Open Letter to the Editor of Novel Noctule

A Call for Radical Care and Kindness

Summary.—First, I almost never directly entertain the rabble of slanderers and cancellers, but—better late and sporadic than not at all—it might be important to have a record of the lengths people in our pathetic climate will go to silence heterodox voices and even see them destroyed. Second, I suspect you are not guilty of what the anonymous informant accuses you: combing through my artworks for trauma porn and then, perhaps after getting off on it, writing a letter—complete with an obsessively thorough record of every “problematic” piece—to my university, insisting that I be terminated at once. And I suspect that even if you are guilty, you worked with—or even were pressured by—someone else: (in my mind) the informant herself! Third, even if you were solely responsible, and even if it is as bad as the informant makes it out to seem (psych-ward-Nazi bad), you are forgiven. You are forgiven in a genuine way, rather than in that condescending and weaponized way that people, especially little brat cancellers, often use: as in “I forgive you and I hope you get some needed help.”

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Hello Jacqueline. (Key and Peele ruined this name for me—ahahaha.)

I received an anonymous note from someone accusing you of trying to get me fired because of my artwork. The informant said that my poetry was so traumatizing that you—as if enjoying the trauma (like how some rape victims develop a rough-sex penchant)—combed through my social media accounts for more traumatic content. Having compiled a listing of all the horror, you penned an official letter—so at least insists the informant—to my university, demanding that students be informed of how much of a monster I am and that I be terminated immediately. That sounds, as I write it, too ridiculous to be true. What self-respecting artist, aware that artistic expression is under threat worldwide, would ever try to eradicate the free expressions of another artist, let alone of the artist himself? It blows my mind.

At the same time, however, I do understand we are in a cultural moment (and I hope it is an evanescent one) where even artists (those who typically do not fit the mold) are compelled on pain of slander and job loss to fit the mold, where diversity in expression is no longer tolerated—indeed, where people yearn, perhaps for a modicum of purpose in their first-world lives of emptiness, to destroy anything that unsettles them. We are in crazy times. The submission guidelines at one magazine, to give just one example, threatened submitters not only with blacklisting, but with sustained public ridicule and doxing, if they submitted a story or a poem where a trans person was injured in any way—yes, even by a papercut!

Look at it this way. Yesterday it was not uncommon for whites—white women especially—to weaponize a racist police infrastructure against black men who, let us imagine, said something they did not like (like failed to address them as “ma’am” or whatever). “Officer,” so says the southern belle (complete with saccharine tones), “my neighbor, a black man, stole my ring and tried to rape me.” Today it is not uncommon for lynch-hungry cancellers—still often white women—to weaponize an anti-heterodoxy HR infrastructure (an infrastructure that seems to have less and less toleration for diversity the more and more it talks about promoting diversity), weaponize that infrastructure especially against artists—against not only artists who make them uncomfortable, but also artists who merely are associated with people who make them uncomfortable and even artists who merely have created a literary character who makes them uncomfortable. “Dear university XXX,” so you say (at least according to the informant), “a person who teaches at your institution, traumatic as it is for me even to write it out, has poems that feature _____”—fill in whatever makes you uncomfortable according to your personal tastes: serial killers; neurodivergent characters that want to become neurotypical; yorkie rapists (“oh, how it spun on his cock even easier, and greasier, than his midget girlfriend!”); stories where women are objectified; stories where a collie puppy gets its snout smashed into its own shit on the linoleum before being flung through the sheetrock (left to whimper behind the wall until blow flies bloom from its rot); stories that feature sailboat wallpaper (since, so let us imagine, that is what you always zoomed in on throughout the years of being treated as a cum dump by a chokey uncle). (You do know that in real life such uncomfortable things happen, right? Why is an artist not allowed to address them without fear of losing his livelihood? Oh yes, because we live now in a “my-truth” cozy reality of glitter families that will never challenge how we self-identify and never upset our view of the world. Lame. Is it not hard to feel, when you really think about it, that the cry-black-rape belle of yesterday and the brat canceller of today are exemplifications of one archetypal force of darkness subsisting over and above its exemplifications?)  

Things have gone bonkers. Students kicked out of school for having a BLM flag in their dorm window? Professors terminated for teaching a word merely because it came too close to sounding like a racial slur? Even more bonkers is what I have learned as a professor, tipped off again and again over the semesters to the Group-Me cancel plots of drugged up and porn-addled brats. So many of the “offended” and “traumatized” are straight lying: they just want to exert power and mash things up (Columbine energy, white-women-crying-black-rape energy). (You know how many students (and these happen to come, for whatever it might be worth, disproportionately from the population of self-proclaimed “visual learners”)—you know how many students who claim to be offended by sexual material in the course readings (and demand, if not my immediate termination, at least an alternative assignment) turn out to be Only-Fans performers with nasty mouths of “daddy daddy daddy”? If I had ten cents for every bottle of lotion I went thr. . . .)

Pathetic it all is, and done in vain as well. Numbing the depression with tantrums aimed to hurt others—no matter the social-justice spin we might put on it to sleep at night—will not cure the depression (anymore than watching-reading-writing horror will prepare us for the true boogeyman of obliteration from which no one escapes). Pathetic as it is, the ressentiment-driven ethos of cancellation has penetrated all our hearts to some degree. In a phrase, it is systemic. We are all hurting, drugged and addicted and vitamin-d-deficient and fast-fooded and participation-trophied and pornhubbed and unchallenged as we are (on top of being able to see, at any moment, satellite footage of our polluted planet—on which we are all soon to die—twist in a seeming void). We are all hurting and, in turn, looking to hurt others: “I’ll make them pay for it!” (For what exactly? Locally, yes—it might be for being a failed writer or a dog abuser (see my psychic foray below on the characteristics of the informant). As I see it, though, it is ultimately for being born—rage not against the machine, but against existence itself: again, Columbine energy, anti-Nietzsche energy. You know what I say is the truth. Your conscience tells you.)

Now, why do I say all this? I say all this because, even if the accusation against you is true, I do not blame you. It is as hard to resist participating in cancellation as it is to put down our cellphones. Plus, I am an adult. I know that people make mistakes. I also know that things work out. So really, it is no biggie if you did these things, however pathetic they are. Suffering, as much as it is an anathema to the young people pushing the anti-diversity and pro-Disney ethos of cancellation, ennobles us so long as we rise to the challenge it poses. Even if the accusation against you is true, then, understand that—putting my silliness aside and being perfectly serious with you (just for a second)—I would forgive you and would want you to know that you are loved (as hopefully you already know).

We have a bit of a plot twist, though. I have doubts as to the truth of the accusation. It is hard for me to point to any hard facts, but I will say a few things. The letter sent to me reeked, absolutely reeked, of bitterness—bitterness in general (holy-water-worthy bitterness, as anyone close to the informant I am sure is well aware), but also bitterness especially toward you. The informant (or some string-puller behind the informant), if my native instincts and my decades of life experience have taught me well, wants you to suffer, suffer as only a Satan of resent could ever want anyone to suffer. She—yes, the letter reads to my sixth sense like that of a biological woman—seems to be, as much as Trump has ruined the damn phrase, a nasty woman. In yet another slander against art (the first being trying to censor it and even harm the source of it), she even tried to weaponize my writings against you, encouraging me to send you shocking poetry: “She deserves it, trust me.” A nasty woman, indeed!

Putting on my Columbo hat, I think we can get more specific than that the informant is a bitter woman who has it in for you. Since the informant knew I had submitted poetry to Novel Noctule (Feb 2021, I believe), I assume she is someone who worked at the magazine. And because she presumably knew it would be natural for me to think she has ties to the magazine (how else would she know I submitted?), I also assume the informant is no longer affiliated with the magazine (why would she put her job in jeopardy if she still were affiliated?).

So, if you are shocked by the accusation against you (as any healthy person should be, since trying to silence and ruin the livelihood of a marginalized voice simply for voicing that marginalized voice is the essence of a hate crime), then I would start by looking at a woman, a young privileged woman (Karen white, definitely), who (1) has a deep grudge against you and (2) was formerly affiliated with Novel Noctule.

But wait, there is more! If my experiences and instincts serve me right, it would not be a surprise if the informant actually is the one who did, or thought about doing, what they accuse you of having done: (1) mailing my university a letter insisting that, because of my artwork, I should be fired and (2) literally getting off on me, my artworks, and my possible ruin along the way. People are twisted like that—and also often childish enough to think they have covered their tracks. The informant’s tone had that harassing-stalker-obsession vibe—you know, the kind that will keep trying to reach out even though you already gave a clear message, perhaps through blocking, that you are done with them. I have had several people obsess over me from the sidelines, so I am well versed in the psychology of these creepy masturbating perps—these “Stans,” as Eminem calls them. Indeed, I think we have a situation here quite similar to the repeatedly corroborated stereotype of the southern preacher who rails rails rails against homosexuality as a compensation (one everyone can see through, even his wife) for all the methed-out boy toys on the side. What do I mean? Well, the people who would try to cancel me for my transgressive writing—especially if they do it behind my back and then try to reach out to me attempting to pin it on someone they hate, as I believe to be the case with our Karen informant—are those who probably really do engage in deeply twisted stuff. Their psychologies are all too transparent. The mirror I hold up to them is too much. As a loose rule (and controlling for the fact that not everyone has the time to engage with art), regular folks block their eyes to the mirror or go to a different mirror; culture workers and artists and intellectuals extract lessons from the mirror, as unsettling as that process might be; twisted fuckers smash the mirror, even if it means hurting themselves; the most twisted fuckers hunt out more mirrors to smash, perhaps even flicking the bean all the while!  

Assuming the informant is the true offender in this case, I would propose, then, a third characteristic. On top of (1) having a deep grudge against you and (2) being a white bully formerly affiliated with Novel Noctule, our Karen is also probably (3) a raging advocate of things like trigger warnings—indeed, to the extent that, due to how deeply she likely claims to be traumatized by words (getting stress ulcers, fibromyalgia flareups, or so on from them), she is prepared to ruin the life of any artist who voices (even if only satirically or through the mouth of merely a hideous character) words that could be perceived as fatphobic or transphobic (or so on from the list of the virtue signaler’s handbook).

The informant has a particular gripe, so I believe, against animal abuse (particularly dog abuse, which was a central topic in my Novel Noctule submission). Going out on a limb, we might add, then, a fourth characteristic that might help you identify the person trying to slander your name: the informant, if she is the one who tried to hurt me, probably (4) is currently (sexually) abusing a pet. It is the homosexual-preacher thing all over again, you see. The people who would try to cancel me, literally silence me and ruin my life, for artwork that deals with dog abuse are, let me just put it this way, those we do not want to be our dogsitters (especially when there is any peanut butter around).

For whatever it might be worth, the image of the perp in my head is a person vampire pale (a horror-writer stereotype, of course) as well as highly tattooed and likely even dabbles in “fringe” metal (both perfect for the wannabee-transgressive-but-really-anti-transgressive conformist, the I-give-the-middle-finger-to-convention-and-yet-cancel-heterodox-views fake counterculturalist, I have in mind). Although a bit plumper, she—a “you’ll-regret-ever-fucking-with-me” person—also has the look and vibe, in my fantasy, of the neurotically stressed dog owner, played by Parker Posey, in the mockumentary “Best in Show”—the fitting face of cancel culture. I picture our Karen going to a therapist—of course, without result—like Posey, but with a hairier dog than the one that Posey had: perhaps a golden retriever or a collie or a sheltie. As is likely already obvious (forgive me, I am just trying to help you identify this Karen-Gollum), she is the type of person that will create fake accounts—an endless stream if she is on a harassing mission.

My psychic energies are about tapped out. I hope I have given you enough to find out the identity of this bitter dog-raping virtue signaler who likely always talks about her stress levels, this former Novel Noctule affiliate with a gripe against you who is likely a terrible writer filled with appropriate self-doubts.

Or perhaps it is best just to let it all die down, especially if I am right and she is the obsessive type who just hates to be ignored (and will be quick to find psychological issues with you if you do ignore her—labeling you a “gaslighter” or “narcissist” or trying to out woke-you (“you are an ableist,” “you clapped even though you know clapping is a microaggression,” and so on) are the trite go-to moves you can expect from this population, along with enlisting friends to jump in, dogpile, against you).

Remember: you are better than letting bully nutjobs get the best of you. And if you happen to be, despite my suspicion, the true bully nutjob in all of this, then cut yourself some slack: we all have issues, spinning as we are toward death on this blue ball. Recognize that today is a new day. Consider offering apologies to those you feel you owe them to (ahem). In the future, and here is my big social justice stake in all of this, please try to be more open to approaching diverse artists with kindness or tolerance—shit, even just indifference will do!—rather than brutality. Perhaps even reconcile with the informant—she might very well be, after all, your life double, which would make sense: we hate in others what we see in ourselves and presumably you and the informant have mutual hate for one another. Lastly, think about letting your dog, if you have one, stay with a family member.

Written in haste,

Michael

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Here is a prose poem that seems appropriate for the true horror artists face today.

An Open Letter to Lit Mags

Few literary venues, we are talking even
on the dark-web rungs of reputability,
provide homes for transgressive writing.
An all-too-HR agenda to niqab reality
in the mediocritizing name of fostering
trigger-minimal (and so growth-minimal) 
“safe spaces” has metastasized beyond 
office watercoolers and Christmas parties,
into comedy clubs and literary magazines
and even into one of the primary furnaces
of self-improvement—the very place where
citizens go (well, used to go) precisely to be
unsettled: the university classroom! 

The conviction that humans have a right
not to be unsettled, which has spread
from campuses through social media
to the world at large (innocent countries
too), is now championed (read: lucrative)
enough that professors—forced to allow
students to opt-out of triggering readings
(such as ones telling of the Holocaust or
of whatever the power-havers, flouting
the subjective nature of triggers, deem
a true trigger)—can be fired for teaching
the Chinese word for “um” (since, yes, 
it sounds perilously close to the n-word).

No wonder, in light of such an assault
on the freedom to express our humanity, 
that the term “transgressive literature”—
even on rare instances when lit mags
insist they want it, “want it to kick us
in the gut”—has been coopted by what is,
in flagrant truth, an anti-transgressive
program. “Transgressive literature” 
is now, in a twisted perversion, code
for written signals and pledges—done,
no doubt, in a boundary-pushing way 
(there remains that tendril of a link
to transgression)—of fidelity to orthodoxy. 

Transgressive literary works are, in short,
militant HR-memos. Such memos, reliably
titled—and with no hint of irony—“How
To Be Inclusive and Not Offend,” “How
To Promote Diversity,” or so on, push
HR’s due-process-less cancellation plan
to its extreme, demanding that readers—
lest they be unwoke—join in on shaming,
censoring, silencing anyone even alleged
to be associated with anyone even quoting
the expressions of someone—and, yes, 
that someone can be a literary character—
who merely seems guilty of “wrong think.”

Under the banner-pretense of protecting
vulnerable groups from brutal violence,
lit mags seem on the cusp of compelling
submitters to swear that none of their art,
not just their submission, is—what is
that crooked watchword?—“problematic”: 
has a trans character that gets murdered,
or animal abuse, or cuisine nonnative 
to the author, or misogyny, or statistics 
that (however uncontroversial) those
on the margins—well, at least as reported
by their privileged protectors (no longer
always lily white)—would find unsettling. 

How nice it would be—if only to thicken
skins and nurture a space diverse beneath
skins, where we feel empowered to voice
the deepest nuances of our humanity
in the nude (and so, yes, even without
the ever-expanding and ever-thickening
filters of social media)—to see the best,
the most literary, of the most unsettling
examples of truly transgressive writing:
outsider, subversive, unspeakable—think:
Bataille. Is not the right wing, embolismed
by children’s books of crossdressing kids,
supposed to be the wing that bans art?