"Less Is Best, Mr. Nabokov"
A piece from McSweeney's
I’ve been going through a lot of older pieces recently. Call it nostalgia, I suppose. Maybe it’s something else, I don’t know. But in some cases, these pieces are over 25 years old. Hard to believe, but true.
One piece that I had completely forgotten about was one that I published in McSweeney’s, back in 2001.
I submitted a Vladimir Nabokov short story called “Torpid Smoke” to seven online manuscript evaluation services. I changed the title and Nabokov’s name but left the piece unaltered. It’s a classic Nabokov short story published in all of his short-fiction collections.
After I paid the experts and received their suggestions, I published what they told me.
I suppose it bolsters the advice to never trust an “expert.”
I started off doing a ton of these short humor pieces, either for McSweeney’s or for other online sites, and then eventually for The New Yorker. Most, if not all, were fiction humor pieces. I sort of got burned out by it all after a number of years, and I switched to writing books and then scripts and such.
But recently, I’ve found myself returning to these shorter pieces. I’ve really enjoyed getting back into them, and I have a new one coming out in the print New Yorker in a few weeks. Kind of miss the purity of just putting out a 1,000-word piece that’s completely self-contained. In its own little world. Like putting out a single rather than an entire album.
Anyway, here’s the McSweeney’s piece called “Less is Best, Mr. Nabokov.” And it’s all true. These are all suggestions I received from real manuscript evaluation services.
At the bottom, I’ve included a link to my other pieces on McSweeney’s, the first going back to 1999! Dave Eggers, himself, was editing the online version at that time and he accepted it. I feel a great deal of gratitude to Dave and the people of McSweeney’s (including John Warner and Chris Monks and everyone else) for publishing me when no one else would (not counting the original Cracked and Mad magazines).
Shit, I still love anyone who’ll publish me. Or read anything I write. Truly grateful. Hope you dig it.
hello, remember me the writer???