Prose off: New Yorker story approved by David "At Least It's an Expensive Empty Suit" Remnick from Guggenheim winner/GENIUS/Pulitzer finalist Yiyun Li v. Fleming story + David S. Wallace

Saturday 3/21/26

There was a liar, fraud, and bigot at The New Yorker named David S. Wallace, whose title was that of fiction coordinator, which, as someone said to me years ago, is pretty funny. Sounds like something out of Orwell or Kafka, but also juvenile.

You know how you know when someone's lying to you? I mean, you know when you know, right?

Think of all the times in your life when you knew someone was lying to you. There were other times you didn't, but the times you knew, you really fucking knew, didn't you?

Of course you did.

New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman would have me send my stories to this David Wallace, because she was never going to take them because they were never going to take them because I was not the right kind of person, and I write infinitely better than the people they publish stories by. This froufrou nonsense, which we've seen many times in these prose offs now with The New Yorker alone, right?

I'm going to say that you couldn't find anyone in the world who, if their life was on the line and only answering truly could save them would go, "Yep! That George Saunders New Yorker story was better than that Fleming one! Feeling confident! Gonna live for a while yet!"

It's impossible. Which we can say with very little that we might think. There's subjectivity, but this is so far past that. You can't say, "I'd rather eat a fecal sandwich than any food in the world." Not a subjective thing. And neither is this.

What Treisman was doing was giving Wallace the job of lying to me, in effect, processing me, so things could be kept looking a certain way--that is, that this wasn't just a system of hook-ups for the right kind of person with the least consequential writing--because who wants to model that look officially?

It's just paperwork. Doing the rubber stamping, but calling it something else. Lying.

One time, he wanted me to go away for a long time. I hated writing this fucking guy, because I knew what he was doing all along. I saw what was in there, how bad all this fiction was. (What's worse, too, is that I had a shelf of books of firsthand New Yorker accounts going back to the days of Harold Ross; I know their history through and through.)

I knew why the people who were in there were in there and how it's been for quite a while now. Decades. I knew all about the galling classism.

Anyway, he said to me to send him five stories. Pick five. Like he's going to look at these, right? Take them seriously! Just might take some time! Hardcore reading going on here!

And I actually took a long time picking five. And reading and rereading and changing things. I mean, I fucking knew. I knew what the deal was. But I still did it. Talked to people about the five. "Fitty" was one of the five. But all of it was as good as what you see in these excerpts, like what you're about to see below when we get to the pasting part of this prose off after we get through the machined dreck.

Eventually I send him the five stories and you know what he does? He does nothing. He wasn't going to read them. He didn't look at them.

Months go by, and there I am--this is what they get off on--coming back on bent knee, oh, please, sir, sorry to bother you, sir, I was just wonder if maybe, perhaps, you'd had time to, maybe, perhaps, take a look...

Because if you're not like that, they blast you. You cannot get yourself low enough to the ground for these assholes. They don't just want you under their shoe, they want you burrow through the floorboards to look up at them all the better.

I knew he hadn't looked at these stories. How do I know? I'm not going put that here, am I? But if you think I'm someone who'd just say that without knowing it...well, you wouldn't think that, would you? Because anyone who reads this pages would know I wouldn't say that unless I knew for sure. I treat everything with this like a legal case.

What's he do? He takes his first look at the stories. One of them. Jumps into the middle of the pile. Like he'd read them, given them a fair chance, and just hadn't reached out to me yet. He says something in general turning them all down, references one by the title, along with a sentence about it that clearly proved, as if it needed to be proven any more, that he hadn't read it. He hadn't even read half a page of it.

There was this was this hockey player and some kind of event. I don't know what the event was, exactly, but it had to do with Nelson Mandela. And the hockey player was asked what he thought about Nelson Mandela. The hockey player had no clue who Mandela was, but he was going to try and pretend that he did, so that no one would be the wiser. Tried to pull one over, in other words.

And the hockey player is like, "Yeah, great hockey player, Nelson Mandela. Great teammate. Got pucks in deep..."

That's what David Wallace's email to me was like: that hockey player talking about that first line right winger, Nelson Mandela!

I had to go to him to be treated that way. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have heard from him. One less thing for him to rubber stamp is how he would have looked at it. That's how much these people try to debase you. I'm serious about this, obviously, I write and create on the level I write and create, so I had to follow-up. It's like driving over to your abuser's house so they can abuse you, and believe me, many of these people love that, get off on it, and wouldn't have it any other way.

Like this guy.

Scumbag, classist liar.

And you know what? He's nothing compared to many of the other people here. A Christopher Beha, for example. A Susan Morrison. A Sigrid Rausing. A Punch Hutton. Wendy "TBoH" Lesser. And more whom we've not gotten to yet.

Keep in mind, too, we're talking someone so pretentious that if I began an email asking how he was, he'd respond, "Doing as one does..."

I knew I'd be doing a New Yorker-related prose off this morning, but I didn't know what story I'd be using to in essence beat the ever living shit out by way of comparison with a story from me afterwards.

But then when I went to their site today and saw Yiyun Li, something by her would be as good as anything. I could do it with every story in there, too. But I can't even look at that many because you only get, what, the two freebies or whatever it is a month, which is best for The New Yorker here.

I'm never going through the crap looking for the worst thing, searching and searching searching and throwing aside the gold until I get a dud. As I've said before: Whatever is nearest to hand will do, because it's all bad.

We've done this a few times now with Li, a darling of their system. She's everything they want one of them to be. A league-leading box-checker. And as talented as a dead fish.

She has a Guggenheim (which is like saying a billionaire heiress was given a twenty dollar bill, but still), a MacArthur grant, which, in case you didn't know, means we got us another OFFICIAL GENIUS here, and has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction and I'm sure we'll be gifted one of those sooner or later.

This is how her story, "Calm Sea and Hard Faring" from the March 1, 2026 issue of The New Yorker, begins:

That morning, on a Monday in mid-January, 2015, the traffic did not ease up until they were past Half Moon Bay. Lilian, looking back ten years later, from a New Jersey college town where Tesla Cybertrucks prowled, felt that the Bay Area before the 2016 election had been as innocent as the children in her minivan, as well-intentioned, as ill-prepared. But are we not all like children in Euripides’ plays, about to be murdered or sacrificed? Immediately, Lilian criticized herself for being too bleak, protesting on behalf of those who were inadvertently encompassed by her thoughts.

The first sentence is pure blah/whatever. Is that what a first sentence should be? The second sentence is worse. This person Lilian is look back from a place where Tesla Cybertrucks prowled? What on earth does that mean? Prowled? They prowled? Prowled for what? Do you not know what that word means? Maybe look it up, OFFICIAL GENIUS? Prowled. Things don't just fucking prowl. They prowl in search of things, usually prey. What do you think these cars eat? Are they prowling for smaller cars?

And hey, editors: Not even gonna pretend to do a job here, huh? Or do not know either? Should I link to the definition for you? Would that help?

"Inadvertently encompassed" makes no sense either, because in this context the thinker would be actuating the encompassing, so it's on that person's dime, so to speak, which makes it intentional and not inadvertent.

NB: During the 1978 season, the New York Yankees' Thurman Munson called time from his catcher's position behind the plate and walked out to the mound for a conference with relief pitcher Sparky Lyle. He says to Lyle, "Don't take this the wrong way, but can I ask you a question?" Lyle responds sure, go ahead. Then Munson says, "Are you even trying?"

Are you, Yiyun Li?

I don't know would be worse: that this is the best she can do, or if she knows she doesn't have to bother trying any harder than this to get the shit that she's given.

But I don't have to figure that out, because I know that each of those two things are equally true.

What you'll note with anything she writes is that Li has no natural writing ability at the level of the sentence. Everything is awkward, bitty, herky jerky. She has no ear, no feel for the rhythms of prose, the timings and shape of a story.

As innocent as children in a minivan? That's your metaphor? What's the minivan have to do with it? They're less innocent when they step out on the curb or if they're riding in a different type of vehicle? What if they're in a Gremlin? Does that make them agents of Lucifer?

I ask again: Are you even trying?

This is someone with no talent who has awards thrown at them. She's also a ghoul and you can do a bit of digging on your own and come to the same conclusion yourself.

There isn't anything she won't use to be one of these people and get the praise and awards of these people. The things she has tried to profit off of will sicken you in the bottom of your soul. The things she has used knowing they would get her more awards, more commendation, more gravy for the train, and that served to protect her from criticism.

And I know what she's doing in this story, too. I know where this is coming from. From what part of the scam/business model. Performative transposition.

I think she'd be up for a hat trick if it meant she could cash in some more.

You get two sentences into this thing--a shitty first sentence, a confusing, poorly written second sentence that of course The New Yorker fiction editors weren't going to edit because they're barely looking at this shit themselves; they're looking at the name at the top of the page and what it represents to them in their system of incestuous evil--and we get a clunky start to the third sentence (that "But we we not" is akin to a sentence that starts, "For are we not..."; same kind of tone, and you can't be doing that in third sentence of your story; that's a much further along kind of thing after many other things have been established, and it's almost never a fiction thing) and we're talking about Euripides.

Again, as I said yesterday: Jesus Fucking Christ.

Can these drones and imposters ever not do this? Can you ever not do the randomly dropped in literary reference thing in your desperation to show that you're smart and this is good writing because you can't actually write well? How out of touch do you have to be to make this reference?

But again: This story isn't for reading. It's not meant to be read. It's not for readers. It's for over-degreed, under-educated people to play a game of trainspotting. They're just looking for terms. Spot the terms. There's one! There's one! They want to spot things that help them feel smart because less smart people in their view wouldn't know what those things were or not like they do.

Because they're not smart. And this is how they try to fool themselves. While also endeavoring to think they're better than you are. Being in a lower class as you are from them in their minds and attitudes.

What I just described is everything to these people, because they aren't anything else. They aren't anything, really. Nothing good. So this is what they do.

No one is seriously reading this. That's not what it's for. That's not why Yiyun Li wrote it.

And the pathetic attempt to say something wise. it's very similar to these millions of people have never read a page of text, who then decide to call themselves a writer, and so they write a page of some godawful fantasy thing which they share on Reddit wanting to know if they're amazing and would you keep reading?

Millions of these people. They're basically illiterate, but hey, I'm a writer! they all say.

And so many of these one-page samples they post will start with a line that's meant to be deep and weighty. Very much in the vein of "aren't we all about to be sacrificed or murdered."

Meaningless. It means nothing. It's not true. She doesn't give a fuck. She's just trying to keep making it by faking it. This isn't good faith writing. This is hook-me-up-in-the-system-of-incestuous-evil-'cause-I-got-another-one writing.

You want to look at a bit more from elsewhere in the "story"? Okay. He we go:

The naturalists were gathering the children for a lecture on tidal pools. Jeremy told a few stragglers to catch up. “Did I hear that you’re a professor?” he asked Lilian.

“More or less,” she said. “I write, too. Mostly fiction.”

“Murder mysteries?”

“Oh, gosh, no.”

“If you want stories, we can have coffee sometime,” Jeremy said, nodding to the children around them. It was not an appropriate setting, Lilian knew, but she suspected that the coffee might not happen.

Again: Does this shit ever let up? Professors, writers, fiction about fiction.

Get an imagination, you talent-bereft, coddled/coddling, lied to/lying, taint-licked/taint-licking imposters.

The only people you can fool with this garbage is people who want to be fooled.

So, you know, basically the whole of this system of delusion and incestuous evil and anxiety-fueled egotism and mean girls-style arm-locking.

And it's so jejune, isn't it? Shouldn't there be some, you know, life in the prose? Shouldn't it leap from the page as it simultaneously pulls us in? The prevailing, overwhelming flatness of this shit. Can you even turn a vaguely memorable phrase? What can you do here, lady? Come on, genius. You're a genius, right? This is how a genius writes? This is what that looks like?

Who believes that?

It's this? This is genius? This is masterful? Really?

What makes it masterful? What makes it not suck? What makes it not ordinary? What makes it more than mediocre, if that?

Where is the skill in this? How can this enrich a life? How can this help you know yourself better? How is this entertaining? How can this get you going? Stir you the fuck up? Move you? Make you care? Inflame you? Inspire you?

These people are just indulging each other, perking each other, jerking each off. As I've said before, it's not that different than high-level Republican circles.

Note, by the way, the whiff of "MFA fiction writing is the only real writing worthy of an entitled POS like myself" tone that Li doesn't even know she's doing with the dismissal of the mysteries bit.

Oh gosh no!

Later on we get

“If there is a wall between the present and the future it is not for us to pull it down,” a character in a Rebecca West novel admonishes.

This is so far from anyone's world. Has no relevance to anyone. A character in a Rebecca West novel admonishes?

What next? A character in a Lydia Davis short-short expostulates?

It's a form of trainspotting. Writing that so some moron can say, "I read Rebecca West in grad school, I am smart, this is why I subscribe to The New Yorker, because you'd have to be smart, like me, let's see, where's my New Yorker tote bag, I should go outside with my tote bag now so people there can see how smart I am, oh wait, is it in the wash with my Paris Review tote bag?"

The story also does it's best to overdose on its use of the word "outlier," which, of course, was coined New Yorker hack Malcolm Gladwell, who is to pretend intellectuals what Joe Rogan is to pretend "free thinkers." And here you have this woman using that cheap, con of a word, a tacky linguistic snake oil byproduct, over and over again, right down to the banal and confusing final sentence of the story, which is this:

How can you mandate hope and optimism when no one can save us from our outliers’ lot?

You are so very bad at this.

Save me from my outliers' lot! Save us! Not the outliers' lot?!

What stakes for us all. You see, I'm of the belief that the real main character of any great work of fiction is you. Hi. That's right, you. Whoever you are. And for that to be true, you don't need to just have skin the game, but your soul and your humanness. And there isn't anyone who has so much as a shed hair in this Yi story.

All Li has to do is have something. That's it. Obviously what we've just seen sucks. You want to suffer, go read the whole thing. But you won't. Unless that's what you need to do, that's the price you have to pay, in order to think you're smart. Which is just...well, I'd say there isn't much hope for you and your life is simply a form of playing out a string until it's over, this thing that never really much was. Because you weren't. In a Cartesian sense. You were just there, which is way different than being here.

After Deborah Treisman goes through the motions of her job, of her life, of her very existence, because it's all just a form of going through the motions, along with whomever is their current version of David Wallace, and fiction editors Willing Davidson and Cressida Leyshon, they bring in David "At Least It's an Expensive Empty Suit" Remnick so he can enjoy a couple pumps of the old cock and pat himself on the back for publishing such important fiction that he, like everyone else here, couldn't actually care less about, and there you have it, baby: The best fiction in the world in a new issue of The New Yorker. And all of the other stuff that comes with it, came with it, comes after it.

You know who else also just had fiction in The New Yorker? Paul Yoon. Does that mean his wife Laura Van Den Berg is coming up right behind him? Because they did get those Guggenheims on the same day, because they both totally, totally, totally deserved them right at the exact same time, never mind ever.

You see how this works? You see how closed the system is? The endless inbreeding? The uniformly shitty, boring-as-hell wank-writing?

This system exists so that the people of the system can be the people of the system.

I'll keep saying that, because it's true.

It's not for writing, it's not for reading, it sure as hell isn't for readers, it isn't for culture, society, history, the world.

It isn't for any of those things.

It's for the Deborah Treismans, the Michael Rays, the Mark Warrens, the Emily Stokes, the John Freemans, the Yiyun Lis.

People don't think, people don't care, people aren't reading hard, reading seriously, reading at all. They're just going "New Yorker fiction = amazing" and "Pulitzer finalist = must be super duper brilliant writing."

Nothing is real. And it's almost never what it purports to be. People just say shit, people just go with associations, and no one cares that much. People don't even care enough to spend five minutes really looking at something to determine what it might actually be in and of itself.

So along it all just goes and goes and goes.

Oh, by the way: Wanna guess who was a Booker Prize judge? Yiyun Li. The inbreeding never lets off here.

Meanwhile, you have someone doing the likes of this by comparison, not that there is even a comparison, as all the people I just mentioned are fully aware. And that was a problem for them.

Ready? Okay, let's do this then.

He started to leave, slowly but willingly, bringing his gloveless hand to the roof of the car for a quick touch, as if that was her but not her. That kind of leaving when you’re a kid and your friend’s mom drops you off at home and waits until you go inside, wheels of the car moving, but not so that you notice.

I heard him driving off now that I knew what to listen for as she watched through the rearview until there was nothing else of him to see, no summoning that could be done on second thought. Then she looked down at her phone like she was confused how it’d come to be in her hand, before blinking as if the whole of her had been restarted and understanding once more.

“That was so nice,” she said, the way a person does when they can’t stop themselves from reaching to hug someone before they’ve finished what they were saying and the remains of their words become lost in the crook of a neck or the slope of a shoulder, which made her seem embarrassed again.

She held herself motionless for a few seconds, a spent look on her face that made me think of the packed-down, now-soundless snow spread across the ground outside her car as if it had always been something horizontal and the sky hadn’t figured in the operation at all.

The video quality wasn’t the best but I think she was crying as she added, “There are still good people out there,” though I’m unsure and it doesn’t feel right playing judge as to the existence of someone else’s tears.

You couldn’t hear the sound of running water despite her window still being open, so maybe the brook itself was frozen, but you figure brooks pretty much have to swear an oath never to freeze or else they aren’t really a brook and what were they then, and I could have made a mistake going back to what I first thought I’d heard or the wind had drowned it out.

What can you say? What can you even say about the difference in quality? I'm not going to say anything. It's axiomatic. It's as clear as anything can be.

Each of these people can do one very limited thing of a thing and they do it poorly. They will write one kind of fiction, and it will be a version of the same thing--the same tone, the same style, the same subject matter--each and every time. They beat that dead horse (sure, we'll go with horse, never mind that this entry is this particular entry). They got nothing else. They don't even have a different kind of story.

And the guy who wrote that fiction above is the best writer when it comes to sports, to music, to film, literature, as a diarist, memoirist, op-eds, as well.

I can't say that? Why? I'll tell you why I'm going to say it. Because these people aren't going to say it precisely because it's all true. And I'm going to say it because anyone out there who wants to go, "What a dick, that can't all be true," can consult the thousands of examples of written proof of it all being exactly true. It's all backed up. So I'm not going to playing willing victim via silence and do my best to keep attention off of these completely true things.

I'm fighting here. I'm fighting for my life, for a life, an actual chance for the first time in my life, and more importantly than any of that, lives that aren't my own in a world that I believe needs what I and I alone can do.

I'm not going to sit back and wait for people who want me dead or envy or fear me or a combination to speak up on my behalf while they're lying their faces off about a Yiyun Li. But yeah, it's all out there. And they won't even let you see most of it. Imagine what things would be like if that weren't so?

This is David S. Wallace by the way, who looks like you're supposed to look here if you're going to be a white guy. Could stand to be portlier, but checks enough of the other boxes. Very Brooklyn, right? Got some Plato and Murakami on the bookshelf...yeah! And, what do you know, he's a "cat dad." Shocking. We've definitely seen our share of those, haven't we? You can go to David Wallace's website and hire him to help you write better. Sounds like a smart investment. And as if you didn't know: Everything in the "Works" section of his site is the result of someone he knew hooking him up.

"As one does..."