day do you think Kobe Bryant played basketball when he was coming up? Lot of hours, right? And if he didn't, he wouldn't have made the NBA, he wouldn't have been a Hall of Famer, etc.

How many hours a day do you think people write? All these self-professed writers? There are millions of them, next to none of whom are writers, and, additionally, few of whom are even readers. But they just slap on that label, when a writer is the last thing in the world they are.

Basketball is easier than writing. So how are you going to be great at writing if you aren't doing it for hours and hours and hours every day of your life?

You think anyone's doing that? Or I should say, you think anyone else is? Day in, day out, decade in, decade out? No way.

Besides, people just aren't like that now. We're not even capable of that, like it's been flushed out of our DNA as a possibility.

But I'm drifting. What I want to say is I wouldn't take offense because I know that person almost certainly doesn't mean every last writer and I know, in terms of reality, that the statement has nothing to do with me.

It's like when we say, "People are stupid." They are. That person doesn't mean every person, though, do they? And we know this, unless we are quite stupid, or we're trying to be contrarian because of whatever agenda we're working. Or because we don't like that person and want to give them a hard time. However it shakes out.

The people who do get offended with these statements are the people they either apply to because they're true about those people, or the people who are unsure of themselves and this feeds their self-doubt, so they lash out as a defense mechanism, with being offended serving as a form of lashing out.

The non-evil, non-moronic publishing person doesn't go, "Fuck him! How dare he talk about me like that!" because they know I'm not. They know what I'm saying is accurate as pertains to many of their fellows. But, we're talking a small group to whom this isn't applicable, because this isn't a place--this system, this industry--where good, capable people go, or even people who care at all about writing, reading, literature. Getting lost in reading.

Most of them are here because of entirely different reasons. There's no accountability, for one. They are around people like them. They're enabled. This isn't a place for truth. They can be as petty and wicked as they wish. It's the family trade. They can be terrible people with no pushback. There was nothing else they could do and fit in. Etc.

The dashboard metrics here are those awards, the publications in The New Yorker, the touting. People at large take those things to mean this completely different other thing than the reality of the thing; that is, that the writer is great, and, certainly, doesn't suck at writing, which these writers clearly do if you are willing to look at these texts divorced from noise, hype, and what you think you're meant to conclude, and can process what you see to even the slightest degree.

But now we have this idea that X, Y, and Z are what is said/maintained/counted as official, but A, B, and C are what's actually true, so A, B, and C run contrary to X, Y, and Z, the latter of which is machine-manufactured by what serves as a kind of establishment, an official-dom, town hall, if you will, or the way of the world, if you prefer, as what is expected to be believed, often through that intimidation factor that plays on people's fundamental insecurity. It becomes an act of heroism in our society to think for yourself. To think your own thoughts.

Consider all the people who read, or say they read, The Brothers Karamozov for Reddit clout and the like. You'd think this and Moby-Dick were the only great books (if that's what they are). But what The Brother Karamozov represents is "big book of major significance" to most of the people who will undertake reading it, which in turn becomes, "I'm someone smart enough to have read the big book of major significance." That's what serves as its primary function here in 2026.

What do you think would happen if The Brothers Karamazov wasn't written by Dostoevsky, but instead was written by your neighbor? Let's say your neighbor put copies of that book of his in the hands of the people who would have been posting on Reddit about The Brothers Karamazov if it had been written by Dostoevsky and represented "big book of major significance" (and following) to them. Let's say they were people who owned a bunch of "great books" and who fancied themselves intellectuals and big readers of enviable taste.

How far do you think those people reading this book, without any of the attachments--the name, the fame, the "Here is a Great Book" status--just the book as the book, would get before they gave it up? You think they'd read the whole thing and proclaim it a masterpiece? On their own? Because it was something they thought? And were willing to put that out there and stand by it? No numbers on their side, no chorus of echoing voices.

There's no way that would happen. Because they're not thinking for themselves. They're influenced by all of these other things, expectations, and also what saying they read this book can do for them in terms of a kind of recognition. They aren't reading for themselves. They're doing these other things. Not everyone. Don't be like that. Maybe not you. But you know if it's not you, just like you likely know if it is you.

Amazingly, understanding how X, Y, and Z functions, and the "there it is right in the texts of these works" proof of A, B, and C, is a form of nuanced thinking beyond almost everyone. Thus, X, Y, and Z continue on unchecked, and A, B, and C--actual reading; which is to say, reading in good faith (that is, not so you can be seen in public with some "acclaimed" book, and not so you can post somewhere how you finished some acclaimed book), while thinking, while being present--basically don't exist.

X, Y, and Z, like a cancer, attempts to consume the possibility of A, B, and C--thus removing the threat of truth--while giving the false impression that A, B, and C still exist because otherwise X, Y, and Z would just be like some order given at gun point, which is essentially how people treat and regard it, without knowing that's what they're doing. Thus, what you really get is Xa, Yb, and Zc. The a, b, and c are for show in service to X, Y, and Z. A false front. It's the skin of them hung up on tacks, without any insides, or like Leatherface going around in his flesh mask.