An Unsolicited Outburst
Asserting That Eyeshot's Fiction is
"Entirely Fictional"
From: Gene Armbrister
To: Throop Roebling
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2001 3:17 PM

This unsolicited communiqué arrives in regard to a number of contributions to your web site contained within what you call I-SHIT[U].NOT FICTION-specifically, I would bring to your attention the pieces by Giovanni Altamira and Throop Roebling.  I am quite familiar with the material addressed in these essays, and I must say that I was shocked by the outrageous inaccuracies and blatant disregard for facticity exhibited therein. Quite frankly, it has become evident to me that the fiction at Eyeshot.net is entirely fictional.  I would expect much more from an institution that prides itself on being "literate," as your introductory page title would suggest.

Although I have neither the time nor desire to recount the errata in their entirety, allow me to highlight some the more egregious and therefore piercingly hurtful misstatements.  Altamira, in his Plot #7, Explanation #1, states that "[Sal Quantao] looked at the novel he was writing before he left for training at Fort Dix, the adandoned [sic] novel -- a tragi-comedy set in a New Jersey town he created about a 20-something odd jobsman who cures ailing ladies of the misery sandwiched between their lust for life and their romantic reality."  Leaving aside any cheap shot I might desire to take at the fact that your pitiful editorial staff allowed a misspelling of "abandoned" to slip through (don't plan on any career as an editor, Mr. Eyeshot), let me point out that my father, whose name is Sal Armbrister, not Sal Quantano, completed his novel long before he was stationed at Fort Dix.

The fact that it was never published does not relegate it to abandonment, as any hack who has published their years-old failure on the world wide web could tell you.  He titled it, he finished it, and he never slipped into simple dualistic assumptions about the universe, thank you very much.  He
did fight in Korea, he is not that wealthy, and he sure as shit is not fucking clubfooted!  I do not know anything about the other people involved in the accident in question, which I cannot even remember taking place, but I am sure you treated them just as slanderously as you treated my father.

As for Throop Roebling, I can hardly bring myself to address the problems with this self-indulgent tripe whereby he claims to have fucked my girlfriend. He doesn't even live with me, yet he's claiming that Patty is his roommate whom he has fucked. Christ almighty! You can rest assured of my glee when, upon further browsing, I discovered that Mr. Roebling had been put to death in reproach for his inaccurate renderings.  I can also assure you that after his second fabrication, concerning an entirely fictional "McSweeney's Night" on the Galapagos Islands, it became patently obvious that everything Mr. Roebling writes is utterly fictional (a bit of advice, Throop: if you're going to create a fictitious name, at least make it believable.  "Zadie Smith"?  Please.)

In the future, Eyeshot.net, I would suggest a little practice we in the screen-door business call "checking your sources."  Please cancel my subscription to AOL so I never again may come across such abysmal twaddle as is proffered by your web site.

Fuck off,
Gene Armbrister