prompt: toll, title: a rose by any other in misc. flash fiction

Dear Mr. Hemmingway,

May we call you Ernest? Look, Ernest, we appreciate the work you’ve put in here but we’re going to have to pass on this manuscript as it currently exists. Your spare journalistic prose sparkles in punchy unadornedness, there’s no doubt there, that’s always been your strongest trait as a novelist, which we thoroughly appreciate. There’s nothing worse than trying to read Charles Dickens, paid as he was so many shillings to the word, stretching his interesting short stories out into volumes of dull frippery through those old twin madnesses, Word-Building and Description.

No, Ernie, we appreciate that you never feel the need to never stop and explain how the clouds hung low there in the sky not unlike steel-gray loosely formed gorilla turds. Knowing when to say that “the field blossomed with verdant greens and butter yellows as if Jesus Christ Himself made dinner salad” and when to say “the field had flowers in it” is a sadly rare trait these days.

It’s just, like, Erns, seriously, we get it, brother, you’re manly. Oh gods, you’re so tough and butch, all right? You’ve been to war and you have muscles and you fish and eat great slabs of meat, we know, we know, we know. Shut up about it for like seven seconds for once in your whole testosterone-soaked existence. It just feels like overcompensation, like you’re trying to prove something, like you’re trying to convince yourself more than any of us dang ol’ readers.

But even that, your “rifle as genitaliana, bang bang, drink drink” macho doggerel, that isn’t even the biggest problem. That sort of thing at least sells, if only to tiny little men who think that their freedoms come through violence and confuse their lucky privilege with hard-earned skill. No, to be honest, E-Dogg, the biggest problem is that pretentious title “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” For heaven’s sake, man, your writing style flows as if you could slice your veins and all that’d pour forth would be cheap newsprint ink and overpriced whiskey and then you pick a title like “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. Jesusing Christ, Ernie, never mind that “toll” mostly just makes people think of turnpikes and chocolate cookies, who but schoolmarms and raving lunatics still use the word “whom” in common conversation? Let alone the kind of person who wants to drink down books filled with Catalonian soldiers of fortune at the bar comparing pistol size?

Ernest, please, in earnest resubmit with another goddamn title and if you can tone down all the homoerotic misogyny, that’d be even better but at least that sort of thing has an audience. But “For Whom the Bell Tolls” Mister Hemmingway, really? How aching gushing transcendently deep do you honestly believe you are with a fancy-schamancy title like that, dude?

If you’re looking for advice, though your pride probably forbids it, one of the kids down in the mailroom here suggested “Death Rings a Bell”. Perhaps start there.

Sincerely,
The Book People

Last updated April 22, 2020