Prose off: Story in Granta by Pulitzer winner Joshua Cohen put forward by supporter of dead body hiders and vomit-inducing classists everywhere Sigrid Rausing v. Fleming story

Sunday 5/4/25

Sitting here this morning working on a story when I thought, you know, why don't we go to Granta's webpage and do a prose off with the most recent story they have up there, which is sure to suck, of course, but just to show how fair we are with these things. Because I don't go looking for the worst material in these venues. You can use any of it. And that's kind of the point. Part of it.

So imagine my reaction when I saw that that most recent story was by Joshua Cohen. Remember him from that prose off beat down with his story in The New Yorker that there is no way you could have looked at without thinking, "This guy seriously won the Pulitzer?" because it was that bad that no other reaction was possible after you knew that he had won a Pulitzer for fiction. And--this is a given--a Guggenheim.

You Guggenheim people are something else, by the way. I don't know if there are people more full of shit--with the caveat that others are tied for the top spot--than you people. It's all backroom deals. Nothing is read or vetted. It's not a competition. It's a rigged hook up fest. It's a disgusting country club and money and who reaches around and services who because that person knows the right people, is part of the right crowd, and always, in every last instance, sucks at writing.

Speaking of which, back to the business at hand. This is the start of Joshua Cohen's "Posterity" from Granta. Maybe it will be awesome. Anyone out there think it's going to be awesome? Gun to your head, and if you're correct you live, and you're wrong you die, is there anyone going with it's probably awesome? And you know what? None of these Guggenheim frauds, or Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing, or New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, gun to the head, would say, "Okay, probably awesome, final answer." No one would. Nobody, nobody, nobody. But yeah. Maybe we're about to see something fresh and dynamic. Let's find out!

I am proud to call myself my father’s son

but I am even prouder to call myself my father’s reader

The books he wrote

The classic novels he composed

The vanguard literature that Dad persisted against all odds in creating was an incitement

a direct indictment

an impassioned critique

an impassioned protest of a culture whose highest honors are essentially betrayals

‘Would you mind putting that away,’ the flight attendant said, ‘we’re getting the cabin ready for departure,’ and Acker left off his shaky typing and shut his computer and stowed it in the pocket of his business-class pod and as the plane got in line for takeoff, as the plane sped and lifted and rose up through the sky, it was as if all his thoughts were left behind on the ground except: I’ve fucked up badly.

The festival dedicated to his late father was scheduled to open tomorrow evening on the Mediterranean island of Midorca and the evening after that Acker was set to present his remarks at the Biblioteca Pública de Midorca. It would be the festival’s main speech, the organizers had told him, it would be the keynote address, the organizers were seeking his permission to record it, and yet most of what he’d managed to write of it so far was this beginning: ‘I’m proud to call myself my father’s son, but even prouder . . .’

From there, he had a few stunted anecdotes that he could use to wing his way through the lecture’s middle, as he’d been winging his way through the middle of his life, but as for an ending, he had none, he had no hope of one: ‘I’d like to take this opportunity to thank –’ is not an ending.

His intention had been to finish a draft in transit, to use all this dead delayed time otherwise wasted waiting between flights and on flights to pressure his jumbled troubled filial notions into a more final respectable form – sensitive, intelligent, did he mention respectable – but drinking vodka sodas high above clouds that looked like tiny brains or like the tiny pills currently seeping into his brain, he was suddenly too woozy and drunk to get anything done and instead of trying to type any more under such slurry conditions he spent most of the flight out of Newark sitting plugged into some trash on his swivel-mounted screen, wallowing in the watching of a popular superhero franchise, watching the original and then the sequel and then the rest of the installments, but somehow, unsuspectingly, watching them out of order.

‘– a refill?’

‘What?’

‘– ice?’

‘What?’

‘Would you like another drink,’ the flight attendant had to yell, ‘and would you like it with ice?’

If this were a scene in one of his father’s (classic, vanguard) books...

Always the same crap with these people, isn't it?

How shocked were you when you saw that this was a story about writers and also nepotism? Can these people think of anything new? Anything that anyone might care about that doesn't come from their navels as they jack themselves off with their silver spoon? Fill up that silver spoon and then drink those contents down while thinking, "Yum yum yum, that's me!"

And how bad is the writing at the level of language?

"'Would you mind putting that away,’ the flight attendant said, ‘we’re getting the cabin ready for departure,’ and Acker left off his shaky typing and shut his computer and stowed it in the pocket of his business-class pod and as the plane got in line for takeoff, as the plane sped and lifted and rose up through the sky, it was as if all his thoughts were left behind on the ground except: I’ve fucked up badly."

What is up with that syntax? Do you think this makes you original? "This is how a real writer does it." "...and stowed it in the pocket of his business-clad pod and as the plane got in line for takeoff, as the plane sped and lifted..."

Where's the editor? Off somewhere keeping her brother's secret as to where he hid his dead wife's body? Is that what's going on there, Sigrid Rausing? Is there another body we should be looking for?

And why do you keep saying the word "as"? Are you getting paid from Sigrid's inherited billions by the "as"?

"Slurry" is a noun, but you're creative using it as an adjective! Wow! That's what it's all about right there. The gift. What a gift this man has.

And Acker? Seriously, you pretentious, hooked up drip of a person? Really? Acker, huh?

You are so bad at writing, brother. You have to know that. You can't seriously think otherwise. I get it, people can believe just about anything, but when you're this bad at something, I'm sorry, I don't believe you can think you're not.

Fuck me that's bad.

But...Pulitzer!

It's the honk-if-you're-a-douchebag-like-I-am style of writing--you know, the pretentious douchebag variant of jeep people honking at each other--that is so typical of these no-talents. Game recognizes game? More like pretentious asshole recognizes pretentious asshole. Put those terms in there. Flash the sign! Honk that horn!

Reader.

Books.

Classic novels.

Mediterranean island.

Impassioned critique.

Drafts.

Have you seen anything in your life as fake as the publishing industry? These people are all as bad as Joshua Cohen is at writing. I don't feel like making a bunch of prose off hyperlinks at the moment, but put the term prose off in the search field of this site and take a gander. (And while you're there, type in "Guggenheim" and make sure you read all of those prose offs against Guggenheim winners. You think I'm just saying stuff here? I'm never just saying stuff. I say the truth, and I have the proof. And you can see that proof in those prose offs yourself.)

This isn't the exception. The strange example of a writer awarded and tongued as brilliant but actually sucking. They all suck. All of these people who are hooked up by this system of incestuous evil are awful at writing.

But no, that's amazing. I'm sure if I wrote that, I'd probably have a lot of success with it. That would definitely go great. If Joshua Cohen had never existed and I had written this, or like he dictated it to me from beyond this world in another world befitting the outsized talents of such a genius, and I had sent it to Granta, I totally, totally, totally would bet my life that Sigrid Rausing would have written me saying this was amazing, what an honor to have it, and that it wasn't just all about evil morons hooking up one of their own because that's how it works and the only way it works here and will work here until it is stopped from working that way here.

By coincidence, this story I'm working on this morning is also about a father and son. It's almost like there's something going on here. I find that this sort of thing happens a bunch. Which is handy. What you're about to see now is going to be a bit different. Ready? Here we go:

God owned a lot of property in the West End. For the longest time he’d handled all repairs personally and been pretty reachable, but he wanted to take a step back—or as many as possible, really—in order to make the most of the last days of his term until the similarly all-powerful demon replaced him like it had been agreed on however long ago before there was anything else save those seemingly endless drafting sessions hashing out the eventual agreement as to the when and the who of the rotation of power.

Scaling back meant putting his kid Jesus in charge of the West End apartments. The boy had done some real growing up after a less than inspiring start.

Never used to apply himself, always daydreaming, screwing around with his pothead friends, cutting class, treating curfew like an option instead of a rule. Blasting atonal music and using the excuse that he needed it to focus with his ADHD. A miscarriage was the only reason he wasn’t a dad at sixteen. Imagine having those people as family? Christ. Mescaline weekends in the desert.

If a prophet had said he’d never amount to anything, you’d think, “Yep, that tracks.”

Nonetheless, a man must love his child because one cannot love if one does not love one’s self, and his child came out of his own dick.

But then he got his associate’s. Lost all that junk food weight. Cut back the drugs to the very occasional Saturday night when there was something worth celebrating, which was less and less, because adulthood isn’t a birthday party as every actual adult knows. Joined a gym. Stopped drinking. Became a pescatarian. Gotten himself a girl.

She kept him grounded, no doubt about that. Sometimes, that’s both all it takes and the only thing that’ll do it.

And with the baby on the way, no wonder he was serious about earning real money.

“It’s not about me thinking I need to prove myself to me, or getting credit,” he’d told the old man when the idea was first broached, “but being there for my family. Stepping up.”

The kid had tagged along with his dad enough over the years to know the drill. And then there was that summer he helped his cousin the plumber. He could fix a leaking sink, and that’s at least half the battle when it comes to property management, or souls, for come to think of it. Leaks and backed-up toilets.

Imagine thinking that your writing should be memorable. What a concept, right?

Why does that never enter the minds of these people? Look at the difference. One excerpt is completely forgettable, save for how poorly it's written, and the other stands out. What is like the latter example? Who else would write that? Look at the humor, the depth. How easy it is to read, and yet all with which it is replete. The multiple levels of the narrative. The tone. The voice. Unique.

Not this arrogant, unimaginative piffle shit that people like Joshua Cohen write because it's all they can write.

And look how different that Fleming fiction is every time. Endless invention. I guess I did put in some hyperlinks.

Acker. What the fuck, man? That doesn't make you creative, chief. You got nothing talent-wise. You have people who hook you up. You know this as well as I do, but it's still good to have it out there.

Actually, if Acker had a face...