Prose off: Story in New England Review put forward by Carolyn "You're Just Not Very Good at Writing, Colin" Kuebler v. Fleming story

Tuesday 6/10/25

Let's return to New England Review and our friend Carolyn Kuebler, shall we?

We've spoken several times about this envious, talentless, bigoted individual whose biggest thing in life is to be the editor a venue that publishes bad work, that is only known about by people in the same subculture as Carolyn Kuebler, and is not read by any of those people because even they couldn't care less about the work therein.

This is Kuebler's thing in life. The headstone thing.

She was the talent-bereft, clannish, embittered editor of the New England Review, which was a literary journal, because you wouldn't know that.

Which begs the questions, Why be alive? Why bother? What were you doing? What was the point of your life? That's what you did with your existence? Seriously?

A big part of the appeal of being Carolyn Kuebler, for the likes of someone so small-minded, petty, and lacking, is you get to be a miserable...well, insert what word you want here...to people you think you can get away with being a miserable such and such to.

You think you have control or leverage, but it's like presiding over a speck of dust. And that's your whole life. That you're the boss of that speck of dust. That's your pinnacle. Your big achievement. Your identity. Your thing. And it's not even good dust. Dust from like a pyramid. Or the moon. From off of a ghost's shawl. Gold dust. It's more like a germ.

A Kuebler is pure pettiness. Animus. She's nothing else. We've seen how bad she is at writing. We've seen how bad the writing she publishes by people just like her is. We're going to see some more now, and then we're going to see some writing from the person she stupidly told--lying as much as she's ever lied in her life, which is saying something, because everything about her is a lie that people like her go along with, or at least a few do--just wasn't good at writing.

You can say whatever lie you want if you think it's just going to remain in that email and no one is ever going to find out about it? Can't you?

It takes so little--I can use one six-word sentence I wrote--to show the infinite qualitative gap between what I do and what these people do. And that is where the hate comes from. That, and because I've published thousands of things and a Kuebler, well, she's published next to nothing, and certainly nothing in a place that anyone outside of that sinecure has heard of. Throw in some sexism, and there's only going to be hate. "I hate him. I'll fire off this email and show him for offering me these stories for free that are beyond anything I could ever dream of writing myself and being in all of those famous venues. If only I could mash him with my brow of death! Revenge!"

Okay. If revenge was a dish best served stupid.

I wish this was more of a challenge. I'd like to see something out there that's good. But nothing like that exists now. It's just the shit that all of these people from this subculture do. The same lifeless...nothingness. But it's not just lifeless. It's not even competently written lifelessness. Do these people ever even read it back? Does any editor ever giving the thing an actual going over? It's all just rigged. It's the name at the top and what that name means to the person. Whether it's Carolyn Kuebler or Ann Hulbert or Deborah Treisman or J.W. McCormack or Wendy Lesser or Jackson Howard.

And I don't mean that name has to be synonymous with "fame" in their little world. I mean, "Oh, they represent this skin color group," or "This person isn't smarter than I am so they are acceptable to me." How you look, the money you come from, the people you have in common, the bullshit that the frauds and sycophants of the system say about you.

Those things serve as the bells and whistles. It's never the writing. All of the writing by these people sucks. We've done so many of these prose offs now. Have you ever read the first example and thought, "Oh my, Fleming is fucked now, how can you compete with writing that good?" It wouldn't matter if it was great writing. The gap is still going to be what it is. But how is there nothing that's not terrible? Rhetorical question. I know the answer. This journal explains the answer. The MFA system explains the answer.

Writing is the hardest thing to do in the world. Nothing is close. To write well, to write something great. You need to have so much ability in the first place. And people don't know what that means. That ability must be as expansive as it is deep. It has to range. There can't be limitations. There can't be things you don't know that aren't on your proverbial table. Then you have to work every second of your life to develop and grow that ability. That's not just writing all of these hours every day, it's never stopping writing. No matter what you're doing. There's just too much. It's too hard. It takes everything you have. You can't be a bullshitter, you can't be a dabbler. You can't be the dilettante frauds that all of these people are.

Even if they had the talent, these people don't want to do any of that. It's the last thing they want to do. It's not what they are "writers," which they're not actually. That's not why Carolyn Kuebler is Carolyn Kuebler or Christopher Beha is Christopher Beha or Joshua Cohen is Joshua Cohen or Yiyun Li is Yiyun Li or Diane Williams is Diane Williams.

These people want attention and credit and power. It doesn't matter that to them if that attention and credit has not a damn thing to do with merit, or that they're presiding over a single germ.

They're that small. And when you're that small, you're nasty and toxic and you're looking to avenge yourself to whatever degree you can on someone is just better than you. And who is legit. Smarter. They hate that more than anything. Except maybe themselves. But the two go together. They try to fantasticate their lives. Do everything they can not to be honest with themselves. That's much harder to do when something they could never do, and someone they could never be, is staring back at them.

So they erected this world. And they police this world like they're the intellectual SS. And the world at large has no clue because no one in that world cares about reading, let alone the workings of the publishing industry. These police-state cells within it.

It's in the best interests of all of the people I just named for people not to read and for there to be nothing great for them to read. Because if people read and looked at their work honestly? It'd just be derision and laughter.

Look at Junot Diaz. Look how bad that writing is. Look what a clown he is. How desperate he is to come across as tough. He's a joke, man. And he knows that. Me saying this isn't something that bounces off someone like this. It's his horrid secret that he hopes know no one else knows or says. The second thing is more important than the first. He thinks about it a lot. Probably more than anything else he's ever thought about. That he's just this imposter. He's not any kind of real deal. He's not some great writer or artist.

Look at this George Saunders writing. I mean, come on. It's like going off to war armed with only a wet, empty paper bag. And he knows that. Deborah Treisman knows that. David Remnick knows that. The MacArthur people know it, the Guggenheim people know it. They might not know it in the moment, because they're just waving it through while stroking themselves off. They're on their latest self-cum high. They're not even paying attention to what they shove out there. What they rave about. The actual thing? As in, the story or the book? It's irrelevant. Anything could be on those pages. But who was it by and what does that person mean and represent to them?

But throw some cold water in the face--like with this journal--and then actually look at the story? What defense could you possibly mount? What specifically could you say? If there was going to be a broadcast on national TV and it was me and Deborah Treisman to talk about all of this, you think she'd show? Of course she wouldn't. Because she'd look ridiculous. Whereas I'd be like, "Yes, this will be wonderful" and would have been writing a few stories in my head while I was up on that stage.

Anyway. Apologies for the lead-up. I try to be thorough--you never know when someone's come here for the first time, or if it's down the road and these pages are part of a very long book series and happen to be within the first volume a reader has chosen--and I also can't stand looking at the writing these people do. But let's get to it.

This is the first paragraph of Tom DeBeauchamp's "Certain Galactic Bodies" from the pages of New England Review.

Though the events leading up to it, even demanding it, are acrimonious to say the least and honestly sometimes violent—imagine plates shattering over the kitchen sink and bare little feet bleeding on the constellation of their fragments; imagine cops, “on behalf of the neighborhood,” shining white lights into everybody’s faces to quiet their screamed and rageful declarations of hatred (“I fucking hate you!”) and love (“I fucking love you!”)—the divorce itself, despite all that, is settled easily enough. Geri Anne and Pat are friends again when it’s over, with just the one lawyer between them to be paid—whom she pays—and with him, re-incarcerated, having only to sign the papers in his cell with his deconstructed prison pen (just the ballpoint tip and the tube of ink). He shuffles the pages on his lap and does what she’s asked him to do, scribbles his name in neat cursive on each of the lines their lawyer has highlighted for him. He has to admit that though he does feel a bit melancholy, just as she did when she wrote him, he feels a weight lifted from his shoulders too.

The red pen should be out early and often here. How do plates shatter "over" the sink? How would that work? The implication is plates being thrown. So are two people throwing plates at each other and they end up colliding above the sink?

The parentheses: you can't say "declaration of hate" and then as an example have that be "I hate you." The example has to be indicative of hate but doing it like this is just a tautology. And lazy. And lacking in creativity. Same with the love example, obviously.

And that would never happen. Fights don't have one person yelling "I fucking hate you!" and the other yelling "I fucking love you!" It's implausible.

Then the names. We're told "whom she pays," but either name could be a female name. We don't know that Pat is a man. And it's an awkward construction, which becomes more awkward as we transition out of dash with "and with him." You need to keep stopping and reading this sentence again, which really isn't what you want to make a reader do with the first sentence of a work. They'll bail.

Now we're in prison? This isn't clear. It's jumping around too much. And why does the prison pen need to be in some deconstructed form? Sounds like there's a reason for that? It's a contraband pen? A deconstructed contraband pen is easier to, what, hide than an intact pen?

You're being taken out of the story many times already. He's in jail but he's not in jail? They're friends but she's free and he's imprisoned? He scribbles in neat cursive? Come on. Are you even reading this back? How does an editor not flag that? Is he scribbling or is he being neat? Which is it? It's not both. Words have actual meanings. I can't believe I'm saying that, but I can, because I'm always saying it when I read this stuff. He shuffles the pages? Shuffles them? Like a deck of cards? "Shuffles" is the right word there?

The use of the present tense creates big-time confusion. Because we ostensibly are talking multiple time periods here. But when you stick it in the present tense ("Geri Anne and Pat are friend again...") you've created this situation where she's in the jail cell with him.

And "bleeding on the constellation"? Really? On the constellation of their fragments? Constellation made by their fragments would be less confusing, but it still wouldn't work. This is bad writing. It's amateur writing. This isn't someone who's mastered a craft. And it's not even being edited. Because it's not like Carolyn Kuebler knows any better or cares.

He can have divorce papers in jail but he needs the weird prison pen to sign them?

This is aggravating. Life is too short. Why would you keep reading this? Out of loyalty to this writer you don't know? Because you have some rule to keep reading? Or you made yourself a promise a long time ago to read at least the first three pages of anything you happen to start?

People aren't that way. A few might be. Is that what you're banking on? I know--an author like this isn't looking to be read. The endgame isn't readers. Do you follow me? It's this. It's saying you were in the New England Review. It's not for a single damn person.

And I think that blows my mind more than anything with these people. They don't write for readers. You can say, "There are no readers," but I'd tell you that this is a big part of the problem. But even if everyone loved to read, and did read, these people still aren't writing for those readers. This isn't meant for readers. It's not meant to be read.

If you look through the rest of the story, you'll see that you're just told things. It's like a fiction version of the five o'clock news. A story is something that happens. You go into it, it goes into you. It's not just stating things to someone. In this monotone. The tone of this piece never varies. Life isn't like that. A story can't be like that either. This piece is all surface and statement. And if there was a story in this story, this isn't the way to tell it. There needs to be immersion. This is more like someone stating facts in the background. It has all of the life of a board meeting quarterly report.

But then there's the likes of this by a person Carolyn Kuebler said just isn't very good...

Someone, he theorized, who was aware of these workings of the world, or that mostly bygone world, might walk over to him. Initiate an exchange with a nod. For a fortuitous coming together. Nods spoke to prospects of resonance. Can be deeply mutual. Like graves with two names on the headstone and people landing on the same phrase simultaneously. “No, you go.” “No, you.” As if you’re beyond chitter-chatter and icebreakers and games of twenty questions—the answers of which neither party much cares about—and are already in something together. Interaction wasn’t forbidden. People met “out in the wild,” as they say—“how it used to be”—all the time.

What they would say, though—by which he meant, what they’d possibly say to him—he had no idea.

Perhaps, “Long day?” after the eyes met, allowing both parties were close enough to each other.

“Yeah. You could say that,” he’d respond, and he wouldn’t be lying. Not with his words, anyway. Do a bit of a laugh. Then reply with a, “You?” that would by its nature sound commiserative.

“Definitely.”

And they’d be off and running.

Wasn’t unlikely at all, in theory.

Everything that ends somewhere good—he reasoned with the logic that was prevalent to this between-days state—by definition starts somewhere else, unless the end-spot was also the beginning, and that’s not how it’s supposed to go. The important thing is to start. And here he was, not giving up yet. Small victories, slow breaths.

How do you quantify that difference? You can't. I mean, how are you going to match up with

Nods spoke to prospects of resonance. Can be deeply mutual. Like graves with two names on the headstone and people landing on the same phrase simultaneously. “No, you go.” “No, you.”

And that clicks something on in all of us. We all know exactly what that means, but we haven't thought about it that way before, and haven't felt it this way either. And like I said above, a six-word sentence establishes the degree of separation: "Nods spoke to prospects of resonance." You won't see something like that in any of these other stories. It wouldn't happen. No one would come up with the likes of it.

And we all know about playing that version of twenty questions when we're going through the motions and yet we press on with it, partially in that moment but also really not. It's a story about loneliness. And one that taps into our loneliness epidemic and distills it in a manner which allows us to understand it better than we otherwise would, and very likely our own situation in this regard, too. It's personal--for a reader--and universal in terms of practical application and its own resonance.

There's so much language to relish in the second excerpt. You can play it back again and again--read it again and again, that is--like it's music. The wisdom is sublime. But it's not proffered as these bald statements. The wisdom is natural and built into the flow of this prose. There are rhythms in the rhythms, and levels of sense in the sense.

While we're at it, you want to do a little prose off postscript pertaining to plates? Okay. This is in that same story of mine:

The plate didn’t break but instead gave brief voice to a strain of clattering echolalia that sounded as it’d been dying to get made and its chance had come at last. The man in possession of the plate had been eating a pastry—there were flakes of it on his lips and a broken, vascular smear of what may or may not have been blueberry beneath his nose—but now he held his chest with one hand and the edge of the table with the other.

He looked like he was modeling a new form of agony that had yet to go to market or had gotten himself reimagined as a member of a bizarre theatrical production that called for an over-emphasis of movement and then he, too, fell to the floor where he became motionless as though some triggered mechanism encoded within the tile had caused everything in him to shut off and the pastry flakes in the corners of his mouth to become suggestive of sawdust.

But sure...definitely not on that same level as the prison pen guy.

I'm unsure how it'd be possible to make one's prejudice more blatant than Carolyn Kuebler has made hers.