Prose off "Let's go again" edition: Typical uselessness and AI-indistinguishable writing from clip joint American Short Fiction v. Fleming stories

Tuesday 6/17/25

American Short Fiction--a scam of an operation with multiple bigots running said scam--that we've talked about numerous times, used to run whole stories on their website in addition to the snippets they included from their current print issue. This was ideal for me with these prose offs, because those stories were always terrible the entire way through. I could quote them here at length and also direct people to the American Short Fiction website and say, in effect, "But maybe you think it gets better later on...it doesn't, not a jot...have a gander for yourself if you don't believe me."

American Short Fiction publishes system people. It's a hook-up. Meanwhile, they charge other people money to submit. But they're publishing Roxane Gay. Hook. Up. Dave Eggers. Hook up. Jamel Brinkley. Hook up. J. Robert Lennon. Hook up. Remember that time I called Lennon out on this, and he immediately emailed these fools in Texas saying that I was on to all of them. Which is pretty funny. We're talking garbage. But garbage by what the bigoted editors Adeena Reitberger and Rebecca Markowits the right people. And the right kind of person. As they pocket that money from suckers who have no clue how this really works and what a scam it is.

Those writers aren't being read. They're giving away their money to an operation that has no other way to make any. The product is dire. Places like American Short Fiction with the MFA-machined nothingness they feature--and extol the "virtues" of--is part of the reason why no one reads. Why would you when this is the so-called best there is now?

But then, with me making a mockery of that work in these pages (all you need to do is 1. Call attention to it and then 2. Put it next to what I write, as someone who is definitely not the right kind of person to bigots like these, being on a totally different level and being legit), American Short Fiction stopped publishing those website fiction exclusives.

I'm sure they weren't paying those writers any money. So it wasn't a financial thing. What might it have been? Is is a coincidence that I featured that dreadful work here and they stopped giving me ammunition? I don't know. Is it a coincidence that after they kept going up in these pages that Christopher Beha and Katie Ryder were let go from Harper's? Could be. Would you bet that all three are if you're life depended on it? Probably not, right?

This means that when it comes to a prose off with American Short Fiction, I can only use the brief excerpts they include with their print issues. Part of the reasons these excerpts are so brief is because the writing sucks. Of course they're trying to hide that. If you're selling vacuum cleaners door to door and the machine falls apart the moment it hits carpet, you're going to try and stick with harder surfaces, aren't you?

I get it. You get it. These are chiselers. And bad people. This is what chiseling, bad people do. We've seen what they do to me, which is what envious bigots do.

Thankfully, though, the writing is so bad that I can still do what I'm going to do right now. And it takes but a line--a fraction of a line, a clause--for someone to know my work for what it is. It's like stairs. I've learned over the years that you can run up and down 300 stairs and have yourself quite the workout. But you can also have just as effective a workout on ten stairs. It's true. You just need to understand how stairs work and have at it.

This is from Julián Delgado Lopera's “Spring Bloom.” Brace yourself for brilliance.

Goodbye, vida de mierda!

What you can’t see can’t touch you!

Welcome foggy green mountains crowned by gray cumulus. Welcome labyrinth of buildings desparramados death-dropping over the savana. Welcome top-hats, long coats, shiny shoes smoking cigarettes drinking all the tintos hailing all the taxis and giving zero fucks about Ignacio’s minuscule campo-turned-urban-boy existence. Welcome invisibility! How he’d missed that invisibility, muñeca. No cuchicheo gossipy gossip trailing behind. Everyone in Bogotá strutted down the streets like it was the end of the world and they were all late for it. No time to care about that body full of scars and bruises mapping the brutality of his campo upbringing. Hello, you’re in the capital, pollito, let the dreams come true.

It's embarrassing, isn't it? But sure, great writing, outstanding art. It's not even possible to pretend to think that. People would laugh you out of any room if they saw this and next heard you saying it was brilliant. No one would ever take you seriously.

There's an episode of The Inbetweeners where one of the characters--bit of a lout--uses the phrase, "Makes them froth at the gash." Not very seemly. But, take the spirit of that phrase and extrapolate to so-called literary fiction editors like this, and you're on to something when they see those italicized, foreign language words. They think that's notable. Seriously. And that's it's creative and arty and proves how worldly they themselves are.

Simple, simple, simple creatures. Which is one thing. But simple, simple, simple creatures pretending to be things they are not, will never be, could never be. Whether that's smart, talented, not broken, secure, productive, enlightened. Grown up. Mature. Sophisticated. Legit.

There's that word again.

In theory, what you read above is supposed to entice you to read more. In theory. Because it obviously doesn't entice you to read shit. It's annoying. You just want to not see any more of it. Kind of like when an annoying commercial comes on the TV. Say, those Burger King spots with the out-of-tune singer or the asinine Liberty Mutual ones. You lunge for the remote to hit the mute button, don't you?

Same principle here.

But sure, definitely better than any fiction I've ever written in my life. I feel like that's eminently believable. How could I compete with that?

Wait, my bad--we're doing a prose off. We let them go on for a bit up above. I'll just need a sentence from a new story here. Sounds more than fair to me. Here we go:

There weren’t many people at the cafe on these nights to notice that much about him, a distinction he drew as if believing a higher volume of customers would have produced an aggregation of knowledge in which they all somehow shared and had access to after the fact pertaining to how lonely he was and that he only came in alone, but at least now he could see other humans and there were four walls that were different than his usual four walls and the excursion also served as a form of what he considered airing himself out without anyone having to be close enough to detect anything noisome.

Huh. What do you know. A totally obvious different level of ability. Shit on one hand, art on the other. The gap isn't subtle or slight, is it?

How do you defend being as much of a bigot as people like Adeena Reitberger and Rebecca Markovits are? Well, it helps that no one cares about your world at all. That's why it's so important to editors, publishers, and writers, for no one outside of their little worlds to care or--underline this--to read. Because then they'd be exposed. Mocked. Left behind without even their own little world in which to cosplay being these things they're not. They couldn't be embittered, petty pricks and get away with it. They'd have to produce good work, publish good work, be accountable. If you live alone on a remote island with someone, you can get away with doing a lot of horrific shit to them.

That's these people.

Want to go again, lover? (Say it in a Bette Davis voice--it's more fun that way.)

We can go again.

That first excerpt was from the spring issue of American Short Fiction. This one is from the brand new summer issue. It's an excerpt of Lydi Conklin's “Sorry about the Wolf” (I'm sure there's a genius reason for not capitalizing "about," so don't sweat that):

I studied your pictures for hours. Hours over weeks, because it took that long to arrange a date. Not because of you, because of me—in the aftermath of my breakup, I spent long days on worthless magazine pitches: tired ones about California cuisine, unhinged ones about the erotics of wildfire. Work was the only way to forget Elena. But I was forcing myself to date, at least once, at least to try. I’d clear the air, open myself to possibility.

How hard are you pushing back if I told you that was written by AI? That's right: Not at all, baby! AI-level fiction if AI just enrolled in Creative Writing 101 at Bunker Hill Community College.

What's the point of this? Mounting a tribute to otiosity? Who needs this? Who wants it? What's it for?

Embarrassing. Again.

I'll do a paragraph in this second example from me to cap this prose off. Different story. Same guy.

Whatever had to be done, Doreen wanted to do, for as long it took. And someday, these days of checking and mending and skin smoothing over skin would be a memory. They’d belong to the past. Better days were ahead. Better days had come. Days that weren’t determined by what had been. Not that it’d ever be forgotten. Doreen would never let that happen, even in her dreams. Long ago would be both long ago and like yesterday. But the friends would have the morning. And the afternoon. And the evening. The tomorrows. The sun. A fresh beginning and continuation both. The “look at us.” The “here we are for another day.” The “what do you want to do” and the “I’m so glad we are what we are.” The light of the new start. Again. And again.

Would you look at that? Who else could write that? Where have you seen the likes of it? Where would you? You think that could be attributed to AI?

Think of how much you have to hate someone who had never done you any harm to automatically, as a rule, refuse to publish anything he did because he's legit and you're not. Because he's good and you're not. Think of how little you have to care about right and wrong. About writing itself. What a sick, twisted fuck you'd really need to be. And that's your life? The basis of your life? What you're here for? To be a sick, twisted fuck? To make like you care about writing and readers when there is nothing you truly care about less?

That's Adeena Reitberger and Rebecca Markovits, ladies and gentleman. But it's also most of these people. That's why they're here. That's the basis of their subculture. And it's really what publishing is all about. This is the core and guiding spirit.