Every person and their canine has opined about this collection—not just the critics but seemingly everyone I follow on Substack.

 I got the impression that a lot was resting on this work. For a subset of readers who find most contemporary fiction a bit shit, Tulathimutte’s collection was a potential breath of fresh air. The reviews I read* (and remember) were mixed. The one review that stuck with me (that I could also find no thanks to Substack search) is ARX-HAN’s.** 

 Rejection is a set of six linked stories*** about our contemporary reaction to rejection. The opening piece, “The Feminist”, is a darkly satirical story of a man who tries so hard to be a feminist ally—he says all the right things—but is trapped in the friend zone, never a lover, always a mate. This state of affairs leads our ally on a violent journey toward incel-dom.**** 

The second piece, “Pics”, centres on the one woman who goes out with the “feminist” and even fucks him. Our narrator, Alison, becomes increasingly obsessed with her once best male friend—no, not the feminist ally—who rejected her after a fling. She tries to communicate this to her girlfriends on a group chat but grows increasingly dismissive of their superficial support.  “Pics” doesn’t have the nasty bite of “The Feminist”, but it’s still funny and tragic.

And so the stories go. Alison will later pop up in the hilariously funny “Our Dope Future” about a tech bro with Andrew Tate aspirations. My favourite piece, “Main Character”, is framed as a confession/explanation of the person behind “Botgate”*****.  It is a very sharp and comical piece about identity—and people’s urge to pigeonhole an individual into a specific type and category—that hit home with me.  ******

I think I enjoyed the collection more than most of literary Substack—to the extent that I went and purchased Tulathimutte’s debut novel, Private Citizens. I’d say my views were closer to the mainstream critics who loved the book, except most of them (OK, Dwight Garner) spent most of their reviews (OK, Dwight Garner) talking about the ickiness of the stories and how they needed a cold shower (OK, Dwight Garner) after reading a story. Yeah, there are bodily juices and yeah, “Ahegao, or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression” features some “out there” kinks,****** but seriously, how puritanical are mainstream literary critics (OK, Dwight Garner).********

One thing I think we can all agree on is that Tulathimutte is a writer who provokes discussion. And that’s a good thing.

 *I would provide links to these reviews, but the Substack search function, at least on the app, is awful. I’m not convinced it even registers the words or phrases you’re looking for.

** https://www.decentralizedfiction.com/p/the-problem-with-modern-fiction-is. In focussing on two stories –“The Feminist” and “Our Dope Future”—ARX-HAN criticises Tulathimutte for not going hard enough, for providing a “caricature of radicalisation rather than anything approaching real psychological verisimilitude on the subject”. And why does Tulathimutte hold back? “because (a) Tony knows that he could never get a story like that published, and (b) more importantly, because Tony is scared.” 

While I don’t entirely agree with HAN (I don’t think Tulathimutte chickens out), I agree that contemporary fiction is sometimes too subtle and nuanced for its own good. Consider Max Besora’s Fake Muse—which has some vague similarities to Rejection, especially the final sections of both books—and you get the idea of the sort of wake-up-kick-in-the-nuts fiction we need right now. It doesn’t need to be anti-woke, alt-right screeds like that Bronze Era fellow (or whatever), but it does need to shock us out of our stupor.

Oh, and while I’m writing this incredibly long footnote (John Pistelli style), I do agree with ARX-HAN that “Our Dope Future” is not especially deep. But it made me laugh out loud several times, and sometimes that’s enough for me.

***The seventh story is Tulathimutte’s cheeky attempt to interrogate his own collection. As I said in the lengthy footnote above, Max Besora does something similar and better in The Fake Muse. Here, it comes off as a tad self-indulgent. As ARX-HAN puts it, the story reads like Tulathimutte is trying to “pre-empt his own cancellation.”

****The main reason why I don’t think Tulathimutte chickens out in this story is because he does all the groundwork. So, when the story ends (spoiler) with the “Feminist” going on a murder spree, I didn’t need to know how he got to that final stage. There’s a disturbing inevitability to the story’s final passages. 

*****I’m not going to tell you what Botgate is, but it’s such a credible scam that I’m sure it must be based on something that happened.

******I haven’t been questioning my Jewishness as wondering what it means to be Jewish right now, given everything that’s going on.

*******It’s extreme, but it’s also so nonsensical that you’re reading the story wrong if it makes you feel unclean.

********I do love Dwight, but he has blind spots.