fantastic... the voiceover sounds like strangers on a train though...lovely but distracting. i need to read it with my own mind voice.
I have no idea where you go when youre writing these. just a delightful sea of word play and images of a melting reality... it had a feeling like Brazil. dont know why.
If we had more people creating stories like this writing good fiction and challenging each other to create better fiction in the fiction tab we would be creating a better culture for all of us and by extension anyone else who finds fiction through substack.
The fiction culture of substack because it is so filled with authors or aspiring authors should be one of gamesmanship. If you're going to participate in it, you should be trying to get better at it. And progression is non-linear. I know one of the heuristic pieces of advice that you will get constantly about writing is you have to write a lot to be a good writer. Generally, this is a good heuristic however, the fact is progression is non-linear. I have watched single-handedly as people on this platform have made huge jumps from one story to the next.
And I have to stop myself and Wonder what happened between story a and story b to create the stochastic jump in the quality of the writing. Cuz if you have bad habits and ingrained tendencies because you've never had someone challenging you or telling you Something just doesn't work. It's not going to matter how much you write, your work is still going to exhibit the hallmarks of those bad habits unless you actively challenge yourself or try something new or have a sense of play about your work.
And that's one of my favorite things about writing fiction the sense of play. And you don't have to be a big reader either. Because at least two of the best prose artists that I can think of on the platform right now both freely admit to not reading much. To the point where my friend zani gets annoyed at the suggestion of you needing to be a constant reader to be a good writer. It's not true. It can be for some people. It might not be for others. For me it is. But that's another thing entirely.
The rhythm of prose in this fiction is what creates the dissonant sense of claustrophobia in the world of the story. It doesn't just work as an artifact of culture. The fact of the matter is this story manages to do what so many of Jon's stories do, the the trick of creating something immediately right off the bat. That is both fantastic and impossible, but stated so plainly + so factually within the world of the fictional world he is creating which may be very small on the page, but very large in your mind, is the ability make me absolutely not question The authority of the narrator or what the narrator is going through.
Because of course there is a strange called at the local pool that is somehow communing with the entire rest of the universe by doing cannon balls and holding their breath.
It's that magical realist touch that only good prose well executed can make you believe. It's the reason that everyone loves the lodestone of magical realism and 100 years of solitude. Because the sense of sense of the real versus The fantastic is so thin in the story yet so plainly stated and owned by the first person narrator.
This is what so many authors who are not as seasoned as Jon fail to understand when I say that they need to establish authority.
You establish narrative authority simply by effectively creating the world both inner and outer in first person POV because you have full interiority suggesting that the story is being told by the writer themselves, all you have to do is say it and believe it. But the problem is if you don't believe it, no one else is going to believe it either and they're going to call you on it and they're going to notice it and it's going to stand out.
Sometimes this can be good but a lot of times it's bad. Because to pull off the lack of authority and make it work, you have to already be very good at creating authority.
Note that I am not going to conflate this with the idea of the unreliable narrator. All narrators are unreliable. The only question ever is a question of degrees of unreliable to the narration in a first person story.
At one point I had considered this could be read if you wanted to do the hip thing and make it metaphorical to the culture, this is very much a good metaphor for the degradation and destruction of the mind that I have seen go on in some dementia patients.
For example, my grandmother who died last year at the ripe old age of 96 was the most happy dementia patient I have ever met. She was having a blast losing her marbles until her last week which was spent in comfort, Care and hospice. Up until then she was just fine repeating the same thing over and over again, she never cared she and either did anyone else in the family if she mislabeled you because she would immediately go along with whatever you said. And she loved to play word games and little goldfish memory games all the way up until close to the end.
She was also in a very, very nice retirement community. But that is privilege. I think most of this has had more to do with how she lived her life. It was also hilarious because she had a very funny penchant for barking at other residents. And even in the state she was in losing herself or another piece of herself by the day she knew the secret. It's all a cosmic joke. Because even when she had Alzheimer's or dementia they never decided to put her through the indignities of getting any sort of diagnosis which I also think might have helped. She knew that she was playing little pranks by barking at everyone.
There were certain elements of this 's story in particular that reminded me of her. In a good way. And for me this is the sort of thing that's important about fiction. Because I was the black sheep of that side of the family, even if they say I wasn't and still am not. I was the only son of the only son, and the truth of the matter is I only ever remember my grandmother three times that I can remember. One of those times was 20 years apart and by the time I met her as an adult in 2018 she was already deep enough in dementia that I really could not get anything aside from the appreciation of seeing how she was dealing with her situation. I would say it was much harder on her children. My aunt and my father than it ever was on her. And that's why I read fiction.
Fiction at its best does these sorts of things. I missed my grandmother's funeral because I didn't have enough money for a plane ticket and I already had tickets to Chuck's final big book tour, and of course they both happened on the same day. My dad and my aunt both told me to skip the trip to Baltimore and go see Chuck.
My grandmother retired early and traveled the world after working for the mayor's office and the social security administration for most of her adult working life. So I think she deserved early retirement and all the traveling that she did before she came down with a bad case of the dementias. And considering I believe she visited maybe 100 more countries in 20 years before her last large trip, which was to Fiji. I hope have she would have appreciated The fact that I was traveling instead of going to her funeral. Which I heard was lovely but somber and would have been filled with hundreds and hundreds of people I didn't know and had never met and had no connection to. But instead for the first time since my best friend had killed herself, me, my fiance and my best friend Stephanie were seeing Chuck in Kansas City, at a venue that used to be a church. Where I got some great photos. And had a great time. And as has happened every single time I've seen him at a book event for maybe the past 15 years. Chuck winged me in the face with a bag of candy.
I mean straight whapped me. I don't know why he does this but this was like the fifth time it's happened, in since I was a helper kangaroo wearing a onesie me, my fiance and my best friend all yelled at him and excoriated him for throwing a bag of Snickers in my face. After which he gently tossed me a bag of candy, corn and apologized.
See what fiction can do for the culture. It can do things like this. Not everybody will tell the story or will even have the same kind of reaction to fiction. But at its best, good fiction has these effects. It doesn't just connect to the particular, but the deeper truth of the fiction you read can bring about very novel connections in your own brain. Sometimes one's you don't even realize until later when you're considering what you've read.
thank you very very much EK
exceptional.
This piece makes me never want to write again. It’s a personal afront to me. I love it so painfully that it hurts my feelings.
Funny, it was only a love letter to my swim instructor, forgot her name tho.
I have no further input past what you've already said in comments and restacked in notes.
props for the strange
That prose tho! Sheesh.
Thank you Bradley.
holy moly
fantastic... the voiceover sounds like strangers on a train though...lovely but distracting. i need to read it with my own mind voice.
I have no idea where you go when youre writing these. just a delightful sea of word play and images of a melting reality... it had a feeling like Brazil. dont know why.
Oh. My. God.
I don’t know what I just read but I *want* it. It’s stellar.
Your facility with language is spectacular. Your word pictures...I'm not sure how to explain the impact.
Wow. Thank you Lyndsey. I am always so humbly pleased when I hear comments like yours. I really do appreciate it very much.
You have a clear voice—always happy to read what you write.
Damn, Jon, that fired on every single cylinder. Drop anchor wherever this came from, because it’s a magnificent place.
Well goddamn. This was so good!
I love what this story is doing for the fiction culture on Substack.
If we had more people creating stories like this writing good fiction and challenging each other to create better fiction in the fiction tab we would be creating a better culture for all of us and by extension anyone else who finds fiction through substack.
The fiction culture of substack because it is so filled with authors or aspiring authors should be one of gamesmanship. If you're going to participate in it, you should be trying to get better at it. And progression is non-linear. I know one of the heuristic pieces of advice that you will get constantly about writing is you have to write a lot to be a good writer. Generally, this is a good heuristic however, the fact is progression is non-linear. I have watched single-handedly as people on this platform have made huge jumps from one story to the next.
And I have to stop myself and Wonder what happened between story a and story b to create the stochastic jump in the quality of the writing. Cuz if you have bad habits and ingrained tendencies because you've never had someone challenging you or telling you Something just doesn't work. It's not going to matter how much you write, your work is still going to exhibit the hallmarks of those bad habits unless you actively challenge yourself or try something new or have a sense of play about your work.
And that's one of my favorite things about writing fiction the sense of play. And you don't have to be a big reader either. Because at least two of the best prose artists that I can think of on the platform right now both freely admit to not reading much. To the point where my friend zani gets annoyed at the suggestion of you needing to be a constant reader to be a good writer. It's not true. It can be for some people. It might not be for others. For me it is. But that's another thing entirely.
What a great comment about fiction culture on the stack
fiction is culture. this is a great example.
The rhythm of the prose is like swimming in good fiction culture.
writing fiction is culture indeed
Did you read any parts out loud to yourself, Andrew? This fiction has flow!
yeah sure did
The rhythm of prose in this fiction is what creates the dissonant sense of claustrophobia in the world of the story. It doesn't just work as an artifact of culture. The fact of the matter is this story manages to do what so many of Jon's stories do, the the trick of creating something immediately right off the bat. That is both fantastic and impossible, but stated so plainly + so factually within the world of the fictional world he is creating which may be very small on the page, but very large in your mind, is the ability make me absolutely not question The authority of the narrator or what the narrator is going through.
Because of course there is a strange called at the local pool that is somehow communing with the entire rest of the universe by doing cannon balls and holding their breath.
It's that magical realist touch that only good prose well executed can make you believe. It's the reason that everyone loves the lodestone of magical realism and 100 years of solitude. Because the sense of sense of the real versus The fantastic is so thin in the story yet so plainly stated and owned by the first person narrator.
This is what so many authors who are not as seasoned as Jon fail to understand when I say that they need to establish authority.
You establish narrative authority simply by effectively creating the world both inner and outer in first person POV because you have full interiority suggesting that the story is being told by the writer themselves, all you have to do is say it and believe it. But the problem is if you don't believe it, no one else is going to believe it either and they're going to call you on it and they're going to notice it and it's going to stand out.
Sometimes this can be good but a lot of times it's bad. Because to pull off the lack of authority and make it work, you have to already be very good at creating authority.
Note that I am not going to conflate this with the idea of the unreliable narrator. All narrators are unreliable. The only question ever is a question of degrees of unreliable to the narration in a first person story.
At one point I had considered this could be read if you wanted to do the hip thing and make it metaphorical to the culture, this is very much a good metaphor for the degradation and destruction of the mind that I have seen go on in some dementia patients.
For example, my grandmother who died last year at the ripe old age of 96 was the most happy dementia patient I have ever met. She was having a blast losing her marbles until her last week which was spent in comfort, Care and hospice. Up until then she was just fine repeating the same thing over and over again, she never cared she and either did anyone else in the family if she mislabeled you because she would immediately go along with whatever you said. And she loved to play word games and little goldfish memory games all the way up until close to the end.
She was also in a very, very nice retirement community. But that is privilege. I think most of this has had more to do with how she lived her life. It was also hilarious because she had a very funny penchant for barking at other residents. And even in the state she was in losing herself or another piece of herself by the day she knew the secret. It's all a cosmic joke. Because even when she had Alzheimer's or dementia they never decided to put her through the indignities of getting any sort of diagnosis which I also think might have helped. She knew that she was playing little pranks by barking at everyone.
There were certain elements of this 's story in particular that reminded me of her. In a good way. And for me this is the sort of thing that's important about fiction. Because I was the black sheep of that side of the family, even if they say I wasn't and still am not. I was the only son of the only son, and the truth of the matter is I only ever remember my grandmother three times that I can remember. One of those times was 20 years apart and by the time I met her as an adult in 2018 she was already deep enough in dementia that I really could not get anything aside from the appreciation of seeing how she was dealing with her situation. I would say it was much harder on her children. My aunt and my father than it ever was on her. And that's why I read fiction.
Fiction at its best does these sorts of things. I missed my grandmother's funeral because I didn't have enough money for a plane ticket and I already had tickets to Chuck's final big book tour, and of course they both happened on the same day. My dad and my aunt both told me to skip the trip to Baltimore and go see Chuck.
My grandmother retired early and traveled the world after working for the mayor's office and the social security administration for most of her adult working life. So I think she deserved early retirement and all the traveling that she did before she came down with a bad case of the dementias. And considering I believe she visited maybe 100 more countries in 20 years before her last large trip, which was to Fiji. I hope have she would have appreciated The fact that I was traveling instead of going to her funeral. Which I heard was lovely but somber and would have been filled with hundreds and hundreds of people I didn't know and had never met and had no connection to. But instead for the first time since my best friend had killed herself, me, my fiance and my best friend Stephanie were seeing Chuck in Kansas City, at a venue that used to be a church. Where I got some great photos. And had a great time. And as has happened every single time I've seen him at a book event for maybe the past 15 years. Chuck winged me in the face with a bag of candy.
I mean straight whapped me. I don't know why he does this but this was like the fifth time it's happened, in since I was a helper kangaroo wearing a onesie me, my fiance and my best friend all yelled at him and excoriated him for throwing a bag of Snickers in my face. After which he gently tossed me a bag of candy, corn and apologized.
See what fiction can do for the culture. It can do things like this. Not everybody will tell the story or will even have the same kind of reaction to fiction. But at its best, good fiction has these effects. It doesn't just connect to the particular, but the deeper truth of the fiction you read can bring about very novel connections in your own brain. Sometimes one's you don't even realize until later when you're considering what you've read.
Or maybe I'm just crazy.
Substack's fiction culture gets better by the day. Loved this story!
thank you Caroline!
Boom! That's amazing!
So. Fucking. Good.
cheers brother