This is a weird batch even by my standards
I’ll let the category names speak for themselves. Nonfiction by Sarah Mullens, fiction by Lincoln Michel, Camara S. Garrett, Tracie Adams and Kristen Arnett, and some hot garbage from ChatGPT.
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Nonfiction
The Mirror Operator by Sarah Mullens
This is Mullens’ memoir of the rocky relationship with her right-wing-conspiracy-theorist mother using logical proofs as a narrative device. It’s written in a way that reminded me of the Ted Chiang story I recently reread for my Personal Anthology.
In bed, lights off in the middle of the day, laptop balanced on my knees, I paused the video of Trump’s Waco rally to scan for my mother in the crowd. A woman with dark hair like hers balls a fist, the frame frozen as she raises it toward the sky. I bring my face closer to the screen: she’s the right height, maybe, but her posture’s all wrong. And the arm? No. Too gangly.
Fiction
The Tugwort by Lincoln Michel
An engaged couple is planning a wedding, but the bride-to-be suffers from panic attacks. Michel is so good at making that feeling seem real and relatable,
Every so often, Carla would feel a painful sensation in her chest, as if some angry creature was being born there. This creature would unfurl its burning limbs. A leg through her gut, a hand sliding through the heart. Carla’s breath would get fast and hot. Then she would be hyperventilating on the floor.
Shuttlecock by Camara S. Garrett
“Remind me later to tell you something,” Steffi said.
With that first line, Garrett starts slowly cranking up the tension in the relationship between the narrator and his girlfriend Stephanie. This story kept surprising until the last line.
An Apology to the Drive Thru Bank Teller I Robbed Accidentally by Tracie Adams
This has the momentum of a freight train. The first sentence hooked me and the last left me stunned.
I turned the steering wheel with sweaty palms as I exited the bank parking lot. My heart, an inmate pounding on bars, thumped against my rib cage. I drove straight home to my studio apartment, conscious of my speed so I wouldn’t get pulled over. My mind raced with ideas of how I would spend all that money.
Clown Porn
I read these a couple days apart and halfway through the second one I realized they were related. This book is at the top of my buy list now, but something tells me I won’t be reading it on the bus.
The Birthday Clown of Your Queer Fantasy by Kristen Arnett
A raunchy, hilarious and unforgettable excerpt from Kristen Arnett’s new book Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One.
I’ve entertained an entire backyard full of people with nothing but a wooden spoon and a cast-iron pan as accompaniment, drumming the theme from The Brady Bunch while simultaneously dancing a jig. I’ve landed a somersault on a Slip ’N Slide while juggling three Coke cans and somehow managed not to break my neck. If I can’t MacGyver myself a dick out of thin air, then I need to find a new profession.
Stop Me if You've Heard This One by Kristen Arnett
An excerpt from Arnett’s novel of the same name. This is a bizarre and hilarious story about a somewhat sinister, adulterous lesbian clown.
Dwight had already seen me perform back when I was first starting out. He’d liked it fine, he’d said, but it wasn’t exactly his thing. That I understood—my big brother was never going to be the kind of guy who’d admit that I was funnier than him. But my mother, that was different. I’d wanted her approval. The look on her face, I’ll never forget; it was as if I were the most revolting thing she’d ever seen. Like she couldn’t believe she’d given birth to something so foul.
“Cheryl,” she’d said, after several agonizing seconds had passed, “What do you want me to say?”
That was the first and last time I ever performed in front of my mother.
Garbage
The only thing that made me cringe harder than the dumb story was how many people think it’s brilliant. Just shameful. Remember when that stupid AI-powered animation came out and we were all supposed to think it was the end of movies as we know it? Yeah that didn’t happen. And I don’t think any writer is going to feel threatened by this nonsense:
A Machine-Shaped Hand by ChatGPT
To be clear, this story is fucking terrible.
This is notable only because so many people think it’s proof of something. The fact that tech bros think this is good writing is more evidence why they’re engineers and not writers. It’s like that guy in high school that insisted on reading you his poetry.
Like what the hell does this sentence even mean:
Already, you can hear the constraints humming like a server farm at midnight – anonymous, regimented, powered by someone else’s need.
Read that swill, then read this collection of great dunks on it.
