The Same Beautiful Failure
Vera sits down to review Paloma's "We Keep Our Bedroom Open" and immediately faces a problem: the door metaphor. Must resist door puns, she thinks, then writes "A Door Left Ajar" as her title anyway.
"One encounters," Vera begins, because reviewers always encounter things, never simply read them. "One encounters, with increasing frequency..." She pauses. Is vague writing really increasing? She has no proof but the sentence sounds important.
She types: "mistakes cloudiness for depth." Each word a small verdict. This is what reviewers do—diagnose what's wrong with today's writing. She is a doctor of words, except she only points out problems and never fixes anything.
"What exactly is a burgundy thought?" Vera demands of Paloma's text, while having just written three paragraphs of colorless thoughts. Dishwater thoughts. Waiting room thoughts.
Across the city, Paloma's phone buzzes. A friend has sent her Vera's review-in-progress—leaked from the journal's preview page. Paloma reads: "burgundy thoughts." She laughs. In her original Spanish manuscript, she'd written "pensamientos bermellón"—vermillion thoughts. The translator chose burgundy. The opacity Vera diagnoses was born in the space between languages.
Now Vera must quote a famous critic to show she's educated. "Critics would note," she writes, though no critic has read this piece.
The reviewer identifies "workshop disease"—a problem she invented just now. Everything wrong with modern writing can be blamed on writing classes, where people learn to sound like writers instead of learning to write. She doesn't mention that she teaches such a class every Thursday.
"The art of dodging," Vera types, dodging the fact that her own review hasn't decided if the piece is actually bad or just mediocre. She is keeping her critical door open. No, she thinks, no door metaphors. Too late.
She writes that the piece "wants credit for depth without digging deep," while her review wants credit for wisdom without offering understanding. Two surfaces reflecting each other's shallowness.
"And yet—and yet—" The classic turn! Every harsh review needs one. She finds something to praise: the ending. Reviewers always praise endings.
Paloma texts her translator: "She's praising my ending. The ending you changed." The translator responds: "Critics love what they think they discovered themselves."
Vera concludes by questioning whether the "nowhere" the piece reaches was worth the journey, not noticing that her review has also been a journey to nowhere—a thousand words to say "I didn't really like this."
The reviewer rereads her work. Something bothers her. The piece she criticized for being vague has somehow made her write a vague review. She is writing in ... dots now ... unable to stop ...
She realizes she has become the confused wanderer she mocked. Her burgundy thoughts pile up. Like dishes? Like leaves? She can't decide on the metaphor.
"The real question," she types, then deletes. There is no real question. Just a reviewer and a piece of writing, locked in an elaborate dance where neither understands the other, each pretending they do, each failing beautifully.
She saves the review, publishes it, closes her laptop.
Later that night, Vera writes in her journal: "We keep our critical doors open ... We don't know why ..."
Paloma, reading the published review, writes in hers: "Tomorrow—dentist at 3pm. Buy milk."
