Observations from inside the Bunker Hill Monument with appearances by Gregory Cowles of The New York Times Book Review, a human variant of K-Y jelly, and Ted "Don't Call Me Killer" Genoways

Monday 11/17/25

The Bunker Hill Monument reopened at last on Saturday. I had showered and eventually set off for Charlestown for what was intended mostly as a reconnaissance mission, as I just didn't have confidence that the Monument would be open after having been closed the two prior days, but it was, so at about 1:15 I got the word to go in (people had been there right at one o'clock when they opened, and only twenty-five people are allowed inside at once) and did five circuits in a reasonable amount of time at a steady pace.

That's actually pretty good. Yes, I've been running stairs at City Hall, but they're not the same and the muscles employed aren't the same either. Different sets of stairs can be like that. I was even a touch sore yesterday, in the calves, mostly. I walked seven miles, did 150 push-ups, and returned to the Monument for another five circuits. These I did in twenty-eight minutes, which is a decent pace if you're in middle-of-the-season Monument shape. It's a pretty good sign of fitness, but it'll take me a little while--though I'm fast-tracking this--to get back to where I was.

One person said to the person they were with, "He's in good shape and we're not," as they stepped aside to let me pass, which was considerate. Most people are unbothered by how slow they are. If they want to stop to rest, they won't even go to the side, like they expect you to wait however long they feel like standing there. And often they don't see or hear you, despite you being right next to them.

People basically aren't sentient beings anymore, and they're so wrapped up in themselves that they think everything is about them, is made for them, exists to serve them, and wait on their whims. And that means that you are, too. There's no shame, no manners, no consideration. People are incapable of thinking about anyone else than themselves, or even granting that anyone else but them exists. Then they complain about whatever they complain about, not having a clue that they are the biggest problem in a world that is just problems now.

But in case you were wondering if Americans inclined to step inside the Bunker Hill Monument had become less corpulent, less rude, less self-centered, less witless, in the past month and a half, the answer would be a resounding "no." Do you know how many of these obese idiots make a joke of, "Imagine if there was a slide to the bottom?" thinking that no one else has ever made this joke save them? More than half, I'd say, do.

How are we so large? Seriously? Why is such a high percentage of us that large? It's laziness. People don't want to do anything. They sure as hell won't think, so do you think they're going to tax themselves by moving their bodies when they can just sit there? Their whole lives are a version of just sitting there.

And all of the bad jokes. There are like four go-to jokes in the Monument. It's always the same jokes. And the maker of that joke will think as they say the joke that they are the funniest person there has ever been. It's something to behold. They honestly believe their joke is unique and inspired, and has certainly not been made by five other people I passed within the last five minute.

To wit (or not):

"Can't say I skipped leg day har har har har har."

There are no leg days for you. You're not funny, you will never be funny, your wife doesn't love you. She just wanted to have kids before it was too late. Neither of you have any actual friends. You add nothing to humanity. You know nothing, read nothing, will never learn anything, can't teach your kids anything, and you are almost certainly an awful and lazy parent doing nothing more than fobbing more versions of your useless self on the world, but probably even worse than you given that everything else--again, parenting, the school systems, standards, literacy, effort, achievement, merit--are getting worse and/or going away completely, in part because of people like you and the resulting society and culture of a world filled with such people and little to nothing else.

Wrap up at the Monument for people like this, and it's on to Mike's Pastry, after a car is called because who wants to walk after the ponderous amount of exercise involved in taking twenty minutes to ascend and descend an obelisk?

Does this sound rancorous? It's not my fault this is the truth of the matter and that I have eyes and ears and use them.

I know that heart disease is the number one killer, but it is kind of weird when you see people that more of them aren't dropping dead in front of you a dozen or so times a year. And their bodies are in better shape than their minds.

But I think the most depressing thing in the Monument, and which says so much about Americans and people now, is that it's virtually impossible for someone who sees me doing what I'm doing and has to open their fat mouth to comment on it, not to ascribe the number of times that they've noticed me to the number of times I've done what I'm doing, as if there was no greater truth in the world, both unimpeachable fact and solid gold gospel.

That is, people are so mindlessly narcissistic, that they cannot conceive of me being there, doing what I'm doing, before they arrived. Everything, in other words, starts with them.

Do you know how stupid you have to be to think that? Most people are too stupid to understand that sentence. Any sentence. This is just reality, and I don't know what to do about it, because I'm dependent on them not being that stupid. I can only go so far as the shortcomings of those people allow me to go.

And observation? Please. I can be drenched in sweat, with drops flying off of me, my clothes weighted down with visible wetness, and if someone has only been in there long enough to see me doing two circuits, they'll announce to their group, like they're Balboa first espying the Pacific, "This is his second time up."

Someone could rob a bank dressed as Grimace, and no one who was there would be able to tell you what he looked like or even what color he was. Hell, in that situation, eighty percent of the people would have been staring at their phones anyway and not noticed anything amiss whatsoever.

In all of the years I've been running stairs in the Monument, I'd say there's maybe been five times someone who felt a need to comment on the number of circuits I was making allowed that it might have been more trips than they themselves had personally been on hand for.

And if you think people are capable of saying, "That's at least his second trip," I'd respectfully submit that you're not paying much attention to how people speak and can speak. Qualifiers are rare in American letters, language, and communication styles now. People don't even know how to use "in," "of," and "from"--basic prepositions--properly.

Think I'm wrong? Start paying attention when you see those words now. You know how you read something and it just seems off, so your brain shuts down rather than trying to figure out what that person is saying and you bail because you have no confidence in what they might say further down the page (post)? It can be because they use "in" instead of "of."

And that throws your own brain out of wack. Doesn't take much. So what do our brains then want? They want language exactly like our own. Our own exact words, just from someone else. Increasingly, that's all we can understand. It's not that we even really understand them, though. More like they're security blankets. We think, "Mine," rather than that we've encountered something foreign, a potential threat.

People have made themselves defenseless and vulnerable to all. In order not to be, you need intelligence. You need to be able to communicate. You need to be able to process what something is so that you can best determine what to do about it. This is true for individuals and for people who are part of something bigger. A community, a culture, a country, a world.

Stairs aren't just stairs. The world is all around you, even inside of the Bunker Hill Monument. What is destroying us, and America, is right within those granite walls. I'm the only one in there, though, who knows it, has any clue. The people who think others are the problem, are usually the best examples there are of the problem, but they're too stupid to be aware.

Look at everyone who delights in saying, "Yeah and most people read below a sixth grade level." Look at their language. Look how they have no idea how "a" and "an" work, or "is" and "are." Those people are the people of the statistic. But they think they're not. That's how lacking in brain function they are and have made themselves.

But right: There are hundreds of thousands of people going home at night to read Tommy Orange and George Saunders. Or...do you think that no one reads that shit, no one reads, publishing gives you next to nothing worth reading in terms of literature (which isn't a term that means something can't be accessible and massively entertaining), there's basically nothing worth reading because 1. The way the system works, what it espouses, what it teaches, what it reinforces, and rewards, as such, is bad, formulaic, unimaginative, imitable and repeatable writing and 2. To write something worth reading you'd have to go against every last manner in which an industry--publishing--functions as well as everything--every external factor, the people you know, your family, your friends even if friendship basically doesn't exist anymore, your classmates, your peers, your colleagues--in your world, in the world, in society, in culture, as you dedicate every last second of your existence to getting better at the hardest thing there has ever been or ever will be to do well, let alone at the level of true greatness.

You think people are going to do that? Can do that? Allowing they were born with a massive amount of unique talent? Really? You think they're going to be strong enough, too? Driven enough? Devoted enough? Brave enough?

So there's nothing. And instead, you get an industry moving chairs around to get the ones they want in the spotlight. And that's all it is. No one is truly reading any of this shit such that you could hook them up to a machine that measured how into that reading they were, how much they liked it, if such a machine existed.

They might sit there for an hour, forcing themselves to look at pages they hate while taking noting in, without admitting that's what they were really doing for a plethora of reasons--that their entire life is one giant affectation, so they can post something on social media for points with their fellow wank-stains, for "literary citizen" community "I'll jerk you if you jerk me" bullshit--but no one, left alone without an agenda and a need to whore for attention and validation, actually wants to read any of it.

A group of petty, old-monied, broken, bigoted, insecure, petty, intellectually barren, soulless, embittered freaks decide to make something happen for a given person. To simply set the machine in their favor. Give them what they require to be seen a certain way, get that Pulitzer nomination, get that Guggenheim, that MacArthur grant, that all but officially bought review in The Washington Post or The New York Times Book Review with a Gregory Cowles who is himself just a further spurt of the K-Y lubricant gel of the system and an ethical disaster/monster like Sadie Stein who has no issue with our boy Lorin Stein and what he did--and I'm sure would love to do some more, so be careful ladies, unless you're one of the ones who'd part with your soul for a byline--with women over at The Paris Review.

Scum. Scum's scum.

Right? Want to defend him? Her? Any of them? Step forward. Make sure your name is on it so we can all see who you are. I'll put you up on here. I'm sure you'll be proud to stand by your words out here with the sun on you rather than in some ill-lit weasel's den.

And the risk in saying this? I mean, "I can't believe a writer said that about The New York Times, there goes his chance at blah blah blah..."

It means very little. The road to glory isn't paved with back issues of The New York Times Book Review. All of this is dying anyway. It's hardly even here now, save for one reason: The system--and publishing--exists so that the people of the system can be the people of the system. That is its real function. Not to produce and disseminate writing worth reading for people out in the world.

I've said those words before and I'll say them again: The system exists so that the people of the system can be the people of the system. Learn those words if you care about writing and reading, because there are no truer words about what publishing actually is right now and what it exists for.

And if these people aren't inclined to hook you up because you're as mediocre, monied, talentless, as they are, so that they don't feel threatened by you, there's nothing you can do, nothing you can write, that's going to make them say, "This is the best blankity blank I've ever seen, we need this person," or "We need to spread the word about this person."

The last way any of this works--publishing, that is--is that way.

The closer that publishing is to be a meritocracy, the closer that is to my best interests. The opposite is true for most people in publishing.

The worst thing here, in their system, is if that "This is the best blankity blank" bit is true as pertains you, both in and of itself and insofar as these people knowing that. Because if that's the case, there is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, nothing you can send, nothing you can propose, nothing you can offer, that will put that other person on your side, never mind all of them, or most of them.

That bit being true is ultimate sin in the publishing world. Many of them will tolerate plagiarists, people who commit sexual harassment and/or assault and with chronic regularity, thieves, rapists, people like Ted "Don't Call Me Killer" Genoways at the VQR (more on him, and them, soon enough) who are capable of bullying someone into going down to the old water tower and blowing their brains out, and not just tolerate--hype, award, lie about, carry water for, hook up, hire, gift, lavishly remunerate--but someone they think is and can do things beyond them and everyone like them and everyone else period?

No. Hard no. The very hardest.

And favor can't be curried by that other person. There isn't a book, an idea, a story, that is the "magic" one that flips the script, as we now like to say. The publishing person can be offered the best thing ever created by a human, and that will be the issue the publishing person can't get around.

They will have hate for the creator of that thing, and all the more so if that creator is honorable, is not a part of these incestuous reindeer games, knows much about much, has an unrivaled track record that they came by against and despite mechanized waves of resistance and discrimination, with no help, no quid pro quo, no cronyism, no nepotism, no identity politicking, and unlimited acts of injustice and attempts at sabotage.

The more in evidence those things are, the greater the ability, the greater the decency, the greater and rangier the expertise, the bigger the problem for the possessor and exemplar of those things.

A person who has done the person who hates them no wrong and has garnered further rage and hate by continuing to try as long as they did, as good-naturedly as they did, while both parties knew exactly what the real deal was.

Think about that. Think of how small one of those people need to be for all this to be the case.

You talk about a can't win situation, right?

So what can you do?

If you can't win a game you're not even allowed to play because of who you are and what you can do, what you do do, what you have proven again and again that you do, you have to try a totally different way.

And if you are that thing who can do things at that level, you eventually have to try things that no one else ever has, would ever, or would dare. Because there's no other choice. Everything else has been exhausted. Tried many times over. It is what it is because these people are what they are. I know exactly how they work and why, what they are, how they think. I know it better than they do.

And when they know you can do things that are infinitely beyond what they can do? Then it's game over with them anyway. They can't come back from that knowledge. It makes them feel too small. They're too threatened. That's why it also doesn't matter if you're always kind and always professional, and more so than anyone else. Or however long that goes on and you take the poor treatment and the discrimination. The greatness is damning with such people. David Remnick. Michael Ray. Wendy Lesser. Jackson Howard. Christopher Beha. Sigrid Rausing.

Look at those people. Those people are jokes. You think those people care about the best writing and aren't threatened by someone beyond them? They're secure and want to put the best work forward because that's what it's all about?

It is impossible to read those entries in this journal and think that. It's not humanly possible. Do you know how little we can say that about?

But if anyone's life depended on answering honestly, there isn't anyone who saw those entries in this record who'd respond, "Yes, definitely," to the question of, "Do you think those editors and publishers are acting in good faith?" and that's me putting the question as benignly as possible, because anyone--including those people themselves, when they read those entries about themselves--know exactly what their real deal is and how foul, backwards, and fucked up it is.

And you know what I can do here? I can say it. I can say it as much as I want. As much as needs be. And there is nothing they're going to do about it that they haven't done already. Behind the scenes. Not out in public. Not to my face, not directly. Because they are simpering cowards and frauds who are out of their depth here and wholly in the wrong and exposed. All they can do is take their chances and hope that these words and truths do not fall within the remit of enough people such that they do lasting damage to them.

They are, practically by design, abetted and protected by the reality that so few people read now, which they've helped bring about with the shit they publish and put out in the name of "the best writing there is," which is laughable, as you know if you look at any of the prose offs in these pages. It's almost impossible to believe that this shit wins Pulitzers, right? You couldn't believe it if you didn't have the proof in front of you that it did.

That's how bad Joshua Cohen, for example, is at writing, as we saw with that story of his in The New Yorker, with the part from mine beneath it. That's how bad Pulitzer grandee Ed Park is at writing, as we saw with the excerpt of his story from The Baffler put forward by the walking Brooklyn cliche of an editor that is J.W. McCormack, who was totally acting in good faith and always does. Sure. Because that's hard to immediately and completely dispel with the slightest effort.

But if something eventually happens? And there's a break in the rain or a fortuitous enclosure out in the wilderness so that the tinder bundle is sufficiently dry and the flame from the match is able to take? Well, it's goodnight then, isn't it? So we'll see. I continue to be here.

They can't get around you not being on their level, they can't forgive you for that, and they sure as hell won't let you pass on their watch, never mind sing your praises, hype you, etc., because of that. Then it's a matter of how long you're willing to go without saying anything.

I went twenty years, on account that I am so averse to confrontation and just want to do my work the best that I can and have myself, and more importantly the work, be treated fairly. Which was much longer than it should have, because I always knew what was happening.

But at least I gathered all of the information possible, near about, such that I had all of the proof and no one could say, "It's the writing" or "It's the kind of writing," or "You did this terrible thing to that editor or publisher," or "You didn't have the track record," or "Clearly they published this person because they're just so great at writing."

It was none of that. And everyone who looks at the case--because it is a case, but one with implications for everyone who either writes, is in publishing, wants to be, and readers and would-be readers out in the world--would know this to be one hundred percent true. That's why there's no visible push back. I mean, sure, the rats circling the drain in the communal fetid piss water of their subculture and say, "I hate him, you better hate him, too, or else!"

Most of them, at present, are no different than catty, rich brat fifteen-year-old girls at a boarding school. Except worse.

Seems like change would be better. Seems like a better system would be better.

I think that's pretty obvious, if you actually care enough to look at and see--and yes, there is a distinction--what's going on here.

I'm after bigger things, things that actually have meaning, and if and when those things are out there and achieved, then everything else will fall into place, if that's what one wants. Because choice--the choice to be a bigot and all of the things I mentioned above, insofar as such people indulging themselves in these things--will be removed, and they will not be free in the sense of being able to keep going as they were.

This is either going to work out or it's not. But that shit doesn't add up to anything anyway, save these chronic bullshitters dry humping your name against their pages, which aren't read, which aren't understood, which are full of people bad at writing who are bad people exactly like the people in charge who hooked them because they are like them and a member of the sinecure. Meaningless, pathetic. They're mad reading this, but you know why? You want to know what about this makes them burn with a rage they have for and with nothing else?

It's because it's completely true, and they know it to be. A Gregory Cowles of Darien, CT (ever been to Darien?) knows that. A Sadie Stein knows it. Everyone like them would know it.

So, anyway, back at with the Monument, and glad to be so. It's closed for the next two days, but I'm looking to return to the level I was at very soon, ideally within a week.