While I admire the
Paris Review quite a lot, I've always found the journal a bit sober, for lack of a better word. And since I'm a punk, a documented brat + I like fucking with people (in the sweetest way possible, man, not in a douchey way), I decided to give them a much cooler SASE so when they rejected me--so fucking predictable!--I could at least laugh at my own envelope + maybe force the intern to shake his head disapprovingly. This envelope also makes me laugh because I can picture the fiction reader (probably some NYU/Columbia MFA student +
Paris Review intern) shaking his head at my caption, thinking how lame it is. We all know the
Paris Review would never send an author such a silly rejection envelope, which makes it even funnier for me that they stuck a (lame) form rejection inside this cute little masterpiece. To give you some historical context, this isn't the first time I've pulled off shit like this. Back when college students used to send in FAFSA postcards, I'd write embarrassingly personal/dirty messages to myself, which the Department of Education would have to send back to me to confirm they'd received my completed application + I would laugh my ass off imagining a DC bureaucrat shaking his head at me. Sometimes I do the same shit when I enter a short story contest that asks for a stamped, confirmation postcard. I dunno, that's just how I roll I guess, forcing sober bureaucrats + iconic literary journals to be way sweeter (cuter) than they clearly wanna be.
