Prose off: Another Paris Review hook-up special in the form of an Amie Barrodale short story courtesy of raging classist editor (you better be one of us!) Emily Stokes v. Fleming story

Wednesday 3/26/25

Amie Barrodale is one of the hyper-connected system people of publishing who has no ability. She writes very little, but that she has a new story in The Paris Review suggests to me that she probably has a book coming out, because that's how these things often work. Not always--sometimes it just takes then a decade to so much as type up another example of their shit, but typically everything is done in coordination. The hook ups happen at once, because the people doing the hooking up are essentially working in tandem because it's that time again for that talentless, hyper-connected writer.

You have a dreadful person who is a dreadful writer who is put forward by people like them in the system--and if they're putting you forward, you neither write well or are a good person--who writes very little, so when I see something like this--which is just one of those hook-ups--it's hard not to think that the people of this rigged system are doing their thing where they try and make something happen for someone like this.

Cue the publication in The Paris Review, maybe another in The New Yorker or Harper's or The Atlantic if the author has managed to produced so much as two new works in a dozen years--all they need to do is have that work; it can suck as much as anything can suck, so long as it technically has a first word and a last word and a title and has the right name at the top. A system-sanctioned name.

And so long as the system is like this, you can be assured that that person will both be terrible at writing and a moral dirt bag. Because that's what it takes and is required. And they'll almost certainly come from money. If you met them, you'd think they were the stupidist people you'd ever encountered in your life, and the least likable.

Then The New York Times Book Review gets in on the act with a lie of a review about how great this writer is by someone who barely glanced, if that, at the book--because this is automatic--and inclusion on Best of Lists and These are the Books You Need to Read this Summer puff pieces of more lies, and on it goes.

Barrodale won The Paris Review's George Plimpton Prize back when Lorin Stein was Lorin Steining women at The Paris Review. Allegedly--which is just a word one uses per technicality--having sex on his desk at work, then there are those allegations of anal rape, and of course we have the quid pro quo of trading the appearance of the book or the story for the use of the flesh. Cha fucking ching, emphasis on the middle part.

Remember: I'm the bad guy to these people, the demon, the person worse than anyone, as the good person who writes infinitely better, works exponentially harder, knows immeasurably more, etc.--because of those reasons. The person to lock out for those reasons. These people are mostly all like this, and they cover for each other. So when I look at Barrodale being in there and Stein doing what Stein did, I have to wonder, which is to say, I don't have to wonder very much about why she was in there and got that award.

And if it's not that, it's something similar, because that's how these people work. It's exclusively how they work. It's never about the quality of the writing, except insofar as they're hreatened as much as anyone can be by someone who can do what they never could.

But if you suck like them? And you're one of them? And your number comes up in their demented lottery--which means that your numbers stays in their system and they know what to do with it--and for you--going forward--then sure, they'll get together and pull the rope for you.

Lorin Stein is gone--and you'll never see him come back again, because all of these people who knew what he was doing and didn't care won't be seen associating with him now because they can get in trouble, whereas before it was all just a disturbing, horrific secret--but believe me, you can get an Emily Stokes out of the same cloth that you cut a Lorin Stein. She looks at the name, sees the green check mark next to it in the proverbial margin, and if that person has something, it goes in.

Here we have the beginning of Barrodale's story, "Crystal Palace" in the spring 2025 issue of The Paris Review. It's such an MFA-machined work. The best that an MFA story can be is something polished about which can say, "Well, everything is spelled correctly and those are sentences," which isn't supposed to be all you can say--to the good, if you want to call it that--about what these lying, often criminal frauds say is the best writing in the world. From a brilliant fiction master.

Right. I'm sure we're all about to be dazzled.

That's the bullshit they're pushing, which no one would believe, but these people don't need anyone to believe it because there is no one but them. There are no readers now. There's just these people who pretend to read this shit, but they're just playing mean girls at the lunch table in their subculture of petty, pretentious, insecure, envious, broken freaks.

In order for writing to be great, it has to make you care. Immediately, too. That you could technically read something--that is, it's not like that George Saunders story we saw that time--isn't enough. That's not anything. That's not a standard, a bar. We should be able to say what makes something memorable. Special. Specifically. What in that work was memorable and special? What made us feel a certain powerful way? Why? How was that achieved? What did we see of ourselves in the work? What did we learn? What did we see about others we know in the work? How do we know them better? What entertained us? Got our heart rate going? Thrilled us? Frightened us? Made us laugh?

You can't do that with what you're about to see from Barrodale. You can't do any of it. All you can do is see further evidence of someone this system favors who is working with little. Who can't make any reader in the world honestly care, allowing that people were forced to read this. It's just there. It has no purpose. You're not meant to be enriched, entertained, excited. This story exists to take up these pages in The Paris Review and for this person to a member of this system which itself exists so that the people of the system can be the people of the system. No one actually gives a fuck about the story, because it's impossible to give a fuck about the story.

New Yorker writer Wolcott Gibbs had a line in a 1936 issue of the magazine that was meant to be a riff on--and a sending up of--the prose house style of Time magazine, what was dubbed Timespeak. Gibbs wrote, "Backwards ran sentences until reeled the mind."

In the following first paragraph, you'll see Barrodale doing a version of this. That's because she's straining to sound creative. Smart. But in that creative way. As one in Writing 101 does.

Look at the first sentence. You're not fighting through that junk. Not once, let alone with the likes of that over course of a story that's thousands of words long. Why? That's what you want to do with your time? Is your time not valuable? There isn't anyone who wants to read prose of that nature. It's not the length that's the issue--it's the sluggardness of it. The sludge. The wank component.

This isn't for readers. It's for douchebags writing like douchebags for douchebags putting forward douchebags as, again, part of that middle school lunch table thing while they rest of the world is off in the actual world, which doesn't mean very much in these times of devolution, but you can't trick anyone, all the same, in that actual world with any of this garbage, whereas, at the lunch table, it's "Yes, what a masterful foregrounding of the tedium birthed as a form of psychological perpetuality of the post-COVID age" or some such nonsense.

Syntax breaks down in the second sentence, in which we get an awkward "being," a word that is then used again--not by design, but rather by mistake--in the third sentence, which also goes nowhere.

Look how awkward this writing is: "Its being unclear..."

What? And again we ask, Are you even trying? Is this seriously the best you can do? But we know the answers to these questions. No one is worse at writing than these people. Your third grader, when she sits down to write a little story in class along with her classmates, will write something fresher, truer, better, more worth reading than this sloppery.

And Paris Review editor Emily Stokes, is she going to fix this? She doesn't fucking care. All she cares about is that Amie Barrodale is one of their own, which is to say, one of her own, and this is how it's supposed to work--that's who gets put forward. And so long as that happens, then all is right in the world of someone like that. As a human, as an editor, as someone with any concern for writing, for reading, for readers, for the beautiful act of what reading can be, they're a lost cause.

But here we go. This, as I said, is from Barrodale's "Crystal Palace" in the latest issue of The Paris Review.

The talk of trying them, of there being nothing else to do, of the possibility, however small, of finding a new kind of purpose⁠—thinking outside the box⁠—was mitigated by concern about epic bad trips or just plain death after what had happened to Amy, though that was more of a broken-leg issue. The AI medical wellness suite being not quite state-of-the-art, and there being the possibility that no one really wanted to explore of some kind of mismanagement of medication. Its being unclear, none of them having trained in medicine, what exactly it was that had caused Amy’s passing. John seemed to argue that death might not be so bad under the circumstances, though it was of course difficult to understand him, as he spoke through tears. Still. There was a certain, let’s say, carefulness around drugs among the remaining members of the judiciary and their support staff⁠—Terry and Keith⁠—who were great, of course. 

They took it to a vote and agreed eight to two that anybody who wanted to was free to go ahead and “sample the wares.” Brett immediately raised a hand. Clarence looked around at the others, murmured that he was surprised, and extended a hand as well. And then, well, then that was it. The other justices sat there blinking until Sonia said, “Okay, what do we do now?” and Samuel said, “I guess they take the drugs. The acid or whatever.” And Clarence and Brett dropped, and then somebody suggested Bear Paw.

They were in the smaller, formal mess⁠—far enough off the main grid that you could forget for a second that you were living at the end of eight miles of tunnels, inside a mountain, between concrete walls, under lead-lined ceilings, the crystal chandeliers an afterthought of some unchained military planner in a former world. (Sigh.) It had a Persian rug, recessed lighting, one long table, and nine leather chairs. The tenth chair had been dragged in from the regular mess, and was not very comfortable. For that reason, Brett or Sonia always made a point of taking it, not wanting to allow some situation to develop where it was always Terry or Keith in the bad chair. 

They sat with two pouches of Scrabble tiles and half a dozen bottles of Brett’s home-brewed beer, a wheat gruit that was really more like hard kombucha. You had to drink quite a lot of it before you maybe felt a little hot in the face or sore in the shoulder joints. The game had originally involved recalling obscure precedents, trying to stump one another, but over time its rules had evolved into a tangle of codicils and caveats that would likely be indecipherable to an outsider, had there been one. The suspicion that a justice was fabricating precedents had given way to one’s own fabrications, subtle at first, then large, graphic, designed as provocation. These fictions had evolved into indirect personal attacks, and Bear Paw, as it was played now, was really a game of insulting people.

One thing: Brett was not a wreck like John, but he did feel penetrated by sadness. That was pretty much to be expected, but it was a little unfamiliar to him. Not unfamiliar. It was something, in a former life, that he had kept at bay with work, family. Maybe only sometimes brushing the depths when he got really wasted. Hammered. A memory came to mind, of the time he attacked a car.

“Brett?” Sonia said. “We’re doing alphabetical order by first name, so that leaves it with you.”

“Oh, of course, yes. Sorry about that. All right.” He drummed his fingers on the table and looked around ominously. “An easy one to start … Uh … Let me see. Okay, I know. ‘Where First Amendment rights are asserted to bar governmental interrogation, resolution of the issue always involves a balancing by the courts of the competing private and public interests at stake in the particular⁠—’ ”

“Barenblatt v. United States, 1959.” Clarence snapped up two tiles from Brett’s pile. “Way too easy. Upholding the conviction of …” He paused, pretended to contemplate how to lay out his new tiles among his old. 

“Lloyd Barenblatt,” Brett said. “A graduate student and teaching fellow who refused to⁠—”

Fuck me.

(Not you, Lorin--I know, those halcyon days of orgasming inside of people you had power over and as part of doing business, as such, on your work desk are no more, but I was never your type anyway. Maybe you can live vicariously through your equally odious wife Sadie with her gig at The New York Times Book Review. What do you do all day, by the way? Shop?)

Relatable, important stuff, huh? And why are you saying "of course" in that first paragraph? We don't know or care about these people.

It's almost shocking how poorly that first sentence reads, isn't it? Why on earth would you try to keep reading after that? It looks like someone screwed up in laying the thing out or there are a bunch of words missing.

What else is there to say? You want 6000 more words of that? Because I don't you think you do. You want a book of it? Ten books of it?

You might answer, "Not me, but maybe someone."

There isn't anyone who honestly wants to read that. Including these people. That's not what this is about. You know, reading. Or business. Or value. Or entertainment. Or art.

But those things are what this is about. It's the start of a little something I'm doing called "Still Good."

I bought this type of a subscription that wasn’t what I thought it’d be or what it should have been, which isn’t up for debate or me being a presumptuous asshole because it’s the type of thing where everyone knows the deal including even older people who once had to think about showing too much ankle and call you asking what to do about their laptop running out of power.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was the profile photo that this woman used which didn’t leave much to the imagination—I pictured a cartoon eagle saying, “Now that’s spread!” in a thought bubble—as none of those profile photos do.

But when you paid and got the access, you discovered that her videos were just of her sitting in her car. Clothed. Bundled up, depending on the season. The skin you saw was face and hands. Those parts of her. And her hair. The other stuff you could have found in a store. The windbreaker. The hat. The lip gloss.

Sometimes she’s drinking a coffee like there’s nothing more important to her in the world, this beam of light in a Starbucks cup for the darkened path that she’s had to go down.

After she takes the first sip of it she’ll say something like, “I really needed this today so bad” or “This is my little treat I got myself,” and then sort of laugh uncomfortably as if she’s embarrassed that this drink is so important to her, but you can tell that it is.

It’s one of those laughs that could change within a fraction of a breath—like when it’s barely cleared the lips on its way out—into someone crying instead, and then when you realized that wasn’t laughter anymore but tears you’d be like, “Wait, what’s going on here?”

Once she’s taken the sip and laughed without quite getting to crying and has kind of settled into herself, she starts talking in these life lessons from wherever it is that she’s parked her car about seeing the best in people and how you really do reap what you sow.

The first time I heard that—and she says it a lot—I thought there was no way she wouldn’t spell sow like sewing the activity with the needle and that wouldn’t have bothered me as much if she was doing what she was supposed to be doing instead of sitting in her car making like she was the star intern who was going to get to write the fortune cookie messages that week.

The setting for her videos is always the same, an outpost of a parking lot with trees instead of somewhere bustling like outside a Target. No middle aged housewives passing in the background and chirping into their phones on their way to the nail salon.

There’s a hint of light in the sky by the time she gets there—same hint, regardless of the season—but you know it’s going fast. She has these older videos on her page from when it was warmer with the window down and I was pretty sure I could hear running water, but not a huge amount, more like a babbling brook that’s all spirit and not so much content.

That sound got me down at first, because if it’s spring and there’s a brook that’s up for it wouldn’t you want to be out in that nature instead of in your vehicle and wouldn’t the life advice come off better in the fresh glow of nature without you breathing back your own air?

I don’t remember the guy’s name, but there was this player in the NFL and after games he’d give his interviews at his locker with his helmet still on as if the reporters in front of him with their median height of five foot eight and their little tape recorders were the most ferocious group of linebackers and skull-cracking thugs ever assembled.

I read that it was this psychological way of feeling protected and it helped him with his anxiety. He could get out there on that field but he didn’t want to sit here without his helmet, and that’s how her car could have been with her life.

But the car also means that her house wouldn’t work, or her apartment, or whatever it is. Most people’s homes are like that player with his helmet. Not her home, though. She didn’t live in the car or anything. Nails always done. That six dollar drink.

She did say that leaving and going away aren’t the same thing. She sounded ashamed when she said that, like she was on the cusp of saying she only had herself to blame—you know, that intake of breath people do where they’re considering taking ownership of something, rightly or wrongly, but they’re trying to be accountable.

Then they suck that breath further back in, perk up and pass off whatever just happened as this fluky moment and you can trust them, really you can, they have good advice for you on account of all they’ve experienced and been through, and they want to help.

She swirled her cup to see if there was enough still in it to make a mouthful or for a final sip which she didn’t have to take right now, she could stretch this out some more which you’re probably less inclined to feel like you can do—though it’s not as though anyone’s forcing you to leave—when the cup is empty, because then it’s trash and no longer what you needed and were looking forward to. It’s gone.

I come back to that line—which puts in an appearance every other video I’d say—about the good in people because on the face of it it’s a line that makes me scoff and I don’t want to scoff when she says these words. I want it to be true for her, if not for me.

How much good is there in people actually in people though? We’re not four-years-old. The clouds aren’t made of marshmallows and you put them in your hot chocolate because mom says you can. What does she think she’s finding out there in the world? If anyone should know better, I think it’s her, but she still says what she does.

In one of the videos, when it was winter, and looked colder outside than usual for some reason, this guy without a jacket on came up from behind her car after presumably having driven to the spot himself. He felt freshly arrived, not like he’d been sitting there like she’d been sitting there because that’s what people did at this spot. You’d never seen anyone else in any other video and it always felt like she was some place where nobody but her went unless it was warm, not that the videos provided confirmation.

You could see him advancing into the frame before she noticed he was there while she was talking into her phone about ignoring the haters or you’ll become a hater yourself and then you might never get the real you back again, they’ll just be gone. You’ll be gone, no matter who you are or used to be or thought you were—address unknown.

She sounded proud that she’d thought about that last bit. Sort of a “hey, that was a good one, even people who are truly lost have a place where they get their mail,” but not arrogantly or anything. You knew she was going to be scared by the man, you just didn’t know how violent the jolt of fear would be.

I wanted to alert her through the screen the first time I saw that video, give her a kind of “Hey, look out, lock the door,” which made me feel stupid because the video got uploaded and it wouldn’t be like a murderer would have posted it to keep the updates on her page coming and he wouldn’t have had her password anyway unless it was on her like written inside of the locket she wore but another time she opened it up and made the message inside a part of the video and the locket was from her mom and the tiny words inside said Heart of my Heart.

Gee, what do you know. Kind of different, isn't it?

There's prose that bounces off of you and prose that goes right through you.

I think we all know which is which here.

Again, what do you say? You put these things back to back, and the difference in quality is so absurdly obvious. To everyone. To Amie Barrodale, to Emily Stokes. To all of these people. But that's not what this is about, save that this being true--and it's an absolute truth--is the problem for these people and why they won't let such a person pass or advance or get what they have coming to them when they think they can help it.