Without fail

Tuesday 3/26/24

One would learn more about writing in the two minutes it takes to read that Writing truths entry on here than they would at any university or in any MFA program. An MFA program is full of people and instructors who cannot write. The only way they can generate money with anything writing-related is by getting people to come to their MFA program. The only people who fail to see this are people who wish to be duped and/or have a need to be duped.

Many prose offs are upcoming. Who doesn't love a good prose off? The answer: The person on the time-to-beat-someone-down end of one. Example after example of bad writing is featured in these pages. When is it ever not comically awful? I don't search, I don't scrounge. I click and pick. Whatever I land on will be godawful. Without fail. So what does that tell you about what's coming out of MFA programs? We'll look at a story in The Paris Review soon. We'll break down why it's as bad as it is, and why it ran there. Because it's never about the quality of the writing.

And that entry in these pages was free, too.

I am making a survey of Edgar Ulmer's films. Yes, he was the Poverty Row king, but The Black Cat (1934) was not a poverty row picture, and it's one of the finest of the classic first-era Universal horror films. Ulmer is so much more interesting than Bergman. Or Fellini. Show me someone touting Fellini and I'll show you a wannabe intellectual. People who love Ulmer tend to actually know something about film.

I watched American Movie (1999). I hadn't seen it in some twenty years. Watched it when it first became available, and then after college, when I stayed over for a night with a buddy from school and his family--his parents--in Shrewsbury. We got together with a friend of his that he grew up with, whom I became friendly with, and we decided to rent a movie. No one really had anything in mind, and finally we had to decide because it was getting late, so I mentioned American Movie and that's what we went with. (NB: A nice memory from college: Me and this same guy--it's the Sam Cooke guy--sitting on our other roommate's bed when he was out because he had the biggest TV and watching a VHS tape of 1932's Island of Lost Souls. My sister and I aren't close by any stretch, but along these same lines, I remember one year--and I know she doesn't recall this--that I was in Chicago for Christmas, and I was sitting at the computer in the basement listening to Jamie T.'s "Alicia Quays," and she came over without a word and sat next to me and we just listened to it together. That was nice.)

American Movie was not a great choice on my part. Put them both to sleep. I felt bad. I like that kind of Ed Wood vibe, but watching it now I found it depressing, personally-speaking, how much support this guy had for his undertakings of ineptitude, when I am alone and even my presses have worked to sabotage me at worst, or have not raised a finger to help the cause at best. To say nothing of a single person, pretty much, in any capacity.

I have this one press--have, had, whatever--for which I have pages in a notebook filled with details, quotes, pieces of information, should I finally do what I've been so loath to do and blow them up in these pages, which I would greatly prefer not to do if at all possible. An unstable person there sent me an email once titled "fuck you," which is also what the email itself said in the body, and that's the least messed up of it all. (And I was actually nice about this; how would you be and what would you do if someone did that to you?) This is a press who won't tweet about me, I don't know, having multiple op-eds in the highest circulation newspapers in the country on the same day so that we can sell books, but will send me info about AWP.

Those are the priorities. Lockstep, visionless system adherence. Not good writing, not selling books, but where the table is at AWP.

Could someone get mad at me saying that? It's not my fault that it's true. Inarguably so. Make whatever excuse you want, tell yourself whatever erroneous thing you wish, but that is the truth. Doesn't have to be. And it really shouldn't be in my case. I'm not one of these other people you do a book with. Adjust and go forward accordingly with the person who is different from the others.

The funny thing is, that's really so easy to do. Should be a case of anything you have, given what you are, given its quality, the genius, all of that, we'll put it out, we're your home base press for now while you're in this historically unique situation or for as long as you want us to be. Three, four books a year--one each season--because they're all so different from each other. Memoir, essays, art books, novel, stories, book on writing, music book, film book. I make more writing an 800 word piece than I do giving such a place a book because of this situation I am in, which isn't about the lofty figure I get for the 800 op-ed, but rather how low the amount is from the press, where I shouldn't be anyway, but things are what they are right now, for now. Just for now. Not for always. Cheer Pack, basically for free. There Is No Doubt, basically for free. Big Asks, basically for free. The Ghost Grew Legs, basically for free. You're Up, You're Down, You're Up, basically for free. Longer on the Inside, basically for free. Not actually free, but not far from it.

Speaking of Ed Wood: Plan 9 from Outer Space isn't as bad as you're led to believe. It's terrible, true, but you can watch it. You may even enjoy watching it. I actually don't think that's some huge challenge. I'd like to write something about the film this year.

I remember everything. Verbatim. What you said. Things you'd never remember. I remember them word for word.

Another funny thing: What will happen on here is someone will read about themselves, and they'll think, "Oh, good God, I really did say that," or, "I really did behave that way, and now everyone can see it," or, "I'm a massive bigot who has discriminated against this man for years because he's so much better than I am and now he's doing something about it publicly and there isn't anything I can say to explain this away as anything else."

Yeah. That's how it goes. Don't let it get to that point. Or if it does, do whatever you have to do to fix it with that person and make sure it doesn't get worse. Because if you don't, it will.