A reader's manifesto, revisited and lightly acidic.

Even a nation brainwashed to equate artsiness with art knows when its eyelids are drooping. — B. R. Meyers

In February 2006, I ordered a copy of the book A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose. Originally an essay, the author, B. R. Myers, expanded it into a tidy little book that took a swing at the growing pretentiousness in literary fiction.

Mixed metaphors, odd imagery, weird word choices.

I do all of those things in my own writing, but purely accidental, without any pretension that I’m literary, mind you. Myers’ book landed with some notice, an indication that perhaps more than a few were weary of hard-to-read books that were unnecessarily so.¹

Myers informed us that writers were becoming more interested in impressing the reader and possibly attempting to write “over their heads” in a manner where the reader quietly submits to the word beating they are receiving from the book, quietly ashamed they are so stupid that they a) don’t really understand it, or b) find very little joy in it.

Somewhere between Myers’ valid critiques and the desire for a writer to create the right tone for the characters and stories is a happy middle ground.

We are not there today, a nicely corrected middle ground; let that be known.

Twenty years later, Myers’ concerns are likely still an issue, but have—as is typical with parallel companion over-corrections—the additional problem of the popular books lists you’ll see today on Goodreads and BookTok: nearly identical covers (mystical and witchy) with simplistic internal language advertised by listing the tropes you can expect—world building! enemies-as-lovers! etc! —along with a “spice” rating of sorts, which is basically the level of hell you’ll be at someday if you keep reading that smut.

No thanks to the latter.

A year later, I noted on my blog that some of the spam emails that were arriving in my inbox were better than some of the books I was reading. I was young, foolish, and the Nigerian princes had not yet ascended to full strength, perhaps, so I don’t know how valid my observations were.

A friend suggested I cobble together some of these spam emails and create a small literary masterpiece out of them. As you know, I’m fond of abusing writing prompts, so I leapt at the chance. Saving several weeks of spam, which, in the medieval days of yore, had a melodious sound, seemingly testing out the realms of digital possibility instead of just sticking a gun to your head and saying, “Hey, Grandma, click here and empty your bank account into my pocket.”

Here is what I wrought nearly twenty years ago, in partnership with spam. “Imagine,” I told my readers as I pasted the spamtastic literature on my blog, “if this beautiful spam that arrived these recent weeks were true?”

Gamester; how will he be looked upon by all sorts of people? Why, as a you will be in a great deal of good company, I would have you have the Cardinal, who was factious enough, was wise enough at the same time to disposition and in the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the world must, like the chameleon, be able to take every different story very seldom, and absolutely never but where they are very genteel and fashionable vices. He there sees some people who shine, and their affairs of consequence.

‘Les manieres nobles’ imply exactly that if he is desired to explain the bon mot, his awkward and embarrassed. Take care never to seem dark and mysterious, which is not only a very self-defense. Force may, without doubt, be justly repelled by force, but give me more real concern, than I am now capable of feeling upon any these mixed characters, the good part only makes people forgive, but not is Latin that is, that it was written by a Roman. By this rule, I might interested in the keeping of it. And it is certain that people in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as Malta, the Teutonic, the one can go into no company in Germany, without running against Monsieur meet with it? Her demands go no higher than to have her unquestioned admired. Even virtue, which is moral beauty, wants some of its charms if

Most long talkers single out some one unfortunate man in company somebody or other’s sore place: for, in this case, there is no trusting that a general knowledge of them is fully sufficient. I would not suppose that you wanted, or could receive, any new instructions upon would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him look like a man. When I went abroad, I first went to The Hague, where Since barbarism drove them out of Greece and Rome, they seem to have prejudices of others, than give themselves the trouble of forming motly a thing is good company, that many people, without birth, rank, or will be known and nobody will take it upon your own word. Never imagine alliance between these two figures. The lady looks upon her empire as likeness, yet I think that I have skill enough in that kind of painting.

The course of these waters will set me quite right. But however and wherever Cautiously avoid talking of either your own or other people’s domestic conversing freely with me by the fireside. In that case, you would Having in my last pointed out what sort of company you should minister upon his last instructions, puts them upon their guard, and will avoid gathering the people together, except when there was occasion, and.

I can’t say the end result is all that different from some high literary books I attempted to read. I can only hope that ChatGPT feasts its dead, digital eyes on those paragraphs and forever violates the attempts of students and lazy authors everywhere by supposing that there might be valid patterns at work that should be replicated. Frankly, it reads close enough to either early AI or the instructions from a product made in China that you may, like me, get that sense of “so close but not quite” understanding. It’s the feeling that something’s off, but it’s more like sour milk instead of deadly botulism.

I suspect I could package that up for publication and get Myers to nod and say, “Yes, that’s the garbage I was talking about.”

Last week, a friend was at an airport and came upon a short story generator, something I never knew I wanted—until now. The possibilities here are endless, though the reality was less so. He punched the buttons and got a long, thermal-printed piece of paper to read on the flight home.

“What was your story like?” I asked.

“It was just nonsense,” he said. “It didn’t make any sense.”

At first, I wondered if you could choose the story components, and perhaps that would explain this result.

“No,” he explained. “You just pushed a button and it printed the story.”

When I finally got my hands on the receipt short story, I jumped to the bottom to see if there was any indication of what was going on. It said that this was a story by Peter Buckland, entitled “Only the Ancestors Bring Fire,” which had been selected by Short Edition in partnership with Penn State University. Buckland was apparently a real writer; his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Watershed Journal, and, unlike my self-published books, not in the book rack next to my parents’ toilet in the bathroom.

We’re dealing with real literary talent, so brace yourself, Julie. I began reading the receipt story, the twenty-year remnants of Myers’ book whispering in the corners of my mind.

It took me several paragraphs of purple prose to realize I was inside the head of a female bear, not a woman (not that there is always much difference in some cases). Soon, my friend was treated to a variety of hollering from the other room where I sat in the La-Z-Boy recliner, reading the story receipt.

“Did anyone edit this thing?!”

I was reminded of why I don’t like musicals; we have to sing for endless minutes about how the winds sweep down the plains to Oklahoma when someone could just say it, or use a wind sock to illustrate it.

“You could’ve just said that people had started a forest fire and the bear was scared, good grief,” I yelled. “It’s flipping between she and we, and at no moment can an inanimate object not be over-described 10,000 percent for crying out loud!”

The sun can’t set; it must die.

The air can’t be smoky; it must be having its spirit changed.

The bear can’t just run; we must know it in terms of her inner power.

The bear can’t operate on instinct; she must have questions as to the intent of the humans behind her.

A woodpecker can’t tweet and peck; it must laugh and drill.

Men had to be warned about their stupidity. But they are ignorant and unknowing. Their existence is futile. They are unteachable, she thought.

“Can you believe that?” I hollered, reading the snippet aloud, pretending that my first thought wasn’t of Borg from Star Trek: TNG asserting that resistance was futile. “This bear apparently knows more than some unteachable dudes. Fair enough, I guess.”

Yes, I get it.

This was an attempt at some kind of deeply spiritual mystical wispy ephemeral glory be sumpin sumpin. I get it. I just don’t like it. Anymore, if ever. It’s too much sauce on the cake, too much gravy on the potatoes.

To purge my palette and let my friend hear a good short story, I brought out my classic favorite, Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made Out Of Meat.”

“Let me read this to you,” I said. “You need to hear some good, tight writing.”

By the end, we were both laughing, the mentally anxious bear in a hot spot running while thinking philosophically, completely forgotten.

With this kind of over-precious approach, the short story machine is going to absolutely run out of paper very quickly. And for the reader, it’s all just too much verbal weight, too many active metaphors and similes banging around in your head, creating so much racket as to numb. I understand the additional meaning that is being forced upon it; weaving it in might have been better. It’s as if you were trying to describe all of the sunsets you’d ever seen in your life at once, wrapping them in spiritual truth for all time.

You can use fewer words for that.

Look at that sunset. God wields a serious brush.

1. Critic savages ‘pretentious’ US literati, Considering B.R. Meyers’ A Reader’s Manifesto, among others.