"The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Jess Row / The Massachusetts Review

"You can't actually burn down a golf course."

What makes for a good story title?

Writers often fall into the trap of using a reference that’s deeply embedded in their work—something that’s loaded with meaning but only in the context of their story—and expect that to work as a lure into the piece for the completely uninitiated.

I’m looking at you, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Jess Row’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” (2,000 words) in the current issue of The Massachusetts Review wears its title well. It nests its story in the hollowed-out shell of the 1989 self-help classic like an angry wren.

There’s a reason why “Seven Habits” is invoked, spelled out in-story at the close, but the use of it stands on its own. The book is still marketed as using “a principle-centered approach to personal and professional effectiveness.” Principles like “fairness, integrity, and human dignity” to “help people solve problems.”

Instead, Row gives us a guide to effectiveness as seen through eyes of a frustrated millennial. It’s hilarious. And chilling.

Separated into seven sections (actually eight, there’s a 6.5 in there), we’re introduced to a group of friends / acquaintances at different points in their young-adulthood; post-graduation, during internships, while sharing an apartment sublet, in a failing marriage. Some of the large cast cameo then disappear. Others reappear across what feels like years, a great reflection of the rapidly spinning carousel ride, filled with entrances and exits, of one’s twenties and thirties in a big city.

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At first, the principles at the core of “Seven Habits” (the book) are replaced by their opposites in the short story; wanton destruction, promiscuity, infidelity, dashed careers. But increasingly we get a series of pronouncements, bromides heavy with contradictions that are meant to pass as rules for living. They feel cobbled together loosely to construct personas, but they’re presented with the conviction of the true believer.

“You want to be a conduit. You want to be a hub. You want to be an enabler. You want to sell yourself, but without trying too hard,” says an entrepreneur whose tech success has roots in the adult film industry.

“You have to burst out into the world saying things that are daring and new but still confirm people’s prejudices,” says another. “It was all in a TED talk, I’ll send it to you.”

The pronouncements reach a fever-pitch when the story’s narrator is scolded by a signed-and-framed picture of Susan Sontag, now animate. She’s sneering, eyerolling, and she lays the judgement on thick (and pretty loudly, for a member of the silent generation). Then she’s outed as the narrator’s “unconscious speaking,” but not before delivering a killer one-liner about aspic that would make George Carlin proud.

The closing section (7 of 7) gives us a context in which to appreciate the birth of all those knowing pronouncements. We see the need for them in the face of what was and is the very real plight of the young-adult millennial. In the “inside jokes never explained,” in everything known but not told to that generation. In the catastrophes lying in wait for them, the “fires smoldering all around” that they can’t yet smell. Fires that are, now, racing up the fairway.

“The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is damning. And funny. It’s damn funny.

The Massachusetts Review “promotes social justice and equality, along with great art. Committed to aesthetic excellence as well as public engagement, MR publishes literature and art to provoke debate, inspire action, and expand our understanding of the world around us.”

For submissions, MR is “interested in all styles and subjects, from flash fiction and experimental writing to historical and realist fiction;” they “do typically favor work that focuses more on the world than the self” and “consider one short story per submission, a maximum of 20 pages or 7500 words.” They are open for submissions at the time of this posting.

They do not use Submittable. The link to their electronic submission process is at the bottom of their submission page (link above). There is a $3 fee for submissions. Make sure to read guidelines closely for formatting rules. MR pays a $100 honorarium for work published in a single issue, and authors also receive two complimentary contributor’s copies.

Read more about Jess Row’s awesome work at his website.

A sincere thanks to Jess Row and The Massachusetts Review for putting this brilliant story out into the world—read it and more about MR at the story link at the top.

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