Thursday 12/19/19
Text chain. The first text was but a link. Added, between-brackets commentary is for the purpose of this website and its readers. The rest is a faithful transcription. This, by the way, is not what many people like to call an "outlier." This is typical. The now-norm.
C: [link to comically bad--but also terrifyingly bad, because this is what an industry pretends is great--George Saunders story in the August 12 issue of The New Yorker, which no one could actually believe is good, or is art, or is entertaining, and anyone who says they think any of these things is lying. Don't believe me or how I could say that? It's not me saying it, really, that matters, because the work, and how self-evidently, undeniably awful it is, does all the work for me, and says it all for itself, what it really is. Want to be contrarian and insist, going in, that I'm trying to be difficult? Want to think I am trying to stir things up? I'm not trying to stir up anything, I'm not being difficult. Click on the link. We could do this with almost every publication in existence that publishes fiction right now, and we could do this with almost every book that is touted by these people as "brilliant," "explosive," which they put atop their lists, give their awards, pump up with cream puff reviews that are guaranteed to be glowingly positive for the system people of the industry, reviews that are all but written before the work even comes out, mash notes written on autopilot. There is nothing real in American publishing heading into 2020, and the last thing that matters in this industry is actual ability. It is irrelevant, save that ability will hurt you. Right now. Something I am trying to fix. Something I will fix. But in the interim, almost all of it is like this. Almost all of it is awful. Almost all of it is unreadable at worst, or mediocre, prosaic, safe as milk, at best. Lifeless. A placebo. A blank slate of meaninglessness on which one can project any BS one wishes, which helps people not to think, feel, care, or be invested, and publishing people hate to think or feel or face the reality of life. And this helps publishing people strike their poses and sound the latest notes of their siren song of pretentiousness, which they need to do so that they can feel like they are smarter and better than you are. And this is why nobody reads anymore. It's not because of Netflix, it's not because of short attention spans. It's because this kind of work is what the publishing industry tells you is great, and if you do actual great work, they will hate you, they will seek to block you, they will blackball you, they will fear you, envy you, and try to keep you from the world. The better you are, the more they will lock arms against you to keep you out. They will not let you join in their reindeer games of what is tantamount to a sick subculture/cult. Go ahead. Click the link. That is touted as the best fiction in the world in 2019. Did you enjoy that? How far did you get? Did you make it through half a dozen sentences? No. Of course you didn't.]
J: Holy fuck
J: Are you fucking with me
C: No.
J: What the fuck is going on here
J: The New Yorker runs that shit and won't respond to you
C: 4-time National Magazine story of the year winner. He'll win a Pulitzer eventually. A god to them.
J: Seriously I feel like I'm dreaming right now
J: Like I'm going to wake up in a minute
C: The fiction department does respond to me. Or used to. David Wallace Wells gives me a token "not quite right for us." They want the above over "Fitty." I'd say, "think about that," but you don't need to.
C: So, that is better than any story I have ever written. It's almost funny, if it wasn't such a hell-space nightmare of inverted sanity that is my waking existence.
J: This just proves, yet again, how fucking broken these people are
C: Broken with all the power.
J: Disturbing
J: Let's play artist
J: Here let me give it a go
J: Hand
Foot
Dick
Yet I say it again
But why do I say it again
Cuckold.
J: Art baby
J: I want my awards
C: That's pretty good. He got a $500K genius grant.
J: I feel sick honestly
J: Like nauseous
C: He's twenty years older than us. Finally wrote a novel. He could have pissed on the page and if he pissed on enough of them and it was called a novel he was getting nominated for a Pulitzer. All he had to do was provide the piss. And so he did, and so he was.
J: No bullshit that makes me actually feel sick.
