Good art is very ugly, I would not lie to you.
I killed SpongeBob with a shovel.
Hello readers, I’ve been thinking recently about how SpongeBob from the show SpongeBob is usually a horrible little man. In any given episode of the beloved children’s cartoon, he’s running around screaming, hitting things with his jellyfish net, and being a menace. In one episode, though, he’s offended by his neighbor Squidward calling him “not normal,” so he takes steps to correct his eccentricities and come off as non-abrasive. After a while, his normalness manifests physically. The corners of his iconic square pants become rounded, and he replaces his extravagant laugh with a mundane “Hi, how are you.”
Much of the art I don’t care for feels a lot like Round SpongeBob. Sure, his regular-edged form annoys some people, but it gives him perspective and flaws, and it makes me respect him, the fictional sponge, deeply.
Round SpongeBob disgusts me.
I try to avoid having my art be overly guarded and sanitized—Round SpongeBob-esque, if you will. Perhaps it’s my disposition or spending half my time writing breezy service journalism pieces, but there is a strain in me that sometimes excessively shaves away my ugly and petty thoughts. I spend a bit too much time being concerned with how an anecdote or line may make me come across in my writing. When I write fiction, I constantly smack my own hand to stop myself from exclusively making everyone nice and good.
It’s for these reasons that my favorite piece of writing I’ve seen in a long time is a creative non-fiction piece by
called “an open letter to my dog who, if i’m being completely honest, lowkey kinda sucks.”The piece chronicles 10 years of anecdotes from the author’s NYC life living alongside her rescue dog, who ends up being way more difficult and chaotic than she anticipated at adoption — destroying electronics, eating disgusting things off the street, and just generally being a loveable but undeniable terror.
The piece has snappy writing and impeccable pacing, and it’s accompanied by images that visualize her dog as this horrible hulking man figure. No notes, top-to-bottom — it rips. But what I admire most about it is that in multiple instances, father_karine shares anecdotes and insights that don’t always make her come off the best. From the jump, there is mild taboo in saying that your dog kind of sucks. And some of the stories she tells here are the kind folks might take to the grave. There’s self-awareness, confidence, and, most importantly, honesty in owning those types of insights.
There’s a section partway through where the author describes taking her dog to the park.
She begins:
“the summer of 2015 i did a very inconsiderate thing and started taking you to a stretch of a public park that wasn’t technically an off-leash dog park, but was used as such by many of the neighborhood residents during the early hours of 5-7 a.m. before most people were awake. and if anybody reading this is in the middle of leaving a rage comment about how letting a dog run off-leash is jerk behavior, don’t worry—i know that now and was punished appropriately.
one morning at the park you dug up what i soon learned was a dead cat that some little old polish lady had buried there. it was your treasure, your precious, and you would not let it go. little chunks of cat carcass fell off as you zoomed around the field clenching the vertebrae between your teeth. the other dog owners screamed in horror as their dogs joined the melee and rolled around in the bits of dislodged death, their tan and white fur now streaked with decay.
the crisis filled me with supernatural bravery and strength, like those frail women who lift entire automobiles off their children after a car crash. i ripped the dead cat from your mouth with my bare hands and yeeted it into a new york city public trashcan. then, like a good citizen, i fished a styrofoam clamshell chinese food takeout container out of another new york city public trashcan, dumped out the food, and used the container to grab up all the parts that fell off the dead cat, which i also disposed of into a new york city public trashcan.”
Obviously, there is an edge to this story. It’s morbid. It’s outrageous. It’s a helluva tale. While we get some morose chuckles along the way, and she does manage to resolve the situation the best she can, she’s ultimately telling the story of a time when her carelessness allowed for the desecration of the grave of a beloved pet. She’s aware of it and doesn’t shy from it.
A Round SpongeBob writer would never tell this story and would certainly not share their potentially distasteful thoughts of getting rid of their dog. But father_karine does just that.
“after that happened, i dragged you home, put you in the bathtub, and scrubbed you for 45 minutes. if i’m being honest, you have not been clean to me since this moment and my perception of you has never been the same. as i toweled you off, i briefly entertained the thought of wrapping you in a blanket in depositing you at a fire station with a note reading: ‘free good dog.’”
Love for pets and children is rightfully supposed to be unconditional. But even folks who are “good” 99% of the time have done shitty things, and there isn’t a tap dancer among us who hasn’t had some stray unsavory thoughts.
It is made clear countless times throughout the story that the author loves her dog very much. It’s not an edgy story for its own sake. She never abandons him, and she makes many moves to maximize his happiness and minimize his destruction. The clear honesty of father_karine’s reactions throughout, though, is what pulls people into the story and lets the piece be a valve for people with similar experiences.
Even with an irreverent tone, father_karine is constantly showcasing her skill at building herself into a multi-dimensional character on the page. The piece is never boring, and she weaves in a ton of rowdy lines that many writers couldn’t pull off. The technical term for her writing here is “very good.”
Some could poorly read this newsletter, thus far, as an endorsement for writers to follow every wretched, edgy impulse and subject the world to them.
But picture, if you will, a SpongeBob who brings a decorative katana to work and says slurs just to get a rise out of people. This is a Substanceless SpongeBob, and I hate him more than the round one.
Edge without substance is bad art. And there’s no richer place to find bountiful examples of bad art than a comedy open mic in a midsized city. Head to most any, and you’ll see a half dozen folks berating the audience for being too sensitive for their edgy jokes that simply regurgitate a stereotype or artlessly say something brazen. This is, strictly speaking, nothing. You still have to be good at your respective craft and have something to say.
I once watched someone fuck up the vibe of my local Greek coffee shop. He got up to the front of the room and started rambling, hopefully hypothetically, about beating up an old lady and hitting her with a car. There was no joke structure, cleverness, or point. It was cheap shock value, and he stayed on the topic for what seemed like 16 years while everyone sat in silence.
What makes our father_karine’s morbid stories work and Joe Open-mic’s jokes fail, is that there is truth in father_karine’s thoughts. There’s an underlying theme of the difficulty of dealing with loved ones who test us, and our own actions that may enable them. We can assume she’s not randomly picking anecdotes to shock or offend; rather, she’s both entertaining and getting at something real. There is an ugliness to it, but it’s only ever truthful.
Being a bit edgier in a substantive way is not the most obvious form of vulnerability, but it still is one. And it’s rare to react to art we like with the thought, “Hey, I wish the artist was more closed off and less honest with us.”
We don’t need to force edge into our work if it isn’t truthful or in service of something bigger. But we also don’t need to be afraid of the stories that don’t necessarily paint us in the best light.
We can all be the platonic ideal of an artist—having some edges, and roughness to us, but still soft at the end of the day. If you will, we can all be Regular SpongeBobs—horrible and little, but still worthy of respect.
That’s it. Goodbye. Thanks for reading I love words and you. I drew the SpongeBobs unless otherwise specified. Don’t ask me about the title, I took a course on SEO and quit very early on. Please like and share. And then go read that father_karine piece.
Insta: @Jade__Fab
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The father_karine piece is incredible, as is this newsletter. Also, you’re not alone in making characters too nice in fiction. I’ll tell myself a character is supposed to be a nasty piece of work and then get squeamish when I sit down to write them. At least there’s a chance to get it right in editing🤷🏻♀️