Prose off: Story excerpted from upcoming Karan Mahajan novel put forward by Granta gang of sister-in-law loathing Sigrid Rausing, career lickspittle Luke Neima, lying joke Dan Bird v. Fleming story

Wednesday 4/1/26

It takes so few words of mine to establish that this writer is infinitely better than any of these writers. That is the word--"infinitely." It's not "exponentially," because there is no way to measure or quantify how much better the one writer is than these favored people of the system of incestuous evil that is beloved and enabled by the likes of Granta publisher, billionaire heiress, and shamer of those who cause her family to hide their dead body, Sigrid Rausing; Granta deputy editor/bigot-stooge Luke Naima; and Granta editor in chief Dan Bird, who is one funny guy in his blatant hypocrisy and outright lies, as we'll soon see, but what can you expect from a Xeroxed John Freeman-type hand picked by the monster and pre-hell (allowing that there is one, metaphoric or otherwise), post-human (because this isn't someone I'd classify as human) that is Sigrid Rausing?

I just clicked a Granta story today for the purpose of doing a prose off. The first one in line on the website. Nothing else. Because all you ever have to do here is look at the story nearest to hand that is put forward by the likes of these people, and it will be atrocious. It'll bore you out of your mind. It will have its head so far up its boring as as to be coming back out the mouth, such that you say, well, that's a neat trick, even if it's the only remotely neat thing about this sloppery.

I'm going to show you a bunch of paragraphs from the start of a story in Granta. Best fiction in the world! Right? That's how this works, no? So at the least, we're going to see some brilliant writing. And if we're lucky, it'll be some genius writing.

In theory.

And if you dare to question that theory, or use your eyes, or, heaven's forbid, your brain, and not worship at the altar of these people, who wouldn't condescend to take a piss on you if you were on fire if they don't see you as a member of their particular strata as pertains to their galling class obsession, then they'd gladly wish death upon you.

I mean that literally. These are evil people. Broken, evil children. And so lacking in talent. You can't find any talent here. It doesn't exist in their world. It isn't even allowed. Talent shows them up. So does legitimacy. And they can't allow that.

When I look at this prose nothingness, this unilaterally nondescript, substance-free, imagination-free fiction, I ask myself if the author is even trying, or thinks they have to try, or just knows that they'll get their handout from these sorts of people anyway, being one of them, so why bother?

But I also think they have no idea what trying even is, or what the art of writing is. I think they're so arrogant and limited and essentially brain dead, that they never so much as ask themselves "Is this any good?" Or, "Why would someone want to read this?" Never mind, "Can I make this better"?

You tell me how you write what you're about to see from this story called "The Complex" by Karan Mahajan having asked yourself those questions or thought in those terms. I honestly would like to know how someone writes this and thinks it's good. How they think anyone would give a fuck. How they think it's interesting. Important. Necessary. To say nothing of amazing, brilliant, masterful, etc.

How about even well-written? What is impressive about this? Shouldn't it be impressive if you're supposed to believe this is outstanding? The best fiction in the world? Because that's what this system tells you it means when a story is in Granta. And all of this stuff so obviously sucks so much. There isn't any indication that this person has any more skill than anyone else, including people who have never tried to write in their lives.

Ready? Here we go again:

In September 1990 – five years after Sachin and Gita’s return – the family came apart.

It began with Mohit’s participation in the anti – affirmative action protests sweeping the country. Mohit was now eighteen, a fresher in college.

Gita had just returned to A‑19 from her work at St. Xavier’s School when she heard that Mohit had been grievously injured at a protest and was in the hospital.

She phoned Sachin at his office. ‘Should we go there?’ she asked. ‘Or will Karishma get angry?’

What had happened was this: A month earlier, in August, India’s prime minister, V. P. Singh, had undertaken a controversial, populist move, pressing into law the Mandal Commission Report, which gave twenty‑seven percent reservations in government jobs to ‘other backward castes’ – OBCs. Government jobs were one of the few paths to security and upward mobility in socialist India; and so the upper‑caste students – the majority of college students – responded with fury to this affirmative action. As a friend had put it to Mohit: ‘Twenty‑two‑point‑five percent of these jobs are already reserved for untouchables. Now they want to reserve fifty percent. What’s going to be left for us? Is it our fault that we were born upper caste? V. P. Singh is just appeasing minorities to garner their votes.’

In Brij’s house, too, there was surprising agreement on this issue.

The coddling of minorities, Brij felt, had gone too far. Whenever he could, he would quote a newspaper interview he’d read with a rising rustic politician who supported the implementation of the quotas.

But would you go to a doctor who got in on reservation – on affirmative action? a journalist asked the politician.

No, bhaiya, the politician responded. I’d go to America.

The politician was being facetious, but Brij chose to interpret it literally.

We are simply told boring things by a boring writer.

This isn't the art of writing. It doesn't even make a pass at being writing. We're even told how these "characters"--actual characters these ain't--choose to interpret things. It's like this booming, monotone voice over a megaphone in some Orwellian world. This isn't writing. You're not a writer, guy. You have to know that on some level. But they hooked you up, didn't they?

By the way: the above "story" is an excerpt from Mahajan's novel of the same name forthcoming from Viking, a major US publisher.

Nothing happens here because someone honestly thought anything was any good or that it had any real reason to be out in the world or would ever mean anything to anybody. It's all about other things.

You think the person who is this writer's agent thinks that's brilliant? What is the conversation on that score like? How could you discuss this person's work favorably if we both have it in front of us and can look down at the page and read it back to each other? Are they going to get in touch with me and rally to the defense here? What could you say? There's nothing you can say, no defense that can possibly be mounted. This is nothing. It's straight up nothingness.

You think the editor at Viking who bought this book was blown away by that writing? You think they said, "I must have this, it's so remarkable, people will love it, it'll sell, people will want to share it with other people."

The hell they did.

It's impossible to think those things after reading that. And the likes of it, because I can promise you that everything else in that book, just like everything else in that "story," and everything else by that same person is just more of the same. That's always how it is. Anything you look at by them is exactly like everything else by them. It doesn't "get better." There is no better here. You could wait until the end of time itself, and you won't see any uptick of improvement. Same shit, at the same level.

The only thing that changes are the titles, which, incidentally, are themselves always bland and boring. "The Complex." Whoa. You're giving me an inferiority complex, you genius writer, you!

You liars. You just lie. And hook up people like you. It's disgusting.

"Fresher." It's awkward, isn't it? They didn't want to say "freshman" on account of how these people prefer to keep everything as vanilla and safe as possible, lest anyone find offense or, gasp, feels or thinks something, oh the horror/humanity, and this shit is so button-up, so homogeneous, that even saying "freshman" is too audacious in their world of creative sterility where they don't want anyone to notice or care about anything.

Be as bland as possible. In every way. Those are your "creative" marching orders.

How would you feel if you wrote the above? Do you think you can't write that well? If so, why? Have you suffered a brain injury? Are you fully illiterate? Because I don't think you think you couldn't do that, no matter who you are or what your job is.

So do you think you could have your fiction run in Granta? Do you think you'd have a literary agent who told you you were brilliant? Do you think you'd get a book deal with one of the largest publishers in the world?

Because I don't think you'd think that, because you're not crazy.

Let's pretend you wrote the above, and you called your mother, and you read it to her over the phone. Do you think dear old mom would say, "You can be a titan in the literary world! You should totally go for that! Wow, I love you so much, but I didn't know you had this kind of ability."

That would be insane, wouldn't it? Absolutely insane. So insane, that it couldn't happen. And people will say all kinds of things to each other. Doesn't matter.

But here? If you're one of them, and you suck at writing, all of that--and more--can be yours, but only if you are one of them and you suck at writing.

As of today, there's no other way, and that's not an April Fool's joke, although I get if you're new to these pages and you're expecting me to say, "Fooled you! Of course there's no way that's what's in one of the 'best' magazines in the world and the stuff of a significant book deal!"

Wish I could. But then again, I wouldn't have bothered writing this entry without the need for it to exist, which is far more than I can say about the likes of Mahajan's story and book, and all her stories and books as she's been hooked up and while she is hooked up going forward.

I just provided you with lots of paragraph from that story, didn't I? I didn't stint. Didn't try and isolate the worst part of her writing. I was kind enough to spare you any more, that's true.

I'm going to limit myself in the second half of this prose off--the part where the beatdown happens--to a single paragraph. I only ever need a few words to prove that what I got is infinitely better than what these people got.

Ready? Here we go:

The setting for her videos is always the same, an outpost of a parking lot if you can call it that overhung with branches throwing these knobby, finger shadows on the windshield, knuckles busted too many times over to ever heal right. No middle-aged housewives passing through the background the same as they pass through their own lives, chirping on phones about the latest bumper crop of kids’ birthday parties while heading into the nail salon or Target for the third time that week, but as though this were somewhere life itself would go if it could for a quick break from constantly having to happen.  

Compete with that.

There is more life in this single paragraph than there will be in collected career output of a Karan Mahajan.

And what do we always say?

The value of a work of art is directly proportional to the amount of life it contains.

It's very easy--as easy as anything can be--for us to say why that paragraph is brilliant, genius, etc., how it works as writing, what makes it stand out, and all that stuff. We know how readily these things can be done as soon as we read it.

These Granta frauds, and the fraud agent of that writer fraud, and the fraud Viking editor of the writer fraud, know it too. But it doesn't matter to them that this is all true. That only matters insofar as it being true is reason to hate and discriminate against the infinitely better writer, and exponentially better person, who is responsible for this being true.

It's almost like if you were a child molester who was arrested for molesting children, and they had proof of you doing your molesting on video. Maybe it was a nanny cam type of situation as you babysat. But rather than be revolted with yourself, and ashamed, you were angry that the state had this evidence of you doing this thing that you did. You blamed the state, rather than yourself. For 1. Catching you and 2. These things being true.

Same idea with these people. It's like Sigrid and her late sister-in-law's dead body. It was the sister-in-law's fault that Sigrid's drug-addled brother had to stash the sister-in-law's body for months. How dare that bitch with her corpse embarrass us billionaire heirs! How dare she!

You're an evil joke, Sigrid. An evil, evil, evil joke of a person. And these people you hand pick as your pathetic myrmidons to do your bigoted bidding in putting forward shit like this as part of the business-as-always of your loathsome classism are just as bad.

And the only reason you get away with it is because no one is looking and no one cares save people of this system who need this system to be what it is for them to get whatever it is they get. The world doesn't care. The world doesn't read. The world isn't looking here. The world has no reason to read what is passed off as the best writing in the world write now. And in this sick, twisted, backwards system, it's in the best interest of the people in that system to have a world without readers and people who care about reading.

So it's just the twisted people in this sealed twisted room. That's why this can happen and keep happening.

I'm the only one who actually gives a fuck about writing and what great writing can do. Lives it. Fights for it. Gives everything I have and is humanly possible to it. These people aren't about that. They're about being these people.

And the rest of all the other people are off watching TikTok or Netflix or posting on social media or eating themselves into a comatose state and never thinking, never reading.

And on it goes. But that's how it goes on and why. It isn't because any of this writing doesn't suck or it'll sell because people want to read it or have any real reason to read it.

That's not what any of this is about. Obviously.