Prose off: Story by Guggenheim winner Roxane Gay about a woman in the woods v. Fleming story about a woman in the woods

Saturday 4/25/26

We've seen many prose offs in these pages in which a story by someone who won a Guggenheim is pitted against a story of mine.

The Guggenheim is as corrupt and farcical as anything in publishing. The award--which is a $40,000 grant--claims to provide financial support to a writer of clear talent who has shown, through their work and devotion to that work, their productivity, a vision on which they deliver and seek to continue to do so, expanding all the while. That is, someone who could really use that money, who will use it in the best faith, pouring it and themselves into their work.

What happens, though, and this is inarguable, and easily provable, as we've seen time and time again, is that the Guggenheim people dole out these grants without so much as looking at the work of very bad writers, who are simply people of this system of incestuous evil, who often came into this world monied, the grotesque, spoiled, dilettante class, who themselves hook up people just like them, and are in turn hooked up by those same people.

This is how they get everything. The story placement, the gig, the book deal, the positive reviews, the articles written about them, the appearances, the awards. The people of the system award the other people of the system, who in turn award the other people back. Then, the Guggenheim people look at who has the awards, and based on that--proof of the incest--says, "You deserve this honor and this money, here you go!" without actually looking at the work and being so dumb, so apathetic, so full of shit, to put it bluntly, to treat this like it means these people are brilliant and worthy.

Several years ago, the corrupt institution that is the Guggenheim awarded grants to husband and wife Paul Yoon and Laura Van Den Berg on the same day.

Is it even possible to believe that it just happened to work out that way? That these two writers, living under the same roof--bad writers, as is so easily revealed, as we've seen repeatedly in these pages, and will see soon for the latest time with a terrible Yoon story in a recent New Yorker--having come from money, having been hooked up time and time again, these Ivy Leaguers, with those jobs in academia, moving in these sinecure circles, were, by some amazing coincidence, each deserving of this award at the exact same time?

Wow. I mean hell, if some guy can part a sea, I suppose this can be a totally legitimate and on the up and up thing. Just happened to work out that way.

Sure it did.

These Guggenheims are ubiquitous. If you're one of these people, you get one. No matter how terrible your writing is. No matter how little you've ever done. No matter how wealthy you are.

It's a lie. Like almost everything the publishing system wants people to believe. There's nothing real here. These people can't write. They don't know anything. They're as bad as people, too, as they are as writers. You need to be, to advance in this system.

The other day, I put up an entry about Willard Spiegelman. After doing so, I thought, "I bet he has a Guggenheim. Should have checked that."

I did check, and sure enough, this loathsome man, with no talent, has himself a Guggenheim. Made the change, put the entry back up.

It's like a given. That's just how it's going to work. I can tell you who is going to have them next. What I'm normally doing, though, is simply confirming after the fact. Because I know. I know the names. I know the members of the sinecure. Once you're in, it's just a matter of when your name and number is called.

You can be the worst writer in the world. It matters not a jot.

There was no way that Roxane Gay wasn't going to have a Guggenheim. She has portrayed herself as someone who has overcome. She grew up wealthy. She went to Yale. Her aunt is Claudine Gay, the ex-president of Harvard disposed because she was a plagiarist (figures).

Roxane Gay is also a bully. Stories of this are legion. Of threats, promises of revenge.

I have testimonies here from editors of hers cowed into publishing her despite having no respect for her work, because she sics her minions on people.

She's a liar, a con artist, a grifter. Entitled. Underline that last one. Underline it again. Go and get the highlighter.

She's the Andrew Carnegie of manufactured victimhood corporate capitalists.

Nothing is her fault, and everything is owed to her. That is her attitude, and how she conducts herself. She exists to amass via handout. Sans legitimacy. Because what she never possessed, and never will, is actual ability.

When challenged online, her preferred retort to people is to tell them to get some followers. Because they don't have as many as her. (After she's made certain, of course.) And we know that how many followers one has is indicative of their ability, their intelligence, their worthiness, their decency, and much else besides. Especially in these times in this world, right?

But this is how the publishing system, the hype, the awards, the conferring, works. At present, anyway.

Roxane Gay received a Guggenheim for nonfiction, rather than fiction, but if she had preferred to officially garner one for her fiction, she could have elected to do so. The bottom line is, she was getting one no matter what. I simply wish to be as factually accurate as possible.

Type the term "Guggenheim" in the search bar of this site. Look at all of the examples of the horrible writing by these Guggenheim winners, and look at the writing from this person that is often contrasted with that awful writing in the same entry.

It's worse than criminal. It's indefensible. It's unjustifiable. It's evil.

I don't know what else you could possibly call it. Twisted? Disgusting? Rancid? Fucked up? Sickening?

Those work, too.

Paul Yoon. Laura Van Den Berg. Wendy Lesser. Bradford Morrow. Uncle Willard. Yiyun Li. Robert Olen Butler. Joshua Cohen. Jesmyn Ward. Ibram X. Kendi. Diane Williams. Junot Diaz. George Saunders. Tommy Orange.

We haven't even gotten to Emma Straub yet, who is just so much fluffy nothingness as a writer, let alone an artist. That would be Emma Straub, daughter of Peter.

The Guggenheim Foundation also makes the claim--just another boldfaced lie--that they're backing the artists who make this world a better place, and are thus being helped in doing so, by freeing them up for a year, financially, to work on a work that helps in this cause.

Do you think anyone in the world believes that the world is improved by another work by Laura Van Den Berg?

How about a condescending, navel gazing book by the likes of a nasty little piece of work like Wendy Lesser about what she likes to read, but which is really about telling everyone else they aren't a member of her privileged class?

We've set this up now, so let's get to it. We're starting with a Roxane Gay story called "I Am a Knife," which featured in her collection, Difficult Women, gushed over at The New Republic by Rafia Zakaria who ought to be ashamed of herself. Roxane Gay, in turn, gushed about Zakaria's own book, Against White Feminism.

Quid.

Pro.

Quo.

Do you get this yet?

This is how Gay operates, with people she determines to be sufficiently like herself, which usually has to do with box-checked reasons. The surface level things. The things you can't control. Like skin color and gender. And you know what that says about a person who goes by those things.

She has a kind of catchphrase for her transactional style: If you clap, I clap back.

You like that?

It's gross, isn't it? Don't you feel gross just reading this?

I thought this Gay story would be appropriate for this prose off because it's about a woman in the woods, and so is the story of mine that I'll use for the purpose of this exercise. The Gay story is meant to be heady or whatever, but really it's just someone belaboring a point that doesn't really exist. The story appears online at a venue called The Center for Fiction. Ready? Here we go:

My husband is a hunter. I am a knife.

Last deer season, he took me on a hunt with him. At four in the morning, he shook me awake. He made love to me. He always makes love to me before the hunt. There is a quality to his efforts that is different, more intense. There is a rawness to how he touches me, as if he is preparing himself for what he is about to do. He takes me. He uses me. He marks me. I allow him. I revel in it. When my husband took me hunting with him, he told me not to shower after he lay on top of me heavy, sweaty, his lips pressed against the dark curve of my neck. As we dressed, I still felt him inside me, sticking to my thighs. It was cold outside. In the cab of his truck, I leaned against his arm, my eyes closed. He drank coffee from a thermos that used to belong to his father, who is dead from black lung. My husband’s beard smelled like coffee for the rest of the day.

We spent hours in the deer blind, doused in deer piss, waiting. I grew bored but stayed silent. Several does passed before us but my husband held one finger to his lips. We were waiting for a buck. “I want to kill something majestic today,” my husband said earlier that morning. He believes killing brings him closer to God. He is always looking for God even though he has little faith left. More time passed. Our bodies grew stiff.  My stomach felt hollow. I hungered. His shoulders slumped as his hope faded but then a massive buck galloped into our sights. The creature was indeed majestic—its musculature pronounced, body thick, standing tall. My husband raised his rifle, inhaled deeply, held his finger against the trigger. He waited. The buck turned his head and looked at us with black, glassy eyes. I held my breath too. We waited. My husband pulled the trigger and exhaled slowly. We waited. The bullet hit the deer in his neck, making a neat black hole from which a thin stream of blood began to flow. My husband nodded his head once, set his rifle down. He is a gun.

What are we doing here?

You want some more? For argument's sake, I mean. I know no one actually wants any more. Here we go:

The night after my nephew is born, after I cut my sister open and hold her life in my hands and close the wounds I made to save her child, my husband fucks me in our bed while my sister and a man and a baby boy sleep in her bed.  They are at peace. My husband and I are loud and violent with each other. When I bite him, I draw blood. He touches me like he’s trying to fix everything broken inside me, like he’s trying to break me even more, like he is trying, through will alone, to create another life inside of what is left of my womb. I believe through him all things are possible. I wrap my arms around his back. I press my knees against his ribs. We do not look away from each other. His every thrust hurts more, hurts everywhere, but I spread my legs wider, open myself more to him. He is a gun. I am a knife.

Okay, then. Thanks for that. Yes, definitely makes the world better. I'm sure the Guggenheim people honestly believe that's true. I'm sure we all do.

Meanwhile, there's this, from this other person. The person and the artist who is the opposite of Roxane Gay in every way. Ready?

The top of her ear that remained in view of the camera had reddened, making me realize how white her skin was. She looked as if she would have been less embarrassed if he’d found her naked.

“Thank you so much,” she added, and then repeated herself as though the words of a second ago hadn’t stopped and instead had started to spill over the ragged edge of what could still pass for a normal speaking voice and she honestly believed no one had ever done something nicer for her, but also like she was someone skilled at getting off the phone who lets you know it’d be better for them if they were done talking to you now without saying it. This was finished so that a moment was able to stay perfect. No chances taken. As real as the keys in her pocket. A file on her phone. The saved password. The line in the locket. And anything else would’ve said less than what she hadn’t denied anyway.  

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.

Then the sound of unseen footsteps in what seemed greater number than moments before, as though the distance coming wasn’t the same as the distance leaving. And the wet felt on the hinges, only drier thanks to a wind apparently able to convince the wood in the deepest parts of the trees to make itself heard just by blowing hard enough.  

I lowered my breath waiting for him to drive off now that I knew what to listen for as she watched through the rearview until there was nothing left to see, no summoning that could be done on second thought. Finally, 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.

Yeah...I'm afraid, as per usual, we have to conclude that this prose off isn't a particularly close contest.

It's as if I don't know my place.

Or that I should be getting lots of stuff soon, right? Because this is legit, no? It's not total lying, sickening, rigged scam, right?

Should I try clapping? Maybe that's it. My bad. See? Accountability.