September 2, 2006

• and in the midst of reading difficult and esoteric literature...i finally figured it out! it's easy. you can do it too.

  how to write a profound novel

  1. pick your theme:
        a. totalitarian government
        b. soldiers who don't want to go to war, but have to
        c. racism in the deep south
        d. just random people in the deep south
  2. imput biblical references. there's nothing literary critics like to pick up on as much as "so-and-so appears to be a Christ figure" or "this title references such-and-such passages in the Old Testament."
  3. string together words that don't usually go together...with equal parts ideas and concrete nouns. take...let's say...love, horizon, and piracy. add pinch of unconventional punctuation.
      eg. her love was inscrutable, teetering on the edge of the horizon; a piracy.
  4. at least one person has to die. if no one dies, your novel is not profound...sorry.
  5. most importantly...use realllly confusing language...so that when literary critics see your work, they won't understand it either, and have to use even more confusing language to cover up their insufficiency. when the readers read these layers upon layers of confusing language, they won't get it either...and therefore it's simply profound.

  text: absalom, absalom! cried he- and it was as the end. the innumerous emancipations of impotent dreams with feet dragging in dry dust following him like noisome shadows did not relent, and thus, the end was as the beginning. and because such an inception could not be tolerated in any logical flow of rationality and existential furor, both the beginning and the end were simply of desolation.

  criticism: J. Li references Absalom, the power-hungry third son of David, in order to invoke the sheer impotent ambition of the protagonist following the death of his wife. The author's choice of the imagery of noisome shadows is masterfully placed and calls upon the images of skeletons as in Ezekiel's famous valley of dried bones. This analogy, therefore, attaches to the passage a double meaning; just as God granted the breath of life to the dry bones, the protagonist hopes, but ultimately fails, to add renewed hope to his grieving heart; the author augments this statement with her final mention of desolation.

  author's commentary: um yeah. what he said.

  go ahead, try it!

  • 5:39 pm
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