Anonymous Writing Group II: criticism thread

Benson puts a gun to his head. Erica has to dispose of a body.

great work bobby s

Quite liked - nay, really liked Harold's epiphany. Agree that if anything it's underwritten, but it gripped me with its succession of ideas & its fusion of the commonplace & absurd - the surreal spirit shining out. 900 more pages of that and who knows, perhaps you have synthesised a universe

I mean, it covers about 40 pages in 1000 words. As a short story or vignette it's good but expand it and it could be amazing, although countering this, perhaps it works best as a vignette because we don't have time to work out Harold's eventual design before he himself is barefoot at the water's edge

It's interesting that we've had three mental anguish/water's edge incidences.

Four, mine is implicit but 'turtles' is a joycean callback/hint

so who wrote the "mr black" story then?

"but I don't get the sense that it's necessary, especially as they're fairly standard everyday things to do"
let's break it down:
"Mr. Black, currently clutching a coffee"
coffee drinker, narrows down the age a bit; he's not just holding the coffee -- he's clutching it -- high strung dude

"nervously adjusting his tie, pulling at his collar,"
works on office job likely, probably not the boss, though, and he's already at work, not drinking coffee at home

"is very fond of numbers"
dude is the fastidious sort, and because of the preceding info, we already have some idea why he likes numbers, and his job is likely number-based.

If it's just "Mr. Black is very fond of numbers", then you're left thinking Mr. Black is some kind of number pervert at first.

i would like to read a story about a number pervert

These are I think the last three pieces I have. If I've missed any give me a shout.

...
by Zak Evans

brevity, in parts: a new hermeneutic

(lively)

in september of last year a letter was penned by a resident of the okarns state correctional facility in purple crayon. struck through with schizophrenic allusions it was addressed to a nearby judicial functional whose job it was to oversee first amendment issues as they related to the local incarceration community. she had recently scribed a sweeping response to three pressing appeals concerning prisoner hygiene as objet trouvé, radical emancipation from Cartesian dualism, and the prolific use of highly specific threats in fictional texts. in each case she had ruled for a restricted reading of civil rights - finding that the state's right to punish criminals took precedence over their self-expression. naturally this made a number of people very unhappy. a civil rights litigator promised to defame her in the press. a certain academic leftist philanthropist withdrew funding from her "pet" project - papier-mâché crafted birds, cats and fish for the prisoners meant to substitute for traditional animal-assisted therapy. "for fuck's sake, mandy," he texted her after the local okarns press ran excerpts from her manifesto. "if they can't make true art what good are sloppy wet paper dogs?"

for the benefit of their disposition, she might have answered, but the poorly scribbled letter had fastened her attention.

five lizards have tacken control of local authority
beware they shapeshift
feds can't be trusted - part of the lunar conspiracy
eject all anticipations imminently

the prisoner had spent the last decade quietly serving time for the stickup of a neighborhood electronics shop. he had made it down two blocks with an armful of discmen when a nearby beat cop overtook him. the weapons charge, stolen merchandise, and handful of industrial grade laxatives and cannabimimetic schedule I cigarettes gave him fifteen years. not a peep before yesterday, and now a paranoid letter that did not quite seem like poetry. it was unsettling. plus, she could sense a fever coming coaxed along by the anxieties of her work.

the phone rang - caller-id indicated a former lumberjack savant turned state prosecutor; her mentor.

"you screwed the pooch now," he cooed over the phone. they always fell quickly into tense banter. "the prisoner's union is up-in-arms, leaders are calling for your head."

"we gave it to the air-controllers so i'm not going to let a few grifters tell me what to do."

the lumberjack picked up on some fear behind her bluster. "you don't sound so sure."

"they took away my animal money," she said mournfully, and then, as though it were an afterthought, "what do you think about lizards?"

"cold blooded, scaly, poisonous?" he offered.

"assuming the roles of important government figures?"

"stay away from the psilocybin," he cautioned and then he was gone, the line dissolved into static, blocked by a tunnel or a water tower.

Breathe
by Caroline Vareilles

The needle pricks. I feel metal scratching on bone. Pain to prevent pain. Why do this? Weakness, vanity?

Take that out. There's no danger here. I'm in good hands. Making myself more important than I really am. Painting myself in the centre of a tragedy. The anesthetic is local, I'm numb.

I weighed him up when I saw him. How he spoke, how he spoke back. Not trust exactly - I trust no-one except myself - more a guy who looked like he knew what he was doing, and didn't care that much about selling it to me. He looked along his straight nose at me, through his expensive glasses, drawled in whole sentences. He didn't say it, but if he wasn't treating me, he'd be treating someone else and it was the same to him. The loss would be mine.

They closed in, wrapped me in cotton, swaddled me. Deliberate of course, regressing me, putting me in their care. It's because I see it that it works. They know what they're trying to do. I choose to submit, let my muffled ears believe they're underwater. Sink down, only my blind face exposed.

Swabs on my eyelids, but even so the spotlights alarm. A needle can only reach its length, but this bright white light spears through everything. I go to screw up my eyes but they're already screwed up. While I'm taking this in I find out it's begun. My head jerks sideways. The wrong senses are telling me the wrong things. I don't feel the impact; the shadow tells me I'm on my side. He's cut me already; but I learn this from the taste of blood. When he saws bone I can hear it.

It goes on. I realise I no longer know for how long. I can't tell where they're at. We talked about nose. It can't be anything else. I make to ask but the cotton fills my mouth. Something tells me my jaw is clamped shut. I don't even know if it's me or them.

Breathe, squat on the bottom, deal with it later. Strong arms take my legs and press them down, and tell me things I don't hear. Breathe.

Dolly

by Karine Fitzroy

Wristphone back on the table and duvet restored - at least able to sleep through irresolution and the botched wisdom of second thoughts now - Dolly dreams and wakes on the morning of her second date with Victor, although it might be more accurate to call it a ‘ramble’, as Victor has done repeatedly, with a marked avoidance of any romantic jargon. Poor kid’s trying way too hard. Course, Dolly does that too - tries to live a plotted life with some kind of narrative cogency - and she now realises with God’s clarity that what she really wants to do is stop caring about herself in any way whatsoever. Call it the inverted drunkenness of the death-row prisoner or the masochism of an intelligent duchess - Dolly is not Victor’s date but his clown - she is others’ entertainment, and her fall is the commodity sought most ardently by every admirer, him included. Her fall! as she dives headlong from the bed and crashes noisily amongst shoes. Her fall, as she kicks the floor, gets up, spin-dives again, flattening loose rolls of carpet and almost breaking her knee. Her window, which she runs to and in lieu of herself or of Genevieve flings through her best hat, looping stupidly onto the head of a neatly-suited schoolboy who gives a great whoop and begins dancing the dance of a cruel cunt, performed at the pavement, as if marauding it or preparing to inflict his arse-boils on it, threatening each paving-slab with some form of occluded extortion, firing porn-rays out of his socks as his shoes fly off and he begins actively moulding his environment into mounds of greasy beef that he can penetrate not with his cock but his pointing, wagging fingers - no you can’t! - and so as cars and telegraph poles are reckoned into patronised nothingballs of sexual ignominy, the Shamer in the Hat is farting his way into the sky, spasmodic leg-flicks reminding us all he still wants to dance, preferably upon our faces or our excised urogenitary tracts, or both, all while singing the song of his alma mater or perhaps one of the shittier hymns. “Bahb” he flaps, “Bahb, gahb flohg.” He gits in Dolly’s bathroom sink now, gits right in her face, only 16 but already has 51% of her assets, so he lowers his balls into her face-cream and hugs himself. “Jurrr” he thinks aloud. His head cranes around and his eyes fuse shut - now he only responds to the fear-pheromones, and wherever they are found so will be his fingertips and the lists they massage unwanted employees out of and frot algorithms against possibility into. Laughing down Dolly’s pussy he begins to fade from view and the hat, still rotating with the sort of jaunty inertia that gets children murdered by home invaders, settles over her crotch. She whips it away with irreplaceable showgirlship and tears into her clothes drawer. It’s a beautiful day! and she’s dressed for the fucking heath and its stupid horny trees.

But there aren’t any conditions that come with not caring about oneself and soon Dolly is dangling her legs out of the window, covered in yoghurt, wondering how many pigeons will feed by noon. Remembering belatedly that she has to be outside Victor’s house by eleven, she shoos away a pair of wasps (but not before allowing one of them to sting her hand) and skips to the shower, flecking her room white, as if some slight mould has chosen this day to envelop and claim the materials of her life. Showering is brief, rusty and badbacked, and Dolly falls uncertainly into a gorgeously mottled green and brown summer dress that she can’t remember wearing before (but can remember receiving, from her mother, whom she didn’t speak to last week). Feeling the delicious stink of guilt she gathers her transport pass and wallet, pops them into her neoprene slingbag before gazing for the final time from the window, just in case there’s anything, she supposes, that might do her the wrong kind of mischief out there in the sunny world.

This is why we fantasise about jetpacks: Dolly has this, two more and then a short walk; she does not like walking. She gazes out, perpendicularly, shopfronts and branches darting back into a staid history, curses the slightest pause between stops, makes room for the neatly-suited schoolboy who noisily mock-barfs into her lap, twice, before she turns around and puts her fist through his head and out the other side. This only seems to encourage him, however, and now with pieces of brain raining down over Dolly he gets up and produces a long-barreled revolver from his inside pocket, with which, pants around ankles, tie still immaculate, he embuggers himself. “Gubb. Covcov.” His erection grows and then falls off, becoming a larva of some sort - no, a queen termite, engorging itself on the grease of the bus floor, shivering with forces beyond its power and then exploding in a ricy granule-burst - a million tiny penis-termites converge upon Dolly leaving trails of stale pus, stop an inch short of her foot, rise vertical and salute, before pouring up the schoolboy’s leg, across his blazer, single file up his neck and now into the hole in his head where they replace his missing brain-matter. His eyes, which have been boggling around on the floor of the bus, ricocheting from shopping-bags and walking-boots, gathering flyshit, bounce fortuitously up to where his penis used to be and affix themselves, a second pair of balls, ocular and erotic, pulsing, bulging towards Dolly, pupils dilating...and this is where he pulls the trigger, the bullet flashes forward through his rectum, reduces both ball-eyes to blood-soup, smashes the front of his bladder off, as all the seminal fluid in his prostate ejaculates at once all over the roof of the bus and he falls backwards over the railing, down the stairs with a bump, in his final action managing to press the stop request button. Of course, nobody wants to get off or on, but the bus stands there anyway, for at least eight seconds.

The rest of Dolly’s journey proceeds more or less in the same manner, excepting for a blissful interlude waiting for the number 387 which is full of ladybirds and swifts catching the ladybirds and some ladybirds surviving by crawling up her dress, which she encourages. Inside her dress, she supposes, a dream of some kind is occurring, where ladybirds escape forever into eternally-enclosing leaves or each other’s shells, stacking up into a giant polybird which can never be killed. She looks up now at the swifts and wishes to grasp one by its tiny feet and fly to nowhere in particular except high. Perhaps so high she won’t have to let go. At this point-

Zak Evans piece shot through with a lysergic & unsteady intensity that I very, very much enjoy. its writer shouldn't worry about quality & just keep churning this stuff out until it congeals. really spry, really charged. bloody excellent. again, a sense of the surreal (papier mache prisoner pets!) intruding in on the paranoid metarealist swirl of a prison-complex its guardians & paymasters no longer know how to handle. strikes me it could grow into something important. n.b. fyi I know who wrote this but I'm not telling

Breathe is a terrifying & really well-written experience of cosmetic surgery; a concern apposite to my own writing, and done superbly here, conveying the weird mix of confusion & precision that accompanies the experience of being sedated & altered. "I go to screw up my eyes but they're already screwed up" is a brilliant line. Today's stuff is great, what can I say?

Id read a zak evans novel, i think.

Not gotten to rest yet.

Sea Nettle - 'course, coursing' doesn't work for me because the two meanings (if indeed there are two) aren't distinct enough. Every word counts more in poetry than anywhere else, and here repetition misses a chance to enrich that stanza.

The lines 'And understood familiarity as a feeling / But not a concept,' are too self-consciously analytical imo - we already know the speaker is like that from the rest of the poem. What I'd like is to throw in something more recent, or from the present; it's not clear whether this is a contented look back or a wistful one, and imo in this case the ambiguity actually isn't helping because it leaves the possibility that the time spoken of is inconsequential. I think just a hint of bitterness, tragedy, regret or whatever would add a layer of tension.

Argh Ismael you are rolling these out too quickly!

I don't have much to say about Harold except a) I really enjoyed it and b) that is one hell of a hardy mouse, possibly unrealistically so.

Shades of DFW about the Zak Evans story - loads of long sentences here but the writer is absolutely in control of their material. Lizards taking over the government is a cliche, but maybe that's the point and the note-writer can be blamed for that. I'm not convinced that the dialogue feels particularly natural, though.

I think I know who Zak Evans is as well.

b) that is one hell of a hardy mouse, possibly unrealistically so.

shaking my head @ u here matt

Flippin' 'eck, I'm MILES behind on these!

Haha oh dear, I just read it again. I am clearly not in the right frame of mind for close reading today.

Right, the poems. I liked them both, stylistically, rhythmically, but I thought 'Blackfriars' was by far the stronger of the two. 'Sea Nettle' is a fab title, but the poem lacked specificity. Everything was relateable in a general way, but there wasn't a single image or sense to bring you deep into the teller's experience - you couldn't see, smell or taste it, and with a title like 'Sea Nettle', I was expecting something tangy. What was the music that was playing? What did the nostalgia centre on, what did it feel like?

'Blackfriars' I loved, especially 'look into my eyes to see my eyes'.

Shades of DFW about the Zak Evans story

pynchon surely

Blackfriars is my favourite of the two poems. I love the first two stanzas, get the HRO connection, whoever raised that, but I think the author makes the bathos of it work in an amusing way. I think the last twist in the sonnet is somehow in the wrong direction though – it's obviously supposed to take the reader somewhere else but it's a little general. Maybe it's just "Alone and afraid... Naked" I don't like... It feels much less wise than what precedes it.

I'd like to see where the Zak Evans story goes... the prose is so inventive that the narrative (reasonably straightforward) buckles under it a little bit. But I think that's probably an unfair criticism given such a short excerpt.

Dolly, I found a little difficult to bite into but after the second read it's difficult not to appreciate the intensity of some of these images & descriptions. I think it would be helped by more of a focus on rhythm and the music of it... Made me think of Burroughs. I imagine not everyone would agree on this but I feel that when you get those kind of body horror semantic orgies in Naked Lunch there's a real swing to it... The sounds and pace of images overlapping each other grips you and makes it easier to suspend the need for a straightforward narrative. Could this be improved by slowing down the action in some places, including pauses, contrasting complex with simple, etc. etc. Could be I just need to read this at 10am with some more caffeine in the blood

Wow, still processing most of these. The standard has been crazy high esp for WIPs as I guess many of these are.

Dolly was otm I think in its depiction of a partic emotional state, that fatalistic abandon that's kinda despairing and jubilant at once? Liked how she's constantly besieged by capering, malevolent boy-children, that rang true as well; and of course the imagery is wonderfully pungent.

Feel like there used to be more stories in this vein, when you read anthologies from the 70s eg vs today you see a lot more of this kinda balls out surrealism. If its being produced now I don't know it, anyway. Would like to read more.

Blackfriars - I don't understand this at all I'm afraid. I liked the middle, the idea of being revived straight into an argument about the thing that revived you is pleasing to me. But it's just floating there in a puddle of custard, I can't work out the connection between the bits.

Mr Black - this is fabulous, I love it. The numbers thing not overdone at all imo, because you've managed to introduce them all in different and interesting ways. It isn't quite the 'appeal to all the senses' rule, but it's something close to it by drawing on all different contexts to serve the story - the three grey hairs, the sensual shapes, the 700 windows.

The other guy also being Mr Black was something I liked at first, but now I'm not sure I do. The story is jammed full of dry humour as it is, I don't know that a funny name gag is necessary.

The first line - clutching, nervously adjusting - looks like a mistake once you reach the end of the piece. Surely he starts off at ease, then becomes clutching as the market drops? The nose pushing air around is a great line - it captures quickening breath as well as the nervous energy of a cornered rat.

Hitchcock-style doesn't seem to me to fit either - it is the looking-down-the-stairwell thing in Vertigo though, wins is surely right. I think it's the right image, it just seems like wrong way to capture it.

In a similar vein, is he a pubs man? If I'm right and he's not, you could recast this detail to add a little extra colour to the character.

"his perspective shifted, like in that bit on the beach in Jaws"

His perspective shifted, like that meatloaf song about objects in the rearview mirror

"The other guy also being Mr Black was something I liked at first, but now I'm not sure I do. The story is jammed full of dry humour as it is, I don't know that a funny name gag is necessary."

If you imagine the story being narrated by Alec Baldwin, this is not a gag but dry statement of fact.

Me
q

I've been meaning to say that your posts in particular have been exactly the type of criticism I'd been hoping for from this thread; but tbh I'm not so sure about that last one.

It's a short poem. Written by my phone, in my pocket, all by itself.

(Apologies)

re. Mr. Black, I agree with whoever said that he shouldn't seem tense at the beginning - it's a much more satisfying character arc if he starts out ultra-confident and then gets this massive shock. I liked the repetitions, esp. of 'Mr. Black', liked the brother also being Mr. Black - just the kind of obviousness of it. I'd have liked a bit more context for the falling numbers, though not necc. an explanation as such. I think the tension could be amped a bit - spend a bit more time, perhaps only a few words, on his reaction to the change.

Season six, uh, I'm clearly in the minority here, but I bounced off it. The poem thing is interesting, but too many characters, too much randomness, not enough forward motion. And I think the second to last episode is a better ending than the last one - the poem is the body, and the bathtub and the acid - this is much more interesting and evocative (to me) than it dreaming the whole thing.

I agree with these but at the same time, making mr black ultra confident or introducing forward motion really alter the pieces beyond the point where I suspect the respective authors were intending to go. Maybe there's a way to show a certain cockiness the numbers have afforded mr black while still emphasizing fundamental nervous anxiety of the character. Maybe not numbering the episodes would remove the expectation of a season-arc. The bathtub ending seemed more ending shot to me as well but it also struck me as deliberately placed not at the end, maybe as commentary that real endings of series are always before the last episode?

One thing I'm not clear about is whether every line is a reference to a specific show. I only spotted three.

there are more than three but they are less than half of the lines

i like the idea of replacing the 'episode _____' with bullet points but i feel like that won't work much at readings; i sort of agree that it needs some kind of 'movement towards' but at the same time i don't want to give it, like, actual narrative progress; i'm not sure if the joke is about 'television' or 'quality television'; the bathtub thing was like three-fifths of the way through, originally

i have read that barthelme story, it turns out, but i had to check

I don't think the forward motion has to make sense, if that helps. An impression of narrative, doesn't actually have to have a pat plot progression. I would enjoy being asked to work a little to try and make it make sense, I don't think failing would bother me as much as the feeling that there is no sense to be made (perhaps there is more than I can grok, being a bear of little brain?)

Harold is mine. Thanks for the comments. It's actually part 1 of a 3-part story which has been driving me up the wall because I can't make the ending work, and although I love part 2, your reactions are making me wonder if I shouldn't just hone this bit some more and call it a short-short.

post 2 to the next round! :P

I agree re: forward motion on season six though I do like it without it, and it would be a shame to change the piece too much.

I think what is really interesting here is the subtle differences between the different genres you're pastiching. On the one hand you have the language of TV plotting. On the other there's this idea of Allegory and meta-commentary. The missing link here is that both of these are essentially abstracted ways of explaining reality to people, one (allegory) is medieval, the other (TV) contemporary. If either slipped for a moment into a more direct, realistic style it would be supremely startling.

I like the idea, which is at the core of this, that allegory allows you not only to understand but to empathise with something that is abstract, that doesn't have any feelings. That could be pushed more here and provide a climax at some point along the line without necessarily adding plot...

And now my brain hurts. Sorry if that's a ramble.

Mr. Black was mine – thanks to all who commented, it's been incredibly helpful. Agree that "Hitchcock-style" is something of a clanger, the parodies illustrate that hilariously. I think my original intention in it was to invoke that perspective shift as a kind of visual cliché that over-dramatised the action (essentially, he's just looking at a spreadsheet, in silence). But it does come across as a bit of a lazy shorthand.

Other criticisms otm too – will definitely be working on consistency of the character and being more careful about the lists, which are a troublesome tic for me in general.

Have had a lot of fun reading + engaging with all these great pieces, roll on round III !

poll

Do we dare? I kind of think we should. What would the question be though?

I haven't finished critiquing anyway. For anyone else still working through them, I'll leave the pieces up for the rest of the week and then one or two will be getting deleted (only where specifically requested).

Nah i dont think so, really, not since one or two came along that were better than mine, like

voted

(for garda, mordy/zora close behind)

i vote for treeship

Agree that "Hitchcock-style" is something of a clanger

I've been trying to pinpoint why, and have come to the conclusion that using cinema as a descriptive shortcut is something one just can't do. I'm reminded of Dan Brown's description of Langdon as 'looking like Harrison Ford' in The Da Vinci Code (which had the added cringe of clearly pitching the movie at the same time) and I think it's a breaking-the-fourth-wall thing. Characters can be into films and it's fine, and it's great when dialogue crackles like its on-screen; but going that step further is more telling the reader what you're trying to do than actually doing it, and for me it always breaks the spell.

i think it depends what you are describing as well as the tone/concept for the piece, and what cinematic references and language you are using