A Master-Class in Literary Emotional Intelligence

Championing the works of James Worth

So how’d I find my favorite author on Substack? It’s a classic writer-specific social media platform meet-cute, basically.

What happened is, I read a few notes written by someone whose humor was a particular type of dry I appreciate, and that was enough to entice me to read a short story, so I did, and I got my fucking world rocked.

Just so we’re all clear, the thing I have most enjoyed about my time on this platform thus far is the people. Yeah, the talent on offer is awesome (at least in my circles) and the quality of work consistently meets the expectations brought on by that talent level, too. But the fact that a whole lot of these talented, skilled writers I’ve come across also happen to be cool and kind and supportive has made the experience that much more fun. The fact that Thaddeus Thomas put this initiative together in the first place is wonderful. A force for good.

So for me to step up and say “If I had to pick one writer, one person out of all these fucking superstars, to tell my audience they HAD to read…” is a little excruciating.

But James Worth is the writer and the person.

Beyond the well-beyond-his-years craft and the subtle, acerbic humor, James develops characters that are so compelling they do not require any special plot points to react to. The first story of his that I read centers around the painfully awkward experience of a newly-sober person enduring a night out at a bar with coworkers. The story doesn’t need to get any wilder than that; the protagonist’s inner monologue drives it forward just as intentionally and as intensely as any action sequence in any noir or fantasy or sci-fi piece out there on this platform. He does more with less, and absolutely nails it.

That story on its own was enough for me to buy in for an entire novel (on my Substack Bestie E.K. MacPherson’s recommendation). And holy fucking shit, it did not disappoint. Mars in Retrograde is a beautiful, heartbreaking, darkly hilarious, ironically uplifting story about a young man on the run with his found family, dealing with the horrible damage inflicted on him by his blood family. I don’t need to tell you more of the plot than that (and I’m not going to, obviously, because spoilers are for suckers.) because the characters truly come first—and they are believable and powerful enough on their own to hold attention and space even if the story itself wasn’t also fantastic.

It is, though. And because the character work is so good, you have no choice but to fucking love these kids—enough, in fact, to get properly worried about them when they find themselves in some danger. These are fucking people, James’ characters. They are flawed and they make really questionable decisions and they struggle with them and pay for them. They are very, very believable. Their existence makes you reckon with your own shit.

And that’s how it’s done, as far as I’m concerned. The most powerful thing writing can do is make you examine yourself and the world around you, and very few things I have read in the past several years have done that as effectively as the works of James Worth.

TS (Tom Schecter)