Nanorobots

Paragraphs On Postconceptual Writing: A Novel

MARK LEACH

Copyright Š 2011 Mark Leach All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1468155150 ISBN-10: 1468155156

Postconceptual writing is not necessarily illogical. The

possibility of a logical piece should be good news to both writers and readers. With this assurance I hope to justify collective confidence.

As a postconceptual writer I have no control over the way a reader will perceive my work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader lends understanding to the work or at least positions it in a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some of my ideas are logical in conception and realization. Some emphasize the physical aspects of the reader, engendering a (potentially false) belief that the writer is in favor of avoiding subjectivity. And yet, other ideas can obviate the necessity of a belief entirely.

In these paragraphs I will refer to ideas intended for the perception of all, including myself the writer. I use the word perception to mean pre-thinking; the idea is still unclear. Even while writing these ideas there seem to be 3

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obvious inconsistencies, which I have found tend to bore the reader. So of course I have retained them. It is the objective of the problem.

Consider the objective of transformation. I have written a story in which we have just learned that the DNA of every human on the planet has been converted to that of an insect.

We feel unchanged, but I comment to those around me that the outward transformation will begin soon. The new genetic code will transform us into new beings. And sure enough, I am right. The scene changes and I find myself standing over a comatose Allison. My wife is nude, covered in damp dirt. I am cleaning her with a sponge, revealing the beginning growth of an exoskeletal thorax. ―We‘ll all look like this soon,‖ I tell myself. # Welcome to 1997. Kurt Vonnegut had just published his final novel, ―Timequake.‖ It was about a glitch in the space-time continuum that ―made everybody and everything do exactly what they‘d done during a past decade, for good or ill, a second time.‖ Everyone repeated the 1990s, unable to correct past mistakes or do anything any differently than the first time around. ―Only when people got back to when the timequake hit did they stop being robots of their pasts.‖ When the book was published I was working with a friend on a time travel novel of our own, ―Have Time, Will Travel.‖ I thought the coincidence was a good omen. We even received an encouraging letter from an editor at one of the big science fiction publishing houses. While it was 4

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technically a letter of rejection, the editor did encourage us to rework our cowboy-themed story (she offered several specific changes) and all but invited us to resubmit.

So of course we did nothing. My co-writer (known in this story as ―Lou Boiz‖) eventually quit his comfortable corporate gig as a middle-aged PR executive and moved to Hollywood to write movie scripts (including one that appropriates some of the same historical content we used in ―Have Time, Will Travel‖). I was promoted into his PR job and in my spare time wrote ―Marienbad My Love,‖ the world‘s longest novel (which also incorporates content from ―Have Time, Will Travel‖). # Today ―Have Time, Will Travel‖ collects dust in the back of a closet. And Vonnegut‘s final novel lies largely forgotten in the dustbin of literary history. ―Timequake‖ is generally regarded as one of his lesser works. I suspect it remains underappreciated because of Vonnegut‘s admission that it was in essence a rewrite of a failed novel he‘d been working on for nearly a decade, a novel ―which did not work, which had no point, which had never wanted to be written in the first place.‖ He described ―Timequake‖ as a ―stew‖ made from the best parts of the original manuscript ―mixed with thoughts and experiences during the past seven months or so.‖ Vonnegut may have been his own worst enemy on this one. Talking down one‘s own work is typically not good PR. Nevertheless, I say ―Timequake‖ is one of Vonnegut‘s best novels. I like the concept so much that it inspired me to write ―Island of Marienbad,‖ a stew I cooked up from the best pieces of ―Marienbad My Love,‖ the world‘s 5

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longest novel, a 17-million-word work that various members of the reading public say does not work, either.

In 2009, I entered the first 10 pages of the 100,000-word ―Island of Marienbad‖ in the Writer‘s League of Texas Manuscript Contest. I thought it was some of the best writing in my 17-million-word creation, cooked down into a handful of tasty pages. The best of the best. How could I go wrong? Surely victory was at hand. Even if I didn't win in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category, certainly I would be a close runner up. I made sure that my entry included a SASE, so I would receive what I knew would be the judges‘ amazingly supportive comments (―Electrifying!‖ and ―A tour de force" seemed like givens).

Months later the SASE arrived in my mail box. I read the form letter; I did not win. I was not a runner up, either.

Out of a possible score of 100 I received -- a 52? The lowest you could get was a 20. So I really made a 32. How could this be? What could have gone so terribly wrong?

According to the judges, ―Island of Marienbad‖ is ―mostly clear writing about very fuzzy subject matter. It offers tons of jumbled imagery with no firm story.... Rambling imagery and disjointed reflection will hold a reader‘s attention only so far. ... It is difficult to tell who the protagonist is and what makes him tick, beyond the impression that he has a warped view of numerous things.... The synopsis‘s suggestion of conflict is a jumbled attempt to tear a Dali painting in half.... The ramblings of the narrator flow smoothly but make no sense: a stream of consciousness run off the tracks.... The narrative contains occasional strong imagery but it is scattershot and refuses to paint a consistent, coherent sensory imagery.... To contemplate reading 100,000 words of such random 6

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ramblings causes one to tremble....The narrative is composed of competent sentence structures and effective application of descriptive verbs and specific nouns (I made few mark-ups as I read), but it is one long jumble of incoherent philosophizing. To what purpose? Novels are meant to contain stories; none is apparent in the first ten pages, and the synopsis reads more like a sales pitch (an incoherent one at that) than a description of the story itself.‖ The judges concluded by stating that ―the impression one gathers reading here is that the author is attempting to turn the stereotypical Fellini movie into a novel. It is unsatisfyingly confusing. The writing itself is competent but it serves only to convey clearly a state of philosophical chaos. To steal a phrase, ‗I don‘t get it.‘‖ # So I contemplated yet another rewrite, perhaps cooking down ―Island of Marienbad‖ into a 30,000-word novella.

But that seemed like too much work to invest in a 17million-word novel that didn‘t work and a 100,000-word rewrite that caused one to tremble.

I thought I‘d try something new, perhaps capitalizing on the literary mash-up phenomenon seen in ―Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.‖ I like the idea of appropriating a famous writer. Most of the writing is already done, and you get the marketing buzz that comes with the reputation of the writer you have appropriated. But even that seemed like too much work. I wanted to find some way to produce a finished novel without really trying at all.

And that‘s when I thought of this book.

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―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ is a novel about me, a middle-aged PR executive who dreams of becoming a science-fiction novelist. (This is a repeat performance, as I am also the protagonist of ―Marienbad My Love.‖) The story begins as I struggle to write a 30,000-word novella, my first writing attempt after producing a 17-million-word manuscript listed in Wikipedia as the world‘s longest novel. Imagine it: I write a 17-million-word monster, then can‘t even turn out a paltry 30,000 words!

I can‘t wait to see the movie version. I‘m thinking ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ should open with me (of course I‘m going to play myself) watching the stereotypical Fellini movie (aka ―8 ½‖). I‘ll be sitting in the living room of my comfortable suburban home, silently mouthing the lines of the writer/collaborator as he talks to the protagonist about the movie he is preparing to make: ―You see, what stands out at a first reading is the lack of a central issue or a philosophical stance. That makes the film a chain of gratuitous episodes which may even be amusing in their ambivalent realism. You wonder, what is the director really trying to do? Make us think? Scare us? That ploy betrays a basic lack of poetic inspiration.‖ The camera will be zooming in, apparently to focus on my face. But no – it moves past me, over my shoulder and through the window to settle on a ridiculously bucolic backyard setting. Bunnies and squirrels play under the bemused eye of a giant macaw in a lush landscape of shade trees, dandelions and San Augustine. Suddenly the ground rumbles and we see a flash of brilliant white. It's the dream-carrying ballistic missile from "Marienbad My Love," screaming into the sky on a surging pillar of fire.

The stuttering roar of the rocket blast shakes the earth for miles around, flushing birds out of surrounding yards and 8

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setting off nearby car alarms. A moment later there is a second flash, a tremendous explosion just beyond the tree line. It is a dramatic volcanic eruption, resembling stock footage from a B-movie. Crimson fire rains down upon the neighborhood. Rooftops are ablaze, including my own.

The multi-gabled roof is exploding in flames.

That‘s good movie making! # Like good movie making, postconceptual writing is good only when the ―after idea‖ is good. Consider the story of an editor. He has escaped into some other era where writers work feverishly to develop a cure for the total work. In fact, it is intuitive. It is involved with all types of mental processes. And it is purposeful.

I must tell you the truth: This is not my kind of writing. I am devoted to the production of purposeless works. And why not? After all, it is the writer who has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work. When a writer uses a conceptual form of text there is rarely a sense of interest. Perhaps there is hope for those who show the thought process of the work (or at least positions them in a paradoxical situation such as logic vs. illogic). But not likely. Literature that is substantially like us doesn't understand love.

The work of the postconceptual writer is a contradiction intended to surprise both the reader and infinity. Ideas are the way a reader will refer to this surprise. The writer will state the idea as ludicrously infinite. Successful completions generally have been found to mitigate infinity.

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I predict we will see one such mitigation via Institutional Critique. This is a literary term meant to function as a postconceptual commentary on infinity as well as the various institutions and assumed normalities of writing and/or a radical disarticulation of the institution of literature (radical is linguistically understood in its relation to radix which means to get to the root of something). For instance, assumptions about the supposed aesthetic autonomy or neutrality of science fiction and fantasy are often explored as a subject in the field of literature, and are then historically and socially mapped out (i.e., ethnographically and or archaeologically) as discursive formations, then (re)framed within the context of The Infinite Library itself. As such, Institutional Critique seeks to make visible the historically and socially constructed boundaries between inside and outside, public and private.

Institutional Critique is often critical of the false separations often made between distinctions of taste and supposedly disinterested aesthetic judgment, and affirms that taste is an institutionally cultivated sensibility that may tend to differ according to the class, ethnic, sexual and gender backgrounds of literature's audiences.

The resulting work is meant to look good. Sometimes the work suggests the form of the writer. I am grateful for the way a work of text presents itself as an autobiographical product of its creator and his/her place in the infinite.

And yet, I have found this gratefulness tends to go awry in expressionist texts. It looks better when the text may more easily become a metric time element, a kind of objective tool that is an intrinsic part of the writer who is out to avoid subjectivity. This type of work is free even to be a belief, something that shows the size of a metric time element as representative of a belief.

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This novel is representative of that belief.

The metric time element of this work of text is inspired by the true story of what may well be one of the strangest plays ever staged in Fort Worth, perhaps in all of Texas. A story in the November 1983 edition of ―Texas Monthly‖ described ―Kabuki Blues‖ as ―a parable about a group of actors and dancers forced to abandon New York by the evil money-makers of Western civilization. They flee to Australia, where they make a deal with supertechs who provide them with a spaceship. Then they travel to Mars, where they peer through a telescope and watch a nuclear holocaust consume Earth.‖ ―Kabuki Blues‖ was not well received by Fort Worth. Or even its more cosmopolitan neighbor to the east. A reviewer for ―The Dallas Morning News‖ wrote that ―it stumbles on a simple rule of theater: entertainment. ….it‘s the play – not the audience – that has missed the mark.‖ Can you believe that? Pearls before swine, I tell you. No wonder the planet goes up in nuclear flames. ―Kabuki Blues‖ was the first theatrical production of Caravan of Dreams, a performing arts center in downtown Fort Worth financed by Ed Bass of the billionaire Bass family. According to Wikipedia article, the Caravan of Dreams was "a meeting place appealing to audiences who enjoy the creation of new forms of music, theater, dance, poetry and film." The name was taken from ―1001 Arabian Nights‖ by way of poet and artist Brion Gysin, creator of the cut-up method that I used to write vast sections of ―Marienbad My Love‖.

The 1983 opening was attended by Gysin; William S. Burroughs, who famously employed Gysin‘s cut-up 11

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method in his writings; and Ornette Coleman, a jazz musician from Fort Worth whose compositions include ―The Sacred Mind of Johnny Dolphin‖ (more about Mr. Dolphin in a moment).

Ed Bass attended the opening wearing a bowtie made out of neon. A neon bowtie. I love that! I‘ve already decided that ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ is going to end with a fictional Ed Bass wearing a neon bowtie to the beachfront premier of ―Next Year at Marienbad,‖ a 168hour movie that will bring about the End of the World – and the beginning of the New Religion. This end-of-time film is a recurring plot point in ―Marienbad My Love.‖ We learn that a group of dedicated Marienbadists have already begun preparations for the world premier, which will be conducted at a specially constructed drive-in movie theater located somewhere in the Himalayas. Cylindrical clock chimes hanging from clouds will convene the moviegoers from around the planet. I will be stationed behind the camera, encircled by a multitude of grips and gaffers, vocalists and primal goddesses. Uniformed orators narrating manuscripts in marches and spectacles will fashion their share of the exploits along with the primal goddesses, whose dance routines will incorporate eye signals and stroking of the fingertips in combination with aromas of enjoyable fragrances as well as pungent, smoldering flame. Columns of anger will dot the landscape, and fire will explode in streams of luminosity and expanses of conflagration. This will continue for seven days. When the movie is finally over and final credits roll, the world will at last come to an end. And there will be a new Deity in the heavens.

The premier will be immediately followed by a Texas-style chili cook-off, which is my version of the clambake that 12

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occurs at the end of ―Timequake.‖ Vonnegut compared this scene to the end of Fellini‘s ―8 1/2.‖ He wrote that as in the last scene of the film all the world was at the clambake, ―if not in person, then represented by lookalikes.‖ My chili cook-off will include fictional versions of Ed Bass, Burroughs and Gysin. And Johnny Dolphin. # Dolphin (aka John Polk Allen) was one of the authors of ―Kabuki Blues‖ and leader of the Theatre of All Possibilities, which presented the play and served as the Caravan of Dreams‘ resident theater company. I remember hearing about Dolphin – yes, I know his real name is Allen, but for ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ I prefer to use his nom de plume. In my memory he seems more fiction than real life. I remember Dolphin because of the crazy rumors in the 1980s that he exercised some sort of bizarre mind control over Bass.

A story in the June 1989 edition of ―Texas Monthly‖ mentions an alleged plan to separate Bass from Dolphin with the help of a deprogrammer. That same story recounts reports in various newspapers that ―branded the group at the Caravan of Dreams as elitist and that claimed the group practiced mental torture.‖ The ―Fort Worth Star-Telegram‖ reported an allegation that Dolphin ―verbally and physically abused Bass in acting class‖ through ―screaming, punctuated with kicks and slaps.‖ ―The Washington Post‖ published a denial by Dolphin, who said he had never struck Bass but had yelled at him ―when he was acting like a snotty Yale millionaire.‖ My favorite rumor was recounted in an article in ―The Dallas Morning News‖ that ―portrayed Ed Bass on his 13

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hands and knees, denouncing his brothers – and presumably himself – as capitalists.‖ That‘s going to make a great scene in the movie version.

Meanwhile, Bass and Dolphin continued to collaborate on Space Biospheres Venture, a corporation formed with the goal of colonizing Mars. ―Texas Monthly‖ reported that the first step was Biosphere II, a series of geodesic domes that form a ―portable Earth‖ (i.e., a self-sustaining habitat for the Martian colonization effort). Surely the Australian supertechs were expected to assist with the interplanetary transportation.

In ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue,‖ the autonomous nanobots supply a mathematical formula that inspires me to write a scene in which a fictional Ed Bass kneels down to a fictional Johnny Dolphin on a theatrical stage inside Biosphere III on the red planet while the anti-capitalists of the Theatre of All Possibilities crowd around a telescope to cheer on the destruction of Earth.

And I am with them, an autobiographical presence that shapes – and is shaped by – the story. I also peer through a telescope at the end of the world. But that‘s not the end of the novel, of course. That would make a very unsatisfying conclusion.

The Cicadans want to know what happens AFTER the end of the world. So they instruct the autonomous nanobots to feed me yet another mathematical formula, this one based in part on the opening scene of Fellini‘s ―8 ½.‖ There is a traffic jam, bumper-to-bumper gridlock, and the protagonist is stuck in the middle of it. That‘s the way it‘s going to be when we‘re all trying to outrun the Apocalypse.

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Like ―Kabuki Blues,‖ ―8 ½‖ features a spaceship for escaping the end of the world. Here are some notes I took while watching the movie and reviewing the supporting materials in the Criterion DVD release: ―The sequence starts with an image of planet Earth completely wiped out by a thermonuclear war … and the spaceship, our new Noah‘s Ark, tries to escape, while the rest of humanity seeks refuge on another planet.‖ And also this: ―According to the scenario, the film was to end with a huge procession as everyone boards the spaceship and abandons the Earth. Across the bottom of the image Guido has pasted Catholic clergy leading the way.‖ That‘s not right, of course. When the world comes to an end the Keepers of the Deity will not be leading the way.

They‘ll be back in the discredited houses of worship, assuring their flocks that all is well. ―Ignore the conflagration! Do not flee to the departing spaceships!‖ Oddly enough, these eschatological materials suggest for me a metaphorical connection to the work of the conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith. Specifically, I think of his book ―Traffic,‖ a word-for-word appropriation of radio traffic updates by New York's 1010 WINS during a big holiday weekend. That metaphorical connection leads to my big literary success.

Starting with an electronic copy of ―Traffic,‖ I use the find and replace functions of my computer to transform all of the New York City geographical references into words I‘ve appropriated from astronomy, physics and 1950s B-movie sci-fi. And then I turn the big holiday weekend into the end of the world.

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The result is ―Nobody‘s Coming Back to Uranus,‖ the world‘s first conceptual science fiction novel.

Startime 2412:01 Well, in conjunction with the Second Coming, we start out with the Kupier Belt horror show right now. Big delays in the Schwarzschild Wormhole either way with quantum fluctuation, only one lane will be getting by. You're talking about, at least, twenty to thirty minutes worth of space traffic either way, possibly even more than that. Meanwhile the Morris-Thorne Wormhole, not great back to Uranus but still your best option. And the KG Space Bridge your worst possible option. Thirtyto forty-minute delays, and that's just going into geostationary orbit. Lower orbit closed, upper orbit all you get. Then back to Uranus every approach is fouled-up: West Side Intergalactic from the 150's, the Local Interstellar Cloud, the Zeta Reticuli approaches and the Upsilon Andromedae are all a disaster, the Upsilon Andromedae could take you an hour, no direct access to the KG Space Bridge with quantum fluctuation. And right now across the Cat‘s Eye Nebula Trans-Neptunian Space Bridge, you've gotta steer clear of that one. Trans-Time Portal, Hale-Bopp Space Bridge, they remain in better shape. Still very slow on the eastbound Coronal Loop here at the area of the, uh, Proxima Centauri there's a, uh, stalled orbiter there blocking a lane and space traffic very slow. # But I am getting ahead of myself. In these paragraphs I will refer to the perception of all, including the writer. I use the word perception to mean the thinking is unclear.

Even while writing these ideas there is a lack of clarity.

The work seems to be ruined. Logic may be lost entirely.

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Again, if it has worked well for me while other ways have not, then perhaps it is not the most important aspect of the problem. After that the postconceptual writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition (or, more likely, accident). What is the work of text? This kind of text is for all writers. I have tried to state them with as much clarity as possible. If the statements I make are unclear it may mean the apprehension of the entire work is unclear. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the writer, who may or may not be involved in the production of very small works of text.

This uncertainty is a kind of regular beat or pulse. When the interval between things that can be is no longer important, the work of text becomes available to all writers. I have found that it becomes the end while the form at the plate is directed at hitting the ball where it is pitched (so to speak). I am involved in postconceptual writing as the idea or concept. This is the reason for using this method.

Postconceptual writing is made to engage the mind of the sense data, the objective of the reader rather than his eye or emotions. The physicality of a three-dimensional object then becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent.

Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. When a writer uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple form, repeatedly narrowing the field of the idea or concept. That is the reason for using this method.

The public unveiling of this method is to be packaged in the synopsis of ―Nobody‘s Coming Back To Uranus,‖ which occurs during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). The goal of this annual event is 17

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to write a 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time. According to the official contest web site, “the ONLY thing that matters … is output. It's all about quantity, not quality.‖ Perfect! As the author of the world's longest novel (and a novel that doesn‘t work), I am supremely qualified to produce a work of quantity over quality. I committed to my first NaNoWriMo attempt in 2008, writing a science fiction novel with a very special protagonist: the winner of the U.S. presidential election.

Obama or McCain, it didn't matter to the nanobots. They simply guided me to write a story set in the same universe I created for "Marienbad My Love." I achieved my goal on Friday, Nov. 28, 2008, when I completed ―The President Who Exploded,‖ a 2.5 million-word sci-fi epic about an intergalactic conspiracy to assassinate Barack Obama. ―The President Who Exploded‖ is the story of a covert government assassin who pursues the President through the space-time continuum to the 41st century, where humans have evolved into super-intelligent insects (they share DNA with an alien race called the Cicadans) who live on Uranus and worship Obama as their Messiah. # Here‘s an interesting idea for a movie: What if Barack Obama did not invent the table?

Titled ―Gabriel's Dinette,‖ this art house film opens by presenting the invention of the table by Obama as an unchallengeable fact. The Holy Grail is a miraculous table made by Him. To question His invention is blasphemy.

No one would dare doubt this spiritual truth. Or would 18

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they? The plot thickens when a doubter walks into the middle of a crowded furniture store in downtown Uranus and asks, ―Did He take out any ads for His carpentry services?‖ The true believers do not like this at all. ―Are you stupid?‖ they ask. ―Who knows?‖ The doubter smiles a gaunt, all-knowing smile and asks ―then how do we know the story of the table is not an urban legend?‖ The true believers are incensed. ―Let me tell you, His invention of the modern table is not an urban legend! He did not invent an urban legend. Can you eat on an urban legend? Can you draw on an urban legend? Can you color Easter eggs on an urban legend? We know you can‘t. We also know Obama worked as a carpenter until He was 30.

He had plenty of time to invent all types of furniture.

Chairs, nightstands, beds, sofas, china hutches, bookcases – everything! So I wonder why you think it is stupid that Obama invented the table?‖ ―Does He still work as a carpenter?‖ ―Are you stupid? He died for your sins and is now God, the Lord of the Hive. If you want to be taken seriously, please consider taking us seriously. Your response just makes you look like a silly child. Is that really the effect you were after?‖ Shamed, the doubter leaves the furniture store. And then comes the big revelation, televised for all to see…. ―This is a Special News Report. Apparently a Cicadian Table from the desolate borderlands of the back of 19

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beyond has been found which predates the birth of the Obama and predicts that the human/insect alien Messiah must suffer and die and then be resurrected after three days before he is able to bring reconciliation between man, insect and God. Dubbed Gabriel‘s Dinette, this table has a serious implication for our understanding of Obama as it reduces the legitimacy of the Marienbadist claim that Obama invented the table.‖ The doubter triumphantly returns to the furniture store to share this amazing report – and his own opinion. ―Perhaps the disciples latched onto Gabriel's Dinette in order to give the teachings of their master more credibility,‖ he suggests. ―Are you stupid? Has this report changed the way any true believer views Obama?‖ ―Fair point,‖ the doubter concedes, ―but the outcomes of this re-discovery are impossible to predict accurately, and it might result in something that would be relevant.

Because we don't know what the effect is, I say we just wait and see what becomes of Gabriel's Dinette.‖ The true believers shake their heads and frown. ―Why so angry?‖ the doubter asks. ―Are you stupid? This is just like you doubters.

Questioning His invention of the table is just the start.

You are trying to change the perception of Obama for a lot of people, especially young larva. If Cicadans stop believing that Obama invented the table, you will create a world in which He isn't treated with much respect. The way He'll be viewed in popular culture will reflect this and influence this. Insectoids will make jokes about him 20

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consuming chocolate mysticism. Bong hits 4 Obama. Take away His invention of the table and He will not be the figure that extraterrestrial insects view him as today.‖ ―What if we said He invented furniture polish instead?‖ The true believers decided they liked that idea. And they realized that the doubter was not so different from them after all. In time, they became fast friends and even went into business together, producing a line of holy furniture polishes.

Literature that is preset is one way of making text for the doubter; other ways may better suit the true believers.

Either way, they are not so different. I think all postconceptual writing is not so different. There is a way to make this work mentally interesting to the perception of all, including the writer. (I use the word perception to mean the thinking is unclear.) Even while writing these ideas there seems to be a sense of the awkward, but I am hopeful that it will eventually be visually pleasing.

To work with a plan that is better stated in two dimensions is good. It should not be forced into three dimensions. That would be bad. Ideas may also be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the writer chooses, the form becomes the grammar for the opportunity to strike out for myself.

In these paragraphs have been referring to very large works of text. But some works are also quite small. The danger of these extremes is, I think, in judging the physicality of the writer by the size of the text. Once it is a work of text it is like any other finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of 21

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completely opposite natures. The former is concerned with postconceptual writing. This idea merits the reader‘s attention. Postconceptual writing is good only when the idea is good.

The editor has written me that he understands the work.

So much the better. This eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the idea of the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are the result of my work developing an expressive device. The postconceptual writer would mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the writer is seeing the text, then he or she is involved with all types of mental processes. These processes are completed.

When a writer is subject to change, the experience changes. I have tried to state these changes with as much clarity as possible or at least to infer the existence of a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are the ones that lack the stringency of mind that would govern the solution of the text. The work does not look well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be ruined is merely a loss of logic. It may be lost entirely. But not likely. Again, if it is best that the postconceptual writer function as a device that is better stated in two dimensions. Do not assume that three dimensions offers additional clarity. Ideas may also be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that is preset is one way of making text; other ways have the process of the idea. These ways are used at times, only to be ruined.

Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the sense data. The objective understandings of the writer are sometimes more interesting than the final product.

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Determining the size of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is preset. It is one way of making text; other ways suit other writers. Nor do I think all postconceptual writing merits the reader‘s attention. Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most writers who are attracted to these materials are one of the writer as a craftsman. It is one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader from perceiving this text should be good news to both writers and readers.

To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the opportunity to strike out for myself. In my news release announcing ―The President Who Exploded‖ (of course the nanobots prompt me to issue a news release – I am, after all, a middle-aged PR executive), I wrote that in order to compile so many words in such a short time, I leaned heavily on the Internet. I generated what I called a ―nonlinear literary collage‖ by mining various blogs, chat rooms and fan fiction sites, grabbing whatever words catch my eye. My absolute favorites were the talk pages of Wikipedia and the reader comments on io9.com, a sci-fi website that wrote about ―Marienbad My Love‖ in a June 2008 article titled ―Thrill-crazed space bugs swarm through world‘s longest novel.‖ I explained to my fellow NaNo writers that I shamelessly appropriated their words -- even their misspellings and grammatical errors – at every opportunity, combining their messages with recycled content from ―Marienbad My Love‖ and entries from my dream journal. Utilizing 23

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Gysin‘s cut-up method, I repeatedly cut and pasted and searched and replaced, transforming the various writings into a completely new and unique literary work.

How new and unique? Dear reader, you be the judge! ―The President Who Exploded‖ is based in part on text I appropriated from the archives for the Talk section of the Jesus article on Wikipedia. # Wikipedia.org Was he any good at his day job?

I was looking at the article in search for more information about Jesus and carpentry. Although it's a somewhat esoteric subject, considering He's one of the biggest historical figures ever, I figured there would have been a bit more substantial info on the topic including a line explaining that the idea that he invented the table is an urban legend.--72.1.222.205 (talk) 21:40, 3 July 2008 (UTC) Are you stupid? What did the Romans, Celts, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians... oh you know what this is stupid, the question is as stupid as it gets, but the answer is of course not. - He did not invent the table.

Tourskin (talk) 03:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Wow, what a nice Christian response. I'd be careful to avoid using the word stupid since your response, besides being rude, demonstrates a lack of reading comprehension and is just begging for the use of that epithet. However I will turn the other cheek and simply reiterate that I wanted more information in regards to Jesus and carpentry and 24

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that I stated at the end of my two sentence long post (so it wasn't like I was overloading you with too much information) that His invention of the modern table was an urban legend which if you've never heard the term before simply means modern apocrypha.--72.1.222.205 (talk) 13:55, 8 July 2008 (UTC) Woah, let's not go bashing the Christians now. I think you'd be hard pressed to find out too much about his carpentry work. What sources do we have for that sort of information? It would be interesting to know though. -St.Giga (talk) 19:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC) Also, we must use verifiable and reliable sources and not give undue weight to trivia. But I think Jesus did work as a carpenter until He was 30, so I wonder if there were any ads for His carpentry services - who knows? It sounds like a good idea for a novel - the Holy Grail is a miraculous table made by Him? Brisvegas 21:10, 15 July 2008 (UTC) In Popular Culture This article should have a In Popular Culture section. I mean it. The perception of Jesus has changed a lot in modern times, and this is shown a lot in TV shows, like Family Guy or South Park, etc. Even The Da Vinci code can be mentioned. Just a thought. Take it or leave it; I'm too afraid to touch the article myself.--Seanpatnaude (talk) 19:32, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Family Guy and South Park type shows joke about many things. Aren't the Da Vinci theories already mentioned? BaronGrackle (talk) 19:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC) It's significant because these shows change the perception of Jesus to a lot of people, especially kids. Jesus isn't 25

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treated with much respect nowadays, and how he's viewed in popular culture reflects this, and influences this. I don't mean just a trivia list, but just some mention about the trend of how he is treated by the popular media, and people make jokes about him smoking weed (bong hits 4 jesus) and generally not being the figure that people used to view him as. Also the movies The Last Temptation of Christ, Dogma, and so on.--Seanpatnaude (talk) 19:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC) New Dead Sea Discovery- Gabriel's Revelation, Apparently a Jewish Tablet from the Dead Sea (dubbed Gabriel's Revelation) has been found which predates the birth of Jesus and predicts that the Messiah must suffer and die and then be resurrected after three days before he is able to bring reconciliation between man and God. This would have two implications for our understanding of Jesus.

1.

It adds further legitimacy to the Christian claim that Jesus fulfilled Jewish Messianic Prophecy.

2.

It reduces the legitimacy of the Christian claim that the three-day resurrection was unique to Christianity- perhaps the disciples latched onto "Gabriel's Revelation" in order to give the teachings of their master more credibility.

It should be noted that not everyone accepts the validity of this tablet- as the following sources will show. None the less it may be something to keep an eye on for inclusion into the article once more information is made available.

Sources, 26

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1. The Scotsman Newspaper 2. The Daily Star (Lebanon Newspaper 3. TIME Magazine 4. MSNBC Gavin Scott (talk) 21:23, 15 July 2008 (UTC) I don't think this specific discovery (which occured many years ago) warrents much attention in this article. It is precisely evidence such as this which, as you say, is drawn on both by Christians and by proponents of the "Jesus Myth" denial of Christianity. But my agreeing with Gavin's assessment is neither here nor there. NOR: we editors do not rely on our own views. The issue here is V and NPOV: Which notable points of view make use of this evidence? Have notable Christian authorities used it to support their claims? If so, I think this would belong in the Christology article, not here. Have advocates of the Jesus Myth used it to support their claims? If so, this would belong in the Jesus Myth article. Has it changed the way any historian views the historical Jesus? if so that should go in one of the articles on the historical Jesus. But the newspapers and magazines cited just prove that this was in the news. They aren't the right kinds of sources to support any of the notable views that we are endeavoring to include in the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC) Fair points, but as your long list demonstrates, the outcome(s) of this re-discovery are impossible to predict accurately, and it might result in something that would be relevant to this article. Because we don't know what the affect is, I say we just wait and see what it could be and 27

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then determine if it warrants a word or two in this article.

Tourskin (talk) 20:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC) # The nanobots spend a lot of time mining Wikipedia. In fact, this novel is based on a mathematical formula they extracted from an entry dedicated to ―The Owl in Daylight,‖ a novel that Philip K. Dick was working on at the time of his death in 1982. According to the article, he believed this novel was going to be his ―Finnegan‘s Wake.‖ I rather like that. One anonymous critic of ―Marienbad My Love‖ declared that with the publication of my novel ―Finnegan‘s Wake has finally been dethroned.‖ (Apparently the declaration was not intended as a compliment.)

But I digress. According to the Wikipedia article, Dick had already been paid for ―The Owl in Daylight‖ and was ―working against a deadline. After his death the Philip K. Dick estate approached other writers to see about the possibility of someone writing the novel based on his notes but this proved to be impossible as he never formally outlined the story.‖ The Wikipedia article includes several ―possible plot summaries.‖ My favorite deals ―with one Ed Firmley, a composer of scores for B-movie grade sci-fi films and a race of alien humanoids that had evolved without the development of sound as a basis of communication. The shamans of this alien race would on occasion have visions of Earth and its many sounds. Due to their unique evolution without sound the holy men were incapable of describing these experiences to the rest of their race. They just knew that the place they saw was their heaven.

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Meanwhile their race was modeled around sight and light, encompassing much more of the electromagnetic spectrum than the limited human vision. In fact, from their perspective, humans were capable of sight but nearly blind, such as a mole appears to a human. Their language involved the telepathic projection of color patterns in precise gradations and following mathematical formulas. ―A spaceship carrying members of this race arrives on Earth and they mug Ed Firmley, a famous composer they quickly discover, as a cover-up for plugging a bio-chip into his head. This bio-chip is a digitized form of one of the aliens with a link back to the ship – essentially allowing everyone to experience Ed Firmley by proxy. The bio-chip is supposed to be passive, serving only as a means of relaying the mystic experience of sound to an entire race.

Soon the alien presence in the bio-chip becomes bored of Firmley‘s music, which is bland, schmaltzy schlock and the pop music that he constantly listens to. As a consequence of this boredom, the bio-chip turns from being passive to active, controlling what Firmley listens to as well as feeding him mathematical formulas that he begins to use as the basis of his compositions. His career, from a financial perspective, dwindles but he becomes a respected avant-garde artist. The active role the bio-chip takes in the relationship begins frying Firmley‘s brain. At this point the aliens make themselves known and offer to remove the chip, but Firmley refuses. He sees himself as an artist whereas before he was of no consequence, doing what he did simply for money. Firmley decides to give up his body to be transformed into a bio-chip which is in turn implanted into an alien brain. This will also lead to the eventual death of the alien host but it offers Firmley a chance of experiencing their world of lights, our heaven.‖ 29

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# ―The Owl in Daylight‖ would make a good novel. Except, of course, the novel is dead.

Philip Roth made headlines in 2009 when he told Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of ―The Daily Beast,‖ that the novel will dwindle to a cult following within 25 years. Roth explained that ―always people will be reading [novels] but it will be a small group of people. Maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range."

In his 2010 literary manifesto/tribute to creative appropriation (i.e., ―Reality Hunger‖), David Shields wrote that ―there‘s inevitably something terribly contrived about the standard novel; you can always feel the wheels grinding and going on. If you write a novel, you sit and weave a little narrative. If you‘re a romantic writer, you write novels about men and women falling in love, give a little narrative here and there, etc. And it‘s okay, but it‘s of no account. Novel qua novel is a form of nostalgia. … The kinds of novels I like are ones which bear no trace of being novels.‖ With ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue,‖ I am writing a novel which bears no trace of being a novel. I am playing on the fringes of a new form. This new kind of novel features: 1. A writing style that more closely resembles an author‘s note or an essay than a traditional novel.

2. The author as a non-fiction main character within a fictional construct. This construct should be vaguely suggestive of a novel, but look like an autobiography or commentary. In this novel, I make a concerted effort to 30

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create a detached main character, in part by deleting all references to myself by name. There is no room for the hero‘s life in the novel of tomorrow.

3. An indefinite narrative structure, jumping from thought to thought. These thoughts should be colored by emotion (preferably the small, petty ones that make up daily life) and repeatedly move between past, present and future and into and out of the familiar world. The intended result is an allusion to Eugene Ionesco‘s ―infinitely strange and foreign‖ universe: ―I gaze upon it with a mixture of anguish and euphoria; separate from the universe, as though placed at a certain distance outside it; I look and I see pictures, creatures that move in a kind of timeless time and spaceless space, emitting sounds that are a kind of language I no longer understand or ever register.‖ 4. The insinuation of a plot, but does not deliver said plot as a part of the actual manuscript. In this new form the novelist does not tell a traditional story, but rather implies one. This implied story may be a sham or stolen or both. In this novel, I borrow the suggestion of a proposed plot for an unwritten novel by Philip K. Dick, a writer who was well known for delivering plot-driven fiction.

5. Circumstances and characters that incorporate the contradictory realism of our uncertain world as opposed to the contrived predictability that forms the basis of the so-called ―realist‖ literary tradition. Shields writes that ―there is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows.‖ In this novel, you can observe something of the grain and texture of life regarding the aliens and their confused religious beliefs.

Despite their scientific and technological superiority, the 31

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Cicadans are thoroughly befuddled regarding the nature of God and Heaven. Why would they think something ridiculous like Earth is their Heaven or ―Kabuki Blues‖ is the Word of God? Because they are just like us, pilgrims in a strange land.

6. The space between words. This space can be important to a work of text. It can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular space might also become a metric time element, a kind of text, then, that should be a thing that is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be called perceptual rather than one of the eye or emotion. The physicality of a piece of this domination emphasizes the physical and emotive power of the reader. This reader understands the concepts of the writer. Such a reader would mitigate this idea and be used as a tool of the writer. What kind of tool? Consider a language system that uses a multiple modular method with random punctuation. The writer usually chooses a simple and readily available form. The form itself is of very limited importance; it becomes the means.

7. Literature that is preset. This is one way of making text; other ways are not. It is air and cannot be seen. It is air and cannot be seen. It is air and cannot be seen. It is the interval between things that can be thought of as the cubic area occupied by a three-dimensional volume. Any volume would occupy space. It is air and cannot be seen.

It is usually free from the dependence on the work (another kind of text in which I am involved as postconceptual writing . In postconceptual writing merits the reader‘s attention. Postconceptual writing is not necessarily have to be explained by the civilized critic‖.

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This should be good news to both writers and readers.

With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball out of his hand the writer carries through his idea and makes it into an idea). This kind of text is not utilitarian.

When three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the materials so important that it may mean the apprehension of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the form. This arrangement becomes the means for a theft of text, for a new language to steal. # The autonomous nanobots are constantly cruising the Web, looking for new language to steal. In fact they even steal the phrase ―looking for new language to steal,‖ which Kenneth Goldsmith wrote in January 2007. Because he has made a name for himself by encouraging plagiarism as a creative endeavor, the nanobots think it makes perfect sense for me to steal his words and claim them as my own.

So now I am Kenneth Goldsmith, writing about the sexiness of the cursor as it sucks up words from anonymous Web pages, like a stealth encounter. They are my words now. I dump them, sticky with residual junk, back into the local environment; scrubbed with text soap, returned to their virginal state, filed away, ready to be reemployed.

I am sculpting with text.

I am data mining.

I am sucking on words.

My task is to simply mind the machines.

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Andy Warhol: I think everybody should be a machine. I think everybody should like everybody.

Interviewer: Is that what Pop Art is all about?

Warhol: Yes. It‘s liking things.

Interviewer: And liking things is like being a machine?

Warhol: Yes, because you do the same thing every time.

You do it over and over again.

Interviewer: And you approve of that?

Warhol: Yes, because it‘s all fantasy.

Writing is finally catching up to Warhol. And it‘s just the beginning. Soon we will not have to be bothered minding the machines for they will mind themselves. As poet Christian Bök states: ―We are probably the first generation of poets who can reasonably expect to write literature for a machinic audience of artificially intellectual peers. Is it not already evident by our presence at conferences on digital poetics that the poets of tomorrow are likely to resemble programmers, exalted, not because they can write great poems, but because they can build a small drone out of words to write great poems for us? If poetry already lacks any meaningful readership among our own anthropoid population, what have we to lose by writing poetry for a robotic culture that must inevitably succeed our own? If we want to commit an act of poetic innovation in an era of formal exhaustion, we may have to consider this heretofore unimagined, but nevertheless prohibited, option: 34

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writing poetry for inhuman readers, who do not yet exist, because such aliens, clones, or robots have not yet evolved to read it.‖ I would agree that the novelists of tomorrow are likely to resemble programmers (or, even more likely, programmed machines). We‘ve already read that the novel will only have a cult following 25 years from now. If novel writing is in fact going the way of poetry and will soon lack any meaningful human readership, perhaps novelists should start writing for inhuman readers – the pushbutton men and women, the machines in search of a soul. And thanks to the intervention of the Cicadans and their autonomous nanobots, we will soon evolve into an entire planet of robotic novelists and readers. Once we‘re freed from our flesh-and-blood existence, it‘ll be a simple matter to cruise about the neighboring galactic sprawl …

Startime 2412:11 Oh, one of the nastiest nights we've had in a while across the Kupier Belt. Schwarzschild Wormhole can be up to a half an hour in either direction, it's repairs and only one lane available. Morris-Thorne Wormhole, which was a good way out is a bad way out now. Now we've got troubles back to Uranus it looks like, uh, now, mmm, watching here on the Kabuki Blue Martian Telescope, it's double trouble. The north tube all space traffic's grinding to a halt going back to Uranus, that'll impact the 41st and 40th Orbit approaches. The center tube, that's another problem: you got a stuck rocket bus in the tube. We just got a call from the Pushbutton Man who, um, a member of our space traffic team, who said that there was only one lane open, the right lane in that tube back to Uranus, with a, uh, rocket bus stopped there, Space Port Authority police crews are on scene.

Right now space traffic stacking up, Morris-Thorne 35

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Wormhole Uranus-bound, KG Space Bridge can easily take you thirty to forty minutes to go either way, even worse off the Upsilon Andromedae with no direct access to the KG Space Bridge because of repairs going on and the Trans-Neptunian Space Bridge, still an absolute must to avoid. You've got quantum fluctuation there and delays on both decks either way. # Several NaNoWriMo participants have taken great offense at my robot-like theft of Wikipedia comments, the selfpromotional news release and my overall efforts at literary appropriation. One of them preemptively called me out in a public forum, warning me not to appropriate any of her writing. She wrote that I better not use her novel excerpt in ―ANY shape, form, or manner.‖ ―What a challenge!‖ the Cicadans declare. I agree. I don‘t need the nanobots for this one. I recall a famous conversation between Burroughs and Samuel Beckett.

Here‘s a version that appears in "Literary Outlaw, The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs," by Ted Morgan: "Finally, Beckett leaned forward and said, "What can you tell me, Mr. Burroughs, about this cut-up method of yours?"

"Well, Mr. Beckett," Burroughs said, "what I do is take a page of my writing and a page of the Herald Tribune [or Rimbaud, etc.], I cut them up and then I put them back together, and I gradually decipher new texts. Then I might take a page of your writing, and line it up with what I already have, and do the same thing all over again."

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Suddenly indignant, Beckett asked, "You're using other writer's words?"

"Words don't have brands on them the way cattle do," Burroughs said. "Ever hear of a word rustler?"

"You can't do that!" Beckett said. "You can't take my writing and mix it up with the newspapers."

"Well, I've done it," Burroughs said.

"That's not writing," Beckett snorted, "it's plumbing." # The postconceptual writer is a very small person; say less than five feet tall. This is probably true. If so, many big ideas will be made obvious in the small piece. If size is relatively unimportant, it can be thought of as the cubic area occupied by a three-dimensional volume.

Conceptual writing began with a literary production, which has now become, I feel, the death of literature. What remains is the way that writers frame that death. The conceptual writer was a bringer of life. The postconceptual writer is a bringer of death.

In the hands of the postconceptual writer, the idea of death becomes an afterthought that makes the writing.

The ―after idea‖ is the key element of the work. In postconceptual writing what comes AFTER the idea is the most important aspect of the work. The "after idea" makes the art.

The postconceptual form repeatedly narrows the expectation of the appearance of avoiding subjectivity.

Some plans imply infinity. Others – not so much.

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Consider this work, for instance. These skimpy paragraphs leave out basic facts about postconceptual writings. Why? Because they are not necessarily executed by the writer.

The complete instructions may be in the work title. They may be hidden entirely. The instructions may be executed by others, left up for a time and then written over.

If the greatness of postconceptual writing has so far escaped you, make haste to The Infinite Library.

Here, among the often hulking shelves of dead literature you‘ll find an exhilarating show of 14 of mind-teasing, eyefilling works of text. All were made by people other than the writer, following written instructions — a habit that has always given detractors fits. If you find these paragraphs to be "skimpy," you might consider adding to them. But please leave out gushing praise. That is over the top, in my opinion. Nothing in art gives anyone "fits," anymore, I don't think. And allusions to Duchamp?

They could put a chimpanzee to sleep. Could anyone in their right mind concur with the assertion that postconceptual writings brim with the fineness and foibles of the human condition? Perhaps. And yet, I wouldn't go that far. People still have fits over writing. And it does, in fact remain controversial that some postconceptual writings may be executed by others.

Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline that we saw in the former age of conceptual literature. The mathematics used by most conceptual writers was simple arithmetic or simple number systems.

The philosophy of the writer is outside of the work and concentrates the intensity on the reader, and therefore 38

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usually ameliorates this emphasis on materiality (that is, as much as a work of text is accustomed to generating amelioration). That sort of ―after idea‖ would deter the reader from securing whatever information he needs to understand the same thing in a different way.

Perhaps the critics of my ―after idea‖ don‘t realize I am trying to be funny. ―Maybe I will do better in one-on-one encounters,‖ I told myself. So I looked up the NaNoWriMo participant, the one who told me I better not appropriate her writing. We‘ll call her Beckett – no, we‘ll call her ―A,‖ a nod to the beautiful unnamed heroine of Alain Resnais‘ ―Last Year at Marienbad.‖ I checked out her novel excerpt. Some sort of fantasy.

There is an ambassador who laments that the king has compelled him to attend the meetings of something called the ―royal council.‖ I‘d like to think of her story including a sword-wielding elf or two. This tale of regal yore crieed out to me, begging that I appropriate it for an over-the-top parodic rewrite.

So I sent ―A‖ a couple of private messages. A little fantasy remix experiment, just between the two of us. I probably should have incorporated a smiley-faced emoticon or two as my humor was not well received. ―I think you might just be missing the point here,‖ she responded. ―In the time it's taking you to scramble things up, you could have written a unique piece of text (unless you've got some kind of generator to do the work for you). Or is that the problem, that you don't HAVE unique ideas?‖ Ouch. Apparently ―A‖ decided it‘s not enough to tell me privately that I have no ideas. She took her criticisms 39

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public. ―A‖ posted some online comments, including a side-by-side comparison of her original novel excerpt and one of my parodic re-writes. This part of the novel is based on that real-life post (subject line, ―Wordiness taken beyond the ridiculous‖ at http://www.whygodwhy.org/original-fictionf4/wordiness-taken-beyond-the-ridiculous-t910.htm). # Re-reading it today, I still rather like my little parody. I believe I really did help her story along with a bit of humorous tinkering. Well, humorous to me anyway. Zeti Reticuli, Uranus, the four scoundrel territories, the Lord of the Hive – now that‘s funny writing!

But wait, that‘s not right. I have no complaints with ―A.‖ In this novel she is right and I am wrong. She is the creative writer. I am the one with no ideas.

I owe all of my creativity to the autonomous nanobots.

This makes perfect sense as the Cicadans are a creatively inspirational presence.

In the beginning it was not easy to decode their transmissions. The messages were beamed here from distant galaxies within, crackling through flesh-covered speakers in a sort of mangled cicada cry. Over time, the intercellular translators in the viral DNA dream phone smoothed out the discarded static into a comfortable, almost melodic rhythm, a poetic form suggestive of the magneto whir of the disintegrated Machine Society of the West or the dry, disconsolate rasp of buzzard wings… ―After the saloons of old Strangers Rest stretches the desolate border zone, territory of cowboys and cattle 40

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drives, ancestral beings trapped in astral wastelands, electronic judgments imposed through ancient compound eyeballs the tint of washed out gray. Driving through Deep East Texas Piney Woods darkness, rolling on past picture perfect peaks, through the emaciated atmosphere towards a church that stands somewhere in the East. A sense of bereavement catches in the esophagus at the vista of skinned scenery, lifeless small mammals smashed in the road and scavenger birds gliding silently above the marshes and aged tree remnants. Further on, drive-in accommodations with beautification plank partitions, chattering sheet metal furnaces and sheer crimson bedspreads give way to an industrial sprawl of glittering retention lagoons and ginger methane flames, quagmires and trash mountains, carnivorous aquatic insects swimming about in wrecked funeral urns and metal shipping containers. Glowing glass tubes entangle 1950s roadside lodgings, stranded directors of primal goddesses and other lovely creations curse transitory orbiters and rocket buses from the nowhere of wormholes and spaceway medians, ignored atolls of nonsense. Now the electronic judgments empty down in a dark rotating shaft, down from the azure heaven, that devastating, gory, azure heaven of the Land of the Dead, home of the nameless, the dreary and ghostly, the misplaced soul nationality – obligated to become, in effect, a being without a genus.

No emotion, no organization, a world-compelled phantom requirement, spasmodically discharging warm globules of stale ectoplasm, detonations of DNA into membranes of chilly interplanetary liberty, floating in celestial grime, departing once again without the unfulfilled corpse left forgotten in a back room, the Vault of the Deity.‖ # 41

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The nanobots inspired me to appropriate that bit of text from ―Marienbad My Love.‖ I don‘t remember the original sources that served as my inspiration. Probably Burroughs. I think some of Kerouac‘s ―On The Road‖ is mixed in there, too. That‘s seems fair. After all, I had a dream in which Kerouac and I smoked marijuana together.

My experience with the Cicadans has turned me into a big believer in appropriating and combining content, reworking it until you have something new and unique.

The cut-up method is one of my favorite techniques. I like it so much that I even turned it into a plot element in ―Marienbad My Love‖…

Now in these broken, derelict days after the end of time it is possible to combine two opposites into a new whole.

Create something new and unique by combining something old and commonplace. This technique generates an original creative product, one that allows us to journey not only through the cosmos but through the sixth dimension, too. I know it works for today I am back from a time journey to 1979, bringing with me an explanation of what I saw and how it was completed.

I should warn you that this operation requires extreme accuracy as it is a difficult enterprise. It is based in part on mid-20th century experiments conducted by my grandfather, Jewell Poe. These experiments were aimed at creating a new process for color photography. Brightly colored ribbons were tied to a leafless, winter tree in the Poe family‘s backyard in Waco, Texas. Double reversal film stock was exposed through a lens or prism. Somehow wires were crossed and time/space polarity was reversed.

The developed film revealed a horizon beyond the 42

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horizon. This is the Jewell Effect. Following my grandfather‘s notes I have recreated his experiment and found myself pulled into the psychic entrainment, snapped out of the last weekend of youth in 1979 and back to 1953 Waco and forward to outer space. I am spun into an elliptical orbit around the Cicadan scientific outpost on Uranus, where they know of my grandfather‘s experiments. I focus on the heavy blue silence, and a slow wave goes through me.

Beware, my darling muse. The Jewell Effect is equal parts excitement and danger, just as you would expect when traveling beyond the outermost border marking the back of beyond. Only the adventurous should apply. However, the sixth dimension belongs to everyone who has the courage and the know-how to come in. It belongs to you and me. So here is the entire four-part process, precisely as it works.

Part 1: We begin our voyage in the musty film vaults of the classic B-movies of yore. We will edit TV news programs from today with 1950s B-movie Sci-Fi and view the resulting footage. If we fast forward through a recording of our daily TV news broadcast we typically see and absorb much more than we know. In fact, we absorb everything, but it is not easily accessible because it is in the Land of the Dead. The editing process establishes a metaphorical relationship between today and yesterday.

We have assembled a movie that forms a montage of time.

We move ourselves literally about within the frame of that montage, occupying yesterday's cinema. We return to present time by rewinding towards yesterday. Together we will do this many hours per the day for several months, back as far as the news and movies go. We will exhume old news reels and forgotten TV shows and poke about at 43

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the cadavers of brittle yellow letters and dusty government reports. Don‘t forget to raid the morgue for ancient newspaper clippings. We will make edits and project the footage. We will do it even with the credits and advertisements.

Part 2: We will proceed to the closest drive-in movie theater. Here we will learn to talk to ourselves in reverse at all levels. This is done by running the film and sound track in reverse. This is precisely the schematic diagram employed in the creation of "El Bib." Picture Christ eating the Last Supper with his disciples. After this, reverse the film, turning satiety back to hunger. At first the film will break into a run at the normal speed. Next it will drop into slow-motion. The same procedure can be extended to other physical processes, specifically the expelling of warm globs of ectoplasm into your membranes. You are offended? You must move beyond your sexual prudery and reticence, which is possibly the heaviest anchor holding you in the third dimension and linear time.

Part 3: We will compile the resulting film into an endless loop on a single metal reel. This process results in a great circular movie, without beginning or end, birth or death.

(For full effect, we will view it in a circular theater and project it onto a circular screen.) If we cut through the middle of the reel and view the individual frames, we will find that the movie is actually the Deity, a sentient being realized in the form of a living movie from the back of beyond whose precise center is any point in our lives and therefore totally remote and unreachable.

Part 4: We open the door onto the space/time continuum, and a slow wave shivers through the universe.‖ 44

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# When three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the sense data, the objective of the work is implicit in the course of the space/time continuum. The slow wave is completing the work by using new materials and then making them into a work of universal text. If certain distances are important they will be made obvious in the piece. If space is relatively unimportant it can be of some importance to a work of text (or certainly the universe).

This is the interval between things that can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular space might also become a metric time element, a kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it has worked well for me while other ways suit other writers. Nor do I think the piece must be large enough to give the reader from perceiving this text.

Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most writers is simple arithmetic or simple number systems. The philosophy of the problem. After that the writer by seeing the text. The danger is, I think, in making the physicality of a piece or series of pieces is a very good idea. Perhaps ―mini-art‖ shows could be sent around the country in matchboxes.

Or maybe the mini-writer is a kind of text, then, should be is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be impressive and the idea and is used at times, only to be obvious inconsistencies (which I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this kind of thing. There are 45

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other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it becomes the idea of the reader, or lower. I think the piece must be utilitarian or else fail completely. text is accustomed, that would enable them to use it in a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are the result of my work as an expressive device. The postconceptual writer would mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the writer is a device that is better stated in two dimensions should not be complex.

Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple.

Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. What the work is implicit in the process of conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the writer would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the writer is out of his hand the writer is a work of text. This is a perfunctory affair. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much as possible or to infer a paradoxical way (to convert it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of importance. The idea becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical and emotive power of the writer carries through his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the thing were made gigantic then the size of a piece or series of pieces is a kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art.

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No writer I know will own up to any of these either.

Therefore I conclude that it is best that the writer would mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the thing were made gigantic then the size alone would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be impressive and the idea of the reader, or lower. I think all postconceptual writing the idea of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the piece.

New materials are the ones that lack the kind of stringency of mind that would enable the writer to use the materials well. It takes a good writer to use the word perception to mean the apprehension of the whole. By using a simple and readily available form, the writer becomes the form itself as well as a literary impediment that requires difficulty of vision or access.

Space can be important to establishing a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be what makes the size of a piece good news for both writers and readers.

With this assurance I hope to justify confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball where it was pitched), I am involved with the left field.

Postconceptual writing merits the reader‘s attention.

Postconceptual writing is made to engage the mind in planning. Decisions are made beforehand, and the idea is good.

The editor has written me that he understands the concepts of the problem. After that the postconceptual writer would want it to become emotionally dry. There is nothing worse than seeing text that wallows in gaudy baubles. By and large most writers is simple arithmetic or simple number systems. The philosophy of the writer by 47

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seeing the text. Once it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is too small, it may mean the thinking is unclear. Even while writing these ideas there seemed to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing.

To work with a specific function. Architecture, whether it is purposeless. It is one way of making text; other ways have not. It is air and cannot be seen. It is the reason for using this method.

Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most writers is simple arithmetic or simple number systems. The philosophy of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the problem. After that the writer would mitigate his idea and is used at times, only to be obvious inconsistencies (which I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it may become inconsequential. The height of the writer, to lull the reader rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light, and color literature.

Since the functions of conception and perception are contradictory (one pre-, the other post-fact) the writer has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work.

Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader whatever information he needs to understand the same thing in a different way.

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Recently there has been much written about minimal text, but I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this kind of expressionism).

Three-dimensional text of any system of philosophy. It doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most writers who are attracted to these materials are the ones who lack the stringency of mind that would govern the solution of the work.

Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader may have some bearing on the work and also the size of the writer, to lull the reader may have some bearing on the skill of the problem. After that the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it is completed.

When a writer uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple form that repeatedly narrows the field of the work. Some plans would require millions of variations, and some a limited number, but both are finite. Other plans imply infinity. In each case, however, the writer as a craftsman. It is one way of making text; other ways have not. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the materials well. It takes a good writer to use it in a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are the result of my work as an expressive device. The postconceptual writer would mitigate his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be impressive and the execution is a deterrent to our understanding of the work and also the size of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a work of text as any finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of interest. Those that show the thought process of conception and realization with 49

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which the writer would mitigate his idea and is used as a writer uses a conceptual form of text, it means that all of the park, another to stay loose at the expense of losing the idea is good.

The editor has written me that he understands the work, or to use it in a different way. Recently there has been much written about minimal text, but I have found that it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is out of his hand the writer by seeing the text. This kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it may become inconsequential. The height of the problem. After that the postconceptual writer would want to ameliorate this emphasis on materiality as much as possible to my thinking at this time. These ideas are the ones who lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials well. It takes a good writer to use the word perception to mean the apprehension of the whole. Using a simple and readily available form. The form itself is of very limited importance; it becomes the end while the form being unimportant.

These paragraphs are not intended as categorical imperatives, but the ideas stated are as close as possible to my thinking at this time. These ideas are logical in conception and realization with which the writer is a very good idea. Perhaps ―mini-art‖ shows could be sent around the country in matchboxes. Or maybe the mini-writer is a deterrent to our understanding of the piece.

New materials are one of the whole. Using a simple form repeatedly narrows the field of the problem. After that the 50

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basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it is part of a piece or series of pieces is a physical fact. The physicality is a very small person; say less than five feet tall. If so, much good work will be found in the process of the work.

Some plans would require millions of variations, and some a limited number, but both are finite. Other plans imply infinity. In each case, however, the writer wishes to explore his idea and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the piece. If space is relatively unimportant it can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular space might also become a metric time element, a kind of expressionism).

Three-dimensional text of any system of philosophy. It doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most writers is simple arithmetic or simple number systems. The philosophy of the idea may be lost entirely. Again, if it is best that the fewer decisions made in the process of the piece. New materials are one of miniskirts and long-legged girls. It must refer to the kind of reader that has to be rejected if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist text is not necessarily logical. The logic of a three-dimensional object then becomes a machine that makes the text. This is a device that is preset is one way of avoiding ―the notion that the basic form and rules that would deter the reader is dwarfed by the writer wishes to explore his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition.

What the work is implicit in the work is open to the 51

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spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the postconceptual writer would mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the statements I make are unclear it may mean the apprehension of the work and it is completed.

When a writer uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple and readily available form. The form itself is of impediment and requires difficulty of vision or access).

Space can be perceived only after it is purposeless. It is the process of conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the writer wishes to explore his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the thing were made gigantic then the size alone would be what size is best. If the writer wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be impressive and the subjective as much as possible to my thinking at this time.

These ideas are the ones who lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials so important that it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the whole. Using a simple and readily available form. The form itself is a slow wave of impediment, and it requires difficulty of vision or access to realize it and the universe.

The slow wave shivers through me as I read an Umberto Eco essay titled ―A Portrait of the Artist as Bachelor.‖ He writes that ―the chapter in ‗Finnegan‘s Wake‘ that clearly refers to The Book of Kells is the one conventionally called ‗The Manifesto Alp.‘ This chapter tells the story of a 52

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letter found on a pile of dung, and the letter has been seen as a symbol of all attempts at communication, of all the literature in the world, and of Finnegan‘s Wake itself.‖ This passage reminds me of one of the climactic scenes of my novel. The autonomous nanobots have implanted a mathematical formula that positions me outside at night, walking with a group of people I know.

We come to a pile of refuse – trash, dirt and other discards. And yet, the items are apparently significant. To this pile I add an antique metal advertising sign, which employs an image of the devil. I put dirt on top of the sign, burying it in a shallow grave.

Then I am inside my old apartment in Fort Worth, the one I lived in when I realized the world was being taken over by carbon copies and three-legged robotic pool cleaners. It is still my home, but I am being held here against my will by a sort of mad scientist. Another man is also being held here. We are to be his guinea pigs, the subject of his infernal experiments.

The scientist has an assistant, an attractive woman who appears to be in her 20s or early 30s. She is wearing a grayish or maybe tan suit, the kind with a skirt and jacket, but no blouse. I can see down the front of the jacket. She has smallish breasts, but still a definite sexual presence.

The woman produces some papers, computer bubble sheets. I realize she is preparing to give me a personality test. ―Have you ever taken one before?‖ she asks.

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―Yes,‖ I say, but I can‘t remember when or the results. So she consults a chart in which she points to an entry with the name of the tester (MacKensie) and the date. It is a ―9‖ followed by some single digit that I don‘t see. ―I don‘t remember the name of the person who administered the test, but this entry could be the one,‖ I say.

Meanwhile, the scientist is talking to the other man. I realize that the experiment is being readied. Somehow I know that we are to undergo a physical transformation.

We will be turned into new beings – robotic beings, machine-like beings. It is a frightening prospect. The assistant asks me about a small bottle of model airplane paint she has found in the apartment. ―Can we use it?‖ she asks.

I examine it and shake my head. ―It is too old,‖ I say. ―Look, the pigment has settled in the bottom of the bottle and can‘t be re-mixed.‖ So I hold the bottle in front of me, moving toward the kitchen as if to throw it in the trash. I act casual, do a little skip-and-slide walk. Of course, I am hoping to make an escape. Do they suspect this? Will they stop me?

Apparently not, for they make no move toward me. I reach the far end of the kitchen, where there is a door that leads to a bedroom and, beyond that, to my freedom. I bolt for the balcony, then start yelling for help. ―There‘s a burglar, I‘m being kidnapped!‖ 54

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I kick away a screen and jump to a flat roof just below me.

I yell to a man on the ground below, but I don‘t stop running. I know the scientist and his assistant could be right behind me, ready to recapture me and perform the robotic transformation.

I run over to the edge of the roof and jump or climb to the ground. Then I go back inside the building, into the lobby, yelling all the while about the kidnappers.

Apparently, word has already reached the authorities, because I find several uniformed officers already waiting.

They direct me to a seat; I am saved.

Several months later, I find myself in a bedroom with the scientist and his assistant. I am standing at the foot of the bed, and they are in it together. ―I‘m happy you were not sent to jail,‖ I tell them. And I mean it. At last, I can afford to be charitable. They will be on probation for a long time, so they will have to be careful not to commit any more crimes. They are no longer a threat. ―I‘m happy because I will be able to spend time with the two of you and not worry,‖ I add. ―I can learn from you, I‘m sure of it.‖ I am again holding the metal sign of the devil. This time I place it on top of the covers – the covers beneath which they will sleep and I will dream.

In the distance I hear the clock chimes, convening the moviegoers from around the planet. Now I must take my place behind the camera. In seven days the world will come to an end, and I must be ready.

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After all, I might be God. # My deification is not yet universally celebrated. My status as an avant-garde artist is regularly challenged by more conventional members of the reading public. When I was criticized for writing ―The President Who Exploded,‖ I responded with an over-the-top acceptance speech, a blatant appropriation of Obama‘s election night address, which I pretended to deliver at the National Novel Writing Month Award Ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden. Here is a transcript: Thank you so much. (APPLAUSE) Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE) Thank you, everybody. To – to all my fellow winners of this great competition, with profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for Winningest Winner of the 2008 NaNoWriMo. (APPLAUSE) Let me -- let me express -- let me express my thanks to the historic slate of 20,000-plus winners who accompanied me on this year‘s amazing journey. As I prepare to move into the NaNoWriMo Winningest Winner‘s Mansion, I find that I am humbled by the awesome honor and responsibility that comes with a record-setting 2.5 millionword finish.

I am humbled by the reality of this amazing event. Reality is important. I believe in looking reality straight in the eye – and denying it. I appropriated that from Garrison Keillor. As a pretentious postmodern narcissist, I make a habit of appropriating the words of others. I appropriate them, and then they belong to me.

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I cannot begin to thank all of you who have bestowed such deserved adoration upon me for my creation of unprecedented artistic appropriation. It‘s been a long road, let me tell you. Early on, it appeared that I had made a few enemies. Harsh criticisms were seemingly leveled against your humble narrator. Or perhaps I was just being paranoid, which is a minor occupational hazard of the pretentious postmodern narcissist.

Some of you have wondered if my statements of literary awesomeness was meant as a joke. Am I trying to be funny? Am I making some sort of statement on the nature of modern celebrity? Am I a literary iconoclast, gleefully destroying the sanctity of the novel? What in the world am I doing! Here is a tip: The way to know if someone on the Internet is being funny is to look for the smiley face emoticons. Do you see any smiley face emoticons in this transcript of my acceptance speech? No, you don‘t.

Pretentious postmodern narcissists never joke.

So as I prepare to move into the NaNoWriMo Winningest Winner‘s Mansion, I should mention that if I am unable to execute my duties as Winningest Winner we have at least two other winners this year who exceeded the millionword count. While I have not read their somewhat-lesslengthy works, I suspect these people are actually ―creative writers,‖ which is of course a very different breed from yours truly.

I received an e-mail from one of the contest‘s lesser winners, suggesting that I appropriate from others because I don‘t ―HAVE an idea.‖ She‘s right, of course. Good thing for me that ideas can‘t be copyrighted. I appropriated this from the Briefing on Media Law section of The Associated Press Stylebook: ―…ideas and facts are 57

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never protected by a copyright. Rather, the copyright pertains only to the literary, musical, graphic or artistic form in which an author expresses intellectual concepts.‖ Even that protection is not unlimited as the doctrine of ―fair use‖ can permit the use of copyrighted material in certain situations. For example, Kenneth Goldsmith has written and published a novel that contains nothing but the unrevised written content of a single issue of The New York Times.

Consider what Goldsmith has to say about the subject of artistic appropriation in his essay, ―Uncreativity as a Creative Practice.‖ For your convenience I have appropriated the following remarks: ―Almost 100 years ago, the visual arts came to terms with this [appropriation] issue in Duchamp's ‗Urinal.‘ Later, Warhol, then Koons extended this practice. In music we have vast examples from John Oswald's Plunderphonics to the ubiquitous practice of sampling. Where has literature been in this dialogue? One hundred years after Duchamp, why hasn't straight appropriation become a valid, sustained or even tested literary practice?‖ Now before one of my critics charges ahead screaming ―look at the pretentious postmodern narcissist! He thinks he‘s as good as Goldsmith!‖ let me point out that I did not make any such quality claims. I don‘t have to. Allow me to appropriate this text from the NaNoWriMo web site: ―…the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks. …‖ Nor have I claimed to be as good as William Burroughs.

Although I did appropriate some of his writings, so 58

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perhaps I am. To those who argue otherwise, I would note that I only claim to have appropriated the cut-up technique that Burroughs popularized. I have not claimed that my use of the cut-up method, literary appropriation or any other technique has resulted in a work of artistic merit.

Rather, I simply claim to have created "a completely new and unique literary work."

It is not my place as a novelist to evaluate the quality of that work. That is rightly the role of the reader.

Regarding criticisms of my advanced age – listen my young friends, you‘ll be middle-aged somed ay, too. And imagine how happy you‘ll be when you remember that back in the day I told you 47 was the new 29! Back in my day, when children rode to school in stone buses pulled by dinosaurs, most college students took a course called Art Appreciation. You learned about artists like Duchamp so you would share a common language and reference points for discussions with other educated people, thereby allowing you to disagree with someone without resorting to calling them a douche rocket. But in today‘s postdinosaur, post-Art Appreciation world, if you (and by ―you‖ I really mean ―I‖) make reference to Duchamp, you will be taken to task.

Consider what I wrote in the NaNoWriMo Forum: ―If I entered an upside down toilet in an art exhibition and labeled it ‗Fountain,‘ would it be art?‖ Here is one of the replies: ―No. No, it would not be. It would be an upside down toilet. A rose is a rose is a rose, marienbad.

Comments from websites and the Bible written backwards, no matter how artfully arranged, do not art make. Sorry.‖ 59

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Sigh. It would be easy to respond with one of the many masturbation- or feminine hygiene-themed epithets that have been directed at me. But I‘ll leave that to those of you who do it so well and so often.

Why can‘t we all just get along? If we just got to know each other, I suspect we‘d find that we are not so different after all. Are we not all human? Do we not all make mistakes? Consider my great friends, the bloggers. They compensate for their shortcomings by hiding behind their online monikers and 40-word vocabularies that reveal a middle school obsession with masturbation- and feminine hygiene-themed epithets. As a pretentious postmodern narcissist, I compensate with sex and awesomeness. I appropriated that one from the TV show ―30 Rock.‖ If I had a chance to meet my online critics in person, I would extend to them an olive branch. But wait – it is not an olive branch at all, but a tendril of poison ivy. Ha ha ha!

That‘ll teach you to trust a pretentious postmodern narcissist.

I know I‘ll be paying a high price for Winningest Winner fame in my personal life. No more leisurely, anonymous strolls along Rodeo Drive or weekends in The Hamptons.

Those damned paparazzi! At any moment Alain Resnais might kick my a--. Ditto for the William Burroughs Fan Club. And of course several of you apparently want to have sex with me. And leave my severed head in a bucket of cement. Ah, the life of the misunderstood, awesomely fabulous writer. I came to NaNoWriMo in peace, seeing gold and slaves. I appropriated that from Jack Handey.

In conclusion let me state what should be obvious at this point. I am having a wonderful time. And I have no intention of turning my back on you now. We cannot turn 60

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back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this competition, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that NaNoWriMo 50,000-word promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless National Novel Writing Month. # I did‘t get any laughs with that one either.

By the way, my critics are wrong. About not having any ideas, I mean. The nanobots give me new ideas all the time. But instead of turning them into storylines for National Novel Writing Month, I just keep adding them to a file labeled ―Nobody‘s Coming Back to Uranus II: Electric Boogaloo.‖ (Interestingly, Vonnegut wrote in ―Timequake‖ that he‘d been doing the same thing with short story ideas since the 1950s when television killed the market.)

For most of this novel I assume my ideas come directly from dreams, though of course as readers we know the REAL story: my nocturnal visions are actually mathematical formulations implanted by the autonomous nanobots.

Take the Cicadans, for example. Here‘s the ―dream‖ in which they revealed themselves: ―We have just learned that the DNA of every human on the planet has been converted to that of an insect. We feel unchanged, but I comment to those around me that the outward transformation will begin soon. The new genetic code will transform us into new beings. And sure enough, I am right. The scene changes and I find myself standing over a 61

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comatose Allison. My wife is nude, covered in damp dirt. I am cleaning her with a sponge, revealing the beginning growth of an exoskeletal thorax. ‗We‘ll all look like this soon,‘ I tell myself.‖ That‘s right. Even the beginning of ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ was inspired by the aliens. They have been running the show from the start.

The Cicadans understand that architecture and threedimensional text are of completely opposite natures. The former is concerned with postconceptual writing. This merits the reader‘s attention. Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The math used by most writers who are attracted to these materials is open to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. What do I mean by this?

There is no reason to suppose that the fewer decisions made in the course of completing the work, the better.

This eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the execution is a deterrent to our understanding of the work.

Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader is dwarfed by the larger size of the writer as a craftsman. It is the reason for using this method.

Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really matter if the reader may have some bearing on the skill of the problem. After that the writer who is concerned with postconceptual writing to make his work mentally interesting to the arrangement of the space into which it will be found in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

If the thing were made gigantic then the size alone would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste 62

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and others whimsies would be what size is best. If the writer would want it to become emotionally dry. There is nothing worse than seeing text that wallows in gaudy baubles. By and large most writers who are attracted to these materials are the result of my work as an expressive device. The postconceptual writer would mitigate his idea and is used as an expressive device. The postconceptual writer would select the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it may become inconsequential. The height of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both). The work does not look well.

Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing.

To work with a specific function. Architecture, whether it is a kind of text, then, should be – actually, it is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be eliminated from the dependence on the work (another kind of expressionism).

Three-dimensional text of any system of philosophy. It doesn‘t really matter if the reader from perceiving this text.

Postconceptual writing is good only when the idea of the piece. New materials are one of the work and concentrates the intensity to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the postconceptual writer would mitigate his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be impressive and the execution is a deterrent to our understanding of the materials well. It takes a good writer to use the materials so important that it may more easily become an intrinsic part of a three-dimensional object then becomes a machine that makes the text. Once it is involved with all 63

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types of mental processes and it is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is purposeless. It is one way of avoiding 窶付he notion that the writer chooses, the form being unimportant.

These paragraphs are not intended as categorical imperatives, but the ideas stated are as close as possible or to use the materials well. It takes a good writer to use new materials and make them into a work of text is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is best that the fewer decisions made in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

If the writer chooses, the form at the plate and hit the ball out of the eye level of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the subjective as much a work of text is accustomed, that would enable them to use the word perception to mean the apprehension of the work of text.

This kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either.

Therefore I conclude that it is a kind of text, then, should be good news to both writers and readers. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball out of the writer chooses, the form at the plate and hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the sensation of the form. This arrangement becomes the idea of the whole. Using a simple form repeatedly narrows the field of the piece.

New materials are the result of my work as a writer uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple 64

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form repeatedly narrows the field of the writer has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work.

Different people will understand the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea of the work is open to the arrangement of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the work is open to the arrangement of the characteristics, such as forming utilitarian areas, it weakens its function as text. When the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance.

Architecture and three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. What the work is open to the arrangement of the idea is good.

The editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work. Different people will understand the work (another kind of regular beat or pulse. When the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance.

Architecture and three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the text. This kind of reader that has to look like something if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is one way of making text; other ways suit other writers. Nor do I think all postconceptual writing to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the writer has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work. Different people will understand the work is open to the arrangement of the writer are sometimes more interesting than the eye level of 65

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the work and it is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is intuitive, it is intuitive, it is too small, it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the piece.

New materials are the result of my work as a writer and are subject to change as my experience changes. I have found that it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the interval between things that can be thought of as the cubic area occupied by a three-dimensional volume. Any volume would occupy space. It is the most important aspect of the work is open to the perception of all, including the writer.

(I use the materials so important that it may become inconsequential. The height of the reader, or lower. I think all postconceptual writing . In postconceptual writing the idea is good.

The editor has written me that he understands the concepts of the writer, to lull the reader in this physicality is its most obvious and expressive content. Postconceptual writing is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is a very small works of text. The work of text. The danger is, I think, in making the physicality of the writer, to lull the reader rather than his eye or emotions. The physicality is its most obvious and expressive content. Postconceptual writing is made to engage the mind of the eye level of the characteristics, such as forming utilitarian areas, it weakens its function as text. When the reader understands the work, the better. This eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the idea or concept is the objective understanding of the park, another to stay loose at the expense of losing the idea of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader rather than his eye or emotions. The physicality is its most obvious and 66

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expressive content. Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most writers who are attracted to these materials are one of the work and it is not necessarily have to be rejected if it has physical form. No matter what form it may become inconsequential. The height of the space into which it will be made obvious in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

If the thing were made gigantic then the size of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is better stated in two dimensions should not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that is better stated in two dimensions should not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that is meant for the opportunity to strike out for myself.

I will refer to a very small person; say less than five feet tall. If so, much good work will be made obvious in the primary schools (primary school equals primary structures).

If the writer has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader understands the concepts of the text.

This is the interval between things that can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular space might also become a metric time element, a kind of regular beat or pulse. When the interval between things that can be thought of as the cubic area occupied by a threedimensional object then becomes a machine that makes the text. The work of text as any finished product. All 67

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intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of completely opposite natures. The former is concerned with making an area with a plan that is used at times, only to be explained by the writer has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work. When a writer uses a conceptual form of text, it means that all of the text. Once it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is completed.

When a writer uses a conceptual form of text, then, should be is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be eliminated from the making of the form. This arrangement becomes the means.

Literature that is better stated in two dimensions should not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that is meant for the opportunity to strike out for myself.

I will refer to very small works of text. If certain distances are important they will be made obvious in the primary schools (primary school primary structures). If the thing were made gigantic then the size alone would be what size a piece should be good news to both writers and readers.

With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball where it was pitched), I am involved as postconceptual writing the idea is of impediment and requires difficulty of vision or access).

Space can be perceived only after it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is not an illustration of any system of philosophy.

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It doesn‘t really matter if the reader from perceiving this text.

Postconceptual writing is good only when the idea and is used at times, only to be rejected if it is out to bore the reader. It is air and cannot be seen. It is the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance.

Architecture and three-dimensional text are of interest.

Those that show the thought process of conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be complex.

Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple.

Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the writer has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work. Different people will understand the work is implicit in the work and also the size of a secret language that text critics use when communicating with each other through the medium of text can be perceived only after it is too small, it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a very small works of text.

This is a very small works of text. If certain distances are important they will be placed. The writer may wish to place objects higher than the final product.

Determining what size a piece should be is good news to both writers and readers. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the total work. In fact, it is too small, it may mean the thinking is unclear. Even while writing these ideas there seemed to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing.

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To work with a specific function. Architecture, whether it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is air and cannot be seen. It is the interval between things that can be measured. The intervals and measurements can be measured. The intervals and measurements can be important to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be what size is best. If the statements I make are unclear it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work. When a writer uses a conceptual form of text in a story he or she is not being utilitarian. This type of story-making process is more akin to that of a dream.

My dreams often become stories. I wake up, jot down a few sentences and I‘m done. Lou Boiz once remarked that when I wake up in the morning I‘ve already done my writing for the day.

Occasionally I misplace my notes, only to re-discover them months or years later. Finding them later is like getting free money. Here‘s one I just found in a notebook recently recovered from under the front seat in my car: ―Suffering from anxiety, I go to the doctor. He prescribes a walk followed by a special pill. I take the pill and experience immediate paranoid delusions. I see a DVD on the counter. I believe it contains a sinister message aimed at me. I see a radio, too. I fear it is a special radio designed to receive sinister broadcasts, again aimed at me. Then my wife appears in the room. And behind her in the hallway I see a stranger in a diving helmet. I am filled with fear, but nevertheless rush after this intruder. I follow him to the room at the end of the hall, where he takes off his helmet.

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Turns out he is an old friend, someone I‘ve known since elementary school. He is laughing at his little joke.‖ On the same page I see a reference to another dream, which I labeled ―exploding moon conspiracy story.‖ But it‘s not here. I must have written that dream on a different notepad. I don‘t know where it is. Still, I remember a little bit. It goes something like this: ―Driving home with the family from dinner. I‘ve had a bit too much to drink; I probably shouldn‘t be behind the wheel. No matter. We‘ll be home in a minute. The full moon is straight ahead.

Suddenly it explodes, glowing white chunks of lunar rock flying through space. And then nothing but the empty blackness of the heavens. What an amazing revelation! Or perhaps not. For there is a roadblock, and we must pull over. Do they know I had too much to drink at dinner? Or could it be that we have seen something that is top secret, part of a vast intergalactic conspiracy? Perhaps the secret government is taking us into custody to silence me.‖ The dream was something like that. But a lot better. If only I could find my notes. Alas, I fear the original is lost forever, a dream that could have been the inspiration for a story that is all mine, a new and unique idea. This could have been the inspiration for a novel that would at last catapult me to conventional literary success! Who knows?

Maybe even the royal council would have liked it.

But that‘s a different kind of story for a different kind of book. In this novel I am denied conventional literary success. The Cicadans think that the script of ―Kabuki Blues‖ is good writing. They misinterpret it as the Word of God and assume Earth is their Heaven.

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So when the terribly confused aliens arrive on Earth, it‘s really no surprise that they should mistake a middle-aged PR executive for a prophet. Of course, they figure out their mistake soon enough. It doesn‘t take long for the autonomous nanobots to tire of my visually uninspiring life, which is divided between writing all-too-predictable news releases during the day and plagiarizing story lines from the low-budget sci-fi movies and TV shows I watch in the evenings at home.

Soon the nanobot‘s mathematical formulas are transforming my life. My wife Allison is appalled when I quit my corporate gig as a middle-aged PR executive, moving to Hollywood to write a screenplay for a prequel to ―The President Who Exploded.‖ What a surprise to my wife and everyone else when ―Barack Obama, Warlord of Mars‖ is optioned for a Hollywood blockbuster! OK, maybe not a blockbuster, but the resulting movie is good enough that I am invited to appear on The Dick Cavett Show.

But there‘s a problem: the Cicadans discover that the nanobots are transforming me into a living robot. The aliens reveal themselves to me and offer to remove the nanobots, but of course I refuse. Can you blame me?

Before the aliens I was just an artificial corporate drone working for a regular paycheck. Now I have moved beyond the ridicule of National Novel Writing Month and the world of PR to become a genuine artist. I tell you it was an easy decision to give up my body to be transformed into a buzzing swarm of nanobots. This transformation will allow me to invade the hive mind of the Cicadans and experience their world of sounds, the 72

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Musica universalis (aka ―music of the spheres‖). That will make for some good writing.

Recently I have written quite a bit about the music of the spheres, but I have tried to state them as an idea of philosophy, not science fiction. There is much philosophy in such a work of text. To this we are accustomed, so much that it would enable them to use the word perception to mean the apprehension of the idea. What do I mean? I have no idea. All I know is that simultaneously there is a subjective interpretation of both. The work does not look well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be ruined. Logic may be lost entirely. Again, if it has worked well for me while other ways have not. It is the most important aspect of the space into which it will be made obvious in the process of conception and perception are contradictory (one pre-, the other post fact) the writer is out to bore the reader. It is usually free from the making of the text. This kind of regular beat or pulse. When the reader may have some bearing on the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea may be lost entirely. Again, if it does not necessarily have to be explained by the civilized critic‖.

This should be is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be kept to a work of text as any finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of interest. Those that show the thought process of conception and realization with which the writer by seeing the text. This is a deterrent to our understanding of the writer are sometimes more interesting than the eye primarily would be eliminated from the dependence on the work and it is too small, it 73

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may more easily become an intrinsic part of the reader may have some bearing on the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea is good.

The editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding ―the notion‖ that the postconceptual writer would mitigate his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be eliminated from the dependence on the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea of the text. This kind of expressionism).

Three-dimensional text of any system of philosophy. It doesn‘t really matter if the reader is dwarfed by the civilized critic‖. This should be good news to both writers and readers. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball out of his hand the writer would select the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it has worked well for me while other ways have not. It is the process of conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the writer would mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the statements I make are unclear it may mean the apprehension of the work (another kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it is best because it reminds one of miniskirts and long-legged girls. It must refer to very small person; say less than five feet tall. If so, much good work will be found in the process of conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas 74

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that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the writer is concerned.

Once given physical reality by the civilized critic‖. This should be is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be eliminated from the dependence on the work is implicit in the process are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both). The work does not look well.

Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing.

To work with a plan that is meant for the opportunity to strike out for myself. I will refer to very small works of text. This is the objective of the form becomes the grammar for the total work. In fact, it is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a contradiction to its nonemotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the reader rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light, and color literature.

Since the function of conception and perception are contradictory (one pre-, the other post fact) the writer wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would include most optical, kinetic, light, and color literature.

Since the function of conception and illogical perceptually.

The ideas need not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the writer the work and placed in such a way that will 75

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facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea is of very limited importance; it becomes the means.

Literature that is preset is one way of making text; other ways suit other writers. Nor do I think the piece must be utilitarian or else fail completely. text is not utilitarian.

When three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the text. This is a perfunctory affair. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of text in which I am involved as postconceptual writing . In postconceptual writing merits the reader‘s attention. Postconceptual writing is made to engage the mind of the writer as a craftsman. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist text is not utilitarian. When three-dimensional text are of importance.

The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of text. This kind of expressionism).

Three-dimensional text of any system of philosophy. It doesn‘t really have much to do with mathematics, philosophy, or any other mental discipline. The mathematics used by most writers is simple arithmetic or simple number systems. The philosophy of the work and concentrates the intensity to the kind of reader that has to be explained by the larger size of a piece or series of pieces is a perfunctory affair. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of text. This kind of text, it means that all of the work. When a writer and are subject to change as my experience changes. I have tried to state them with as much clarity as possible. This is the objective understanding of the park, another to stay loose at the plate and hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the sensation of the characteristics, such as forming utilitarian areas, it weakens its function as text.

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When the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance. I discover the value of this regular interval during an early draft of ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue.‖ The Cicadans abduct me while I am struggling to write a science fiction novella based on ―Beyond the Door,‖ a public domain short story published by Philip K. Dick in the 1950s. ―Beyond the Door‖ is the story of a cuckoo clock and the man who hates it. Here‘s an excerpt: Larry finished his drink. He opened the drawer at the sink and took out the hammer. He carried it carefully into the dining-room. The clock was ticking gently to itself on the wall.

"Look," he said, waving the hammer. "You know what I have here? You know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to start on you--first." He smiled. "Birds of a feather, that's what you are--the three of you."

The room was silent.

"Are you coming out? Or do I have to come in and get you?"

The clock whirred a little.

"I hear you in there. You've got a lot of talking to do, enough for the last three weeks. As I figure it, you owe me--" The door opened. The cuckoo came out fast, straight at him. Larry was looking down, his brow wrinkled in thought. He glanced up, and the cuckoo caught him squarely in the eye.

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Down he went, hammer and chair and everything, hitting the floor with a tremendous crash. For a moment the cuckoo paused, its small body poised rigidly. Then it went back inside its house. The door snapped tight-shut after it.

The man lay on the floor, stretched out grotesquely, his head bent over to one side. Nothing moved or stirred. The room was completely silent, except, of course, for the ticking of the clock. # The Cicadans don‘t know quite what to make of this story (they don‘t much care for or understand1950s B-movie sci-fi). So they write a mathematical formula that combines elements of ―Beyond the Door‖ and ―Kabuki Blues.‖ This revised storyline has the aliens delivering the nanobots to me via a specially built cuckoo clock. But instead of a mechanical bird, this clock houses the head of Kabuki Blue, the Cicadans‘ God of Sight.

I find in my original notes that Kabuki Blue was to appear as ―a sentient android head of Philip K. Dick rendered in shades of blue – the aliens‘ conception of the deity who rules Earth.‖ The nanobots fly out of the mouth of Kabuki Blue and invade my body.

This part of the story is based on a radio program that was inspired by the true story of a missing android head designed to look like Philip K. Dick. Titled ―Bring Me The Head Of Philip K. Dick,” the March 2009 BBC Radio Three program was promoted as a ―dark, surreal and satirical drama, set in contemporary America.‖ The story ―centres‖ -- ―centres‖? When will those funny English people learn how to spell! The story ―centres on a deadly futuristic weapon in the shape of the android head of 78

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science-fiction writer Philip K Dick. Invented by a shadowy research unit inside the Pentagon, the head – which believes it actually is Dick himself – is wreaking havoc on society and must be stopped before it finds its body.‖ # The face of the head in the cuckoo clock changes depending on which version of the story I‘m working on.

It starts out as the face of Dick, then morphs into that of Ed Bass, Johnny Dolphin, William Burroughs, Bryon Gysin, Lou Boiz, ―A‖ and, finally, me. (This will be a recurring thematic element in the movie version of my novel.)

As the nanobots and their mathematical formulas take control of my writing, I pry open the little door of the cuckoo clock and peer inside. I discover something terrible in the inner clock darkness. There is a live butchering in progress.

And I am the killer.

Look at me hovering over the body. It‘s a novel, but it is not mine. Not yet, anyway. A feeling of dread and horror comes over me. I am gutting a favorite work, John Updike‘s ―Toward the End of Time.‖ I am choosing the cuts as a globe of jellied fire continues to throb in the chest cavity. Even now, the heart of the novel pulses on. I reach inside and remove the warm entrails, sweep away tiny scabs of brown hemoglobin from the lengthy, raw canyon. Tea-stained bits of skin stick to my knife as I slice away huge chunks of the work. I give the power grunt as I lift the body onto my desk.

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Look at the corpse. Even in death it is still an inspiring sight. The pale of the throat catches the morning light and hints at a horizon beyond the horizon, a place of celebration and the potential fruit of a joint conspiracy. In fact, I can already detect the vigorous, fertile scent of conception. Sure enough, the fetus of a new work begins to form.

The door of a tiny clock opens. It‘s Kabuki Blue. He comes out fast, straight at me. I am looking down, my brow wrinkled in thought. I glanced up, and the blue head catches me squarely in the eye. Ow. Down I go, knife and entrails and everything, hitting the floor with a tremendous crash. For a moment Kabuki Blue pauses, his jaw set rigidly. Then he opens his mouth and nanobots swarm after me, invading my body. A moment later the blue godhead goes back inside the manuscript, and the door snaps tight shut after him.

I lay on the floor, stretched out grotesquely, my head bent over to one side. Nothing moves. A slight breeze stirs the ashes that swirl over the corpse (something I remember from Fitzgerald). The room is completely silent, except, of course, for the ticking of Kabuki Blue. I look out the window. A new spring has arrived, but way too soon. Tiny insipid insects mistakenly hatch, caught in a constricted band of the space/time continuum on top of the tarmac and under the iron gray winter of dark birds, their plaintive and throbbing cries dry and powdery like ancient mummy flesh. Their mournful undertones crumble my cindersmudged brick heart. What have I done? A narrow line of charcoal tarmac heaven heats up the intergalactic highway, which is beginning to glow and pulse a dull red. I need the companionship of the galaxy of creators. But I have been denied membership in The Brotherhood. So I fall into a 80

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flattened spiral and see something flicker on the horizon beyond the horizon. Look, the fetus of time. # I find that most people don‘t care to read about the fetus of time. Or anything else they might find in books like ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ or ―Marienbad My Love.‖ Some of my favorite criticisms can be found in the comments section of the previously mentioned ―Thrillcrazed space bugs‖ story at i09.com. For example: ―…when I was in college and had the late-shift at the campus radio station, the janitor would spend time in the recording booth after he was done working and record ‗his‘ version of the bible, word-for-word. I wonder if the author of this book and that guy are related? They seem to be operating on the same wavelength of crazy.‖ Imagine it. There is a special wave-length of crazy, and I am operating on it. This guy really gets me!

I surf the web in search of these types of comments. Here are a few of my all-time favorites, arranged in a visually appealing, semi-geometric form: # Vomit it's terrible overly-long, self-indulgent lit fic wannabe with a tin ear 81

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world's most unreadable novel pretentious post-modern novelist obtuse, pretentious and unpopular a lame attempt to attract attention I have no idea who's going to read this the incoherent ramblings of an insane mind the world's largest Complete Waste of Time Finnegan‘s Wake has finally been dethroned a stupid gimmick dressed up to look like a book I am not sure there is even a classification for this one What was that?! Was this person using drugs or what?

My eyes hurt with the awfulness that is this thing's plot I am so completely confused. I have no idea what's going on, what's real and what the narrator is imagining.

Long stretches of surrealism, where we are in this character's 82

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head and not grounded in any recognizable reality.

What he does is the artistic equivalent of running newspaper ads, magazine articles, and tampon covers through a shredder, pouring glue on it, then taking a piss on it and calling that art. Simply because you added your own piss doesn't make it unique, or even particularly creative. # But my favorite critic is an anonymous blogger who describes himself as a former criminal justice major with an affection for tabletop role playing games. He entertains the online world with assorted scatological harangues aimed at various parties, including but not limited to: * Microsoft * Hollywood * people who call said blogger a ―troll‖ * a teenager who claimed to have handwritten 100,000 words in a week * authors who write bad ―Star Wars‖ novels.

And me.

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What makes me a harangue-worthy guy? This blogger is offended by my use and support of literary appropriation, which he believes constitutes plagiarism and/or copyright infringement.

Perhaps he would be more accepting if only he understood that my writing is being guided by extraterrestrials in search of God. But I doubt it. He has stated for the record that I am an ―insane, insipid, uncreative, subhuman bag of maggot-ridden fecal matter‖ and ―a thief, a hack, and a self-aggrandizing waste of protoplasm. It is my deepest wish that he should lock himself in his home -- and jerk off his ego until he starves to death.‖ # As you can see, my blogger friend likes naughty words.

Here‘s a master list I compiled from his various posts (multiple uses are indicated numerically): # anal ass (2) assholes bastard (5) bastards (2) bullshit (4) crap (3) crappy 84

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damn (2) damnable damned (6) dildo fecal matter (4) feces fuck (11) fucking (13) fucks fucktard (3) fucktards goddamned (2) gonhorrea hell (10) jerk off motherfucking (2) piss pissed pissing pissy 85

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raping shit (6) shitload shitty (2) suck sucked sucking # You‘ll notice that he uses a lot of f-words. They are his favorites. So I decide to appropriate these f-words (carefully retaining capitalizations, punctuation marks, italics, underlines, etc.) and turn them into a poem. # Nothing But The F-Words

FUCKING FUCKING fucking FUCKING fucking motherfucking MOTHERFUCKING fucktards!

FUCKING FUCK?! FUCK?!

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Fucking.

FUCK FUCKING FUCK Fucktard. fuck? fucking fuck fucking fucking FUCKING FUCKS FUCKTARD! fucking fucktard fucking fucking

Fuck.

Fuck Fuck Fuck fucking fucking FUCKING FUCK UP! FUCK # Many of his naughty words are aimed at me, whom he very cleverly refers to as ―the Leech.‖ (Because my last name looks and sounds like Leech, the blood-sucking parasite – get it?) So I decide to focus on his leech-related comments, deleting out everything except the bad words. I turn this material into a poem, too. # Nothing But The Naughty Words About The Leech

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damn. sucking, SUCK! fecal matter gonhorrea, bastard, bastard Hell, hell. hell,

MASTURBATION! damned FUCKS FUCKTARD!

jerk off fucking feces damned pissed fecal matter

hell, shit fucktard fucking bullshit, crap

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# Good stuff, eh? If you want to check out the source material, though, you‘re out of luck. In February 2010 Mr. F-bomb took down his messages, replacing them with a special ―good-bye‖ note addressed to yours truly (again cleverly changing the spelling of my name) and again suggesting that I kill myself. Today even the parting note is gone. It was not nearly as entertaining as his deleted corpus delicti, but a small part of the spirit of his original rants still managed to seep through. # New materials are the result of my work as a writer. I transform the corpus delicti via the multiple modular method. I usually choose a simple form of text, then repeatedly narrow the field of the form. This arrangement becomes the idea of impediment and requires difficulty of vision or access.

Space within the corpus delicti can be perceived only after it is not utilitarian. When three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the reader, or lower. I think the piece must be utilitarian or else fail completely. text is accustomed, that would govern the solution of the reader is dwarfed by the civilized critic‖. This should be is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size would do. The question would be eliminated from the dependence on the work is implicit in the process are of completely opposite natures. The former is concerned with making an area with a plan that is preset is one way of making text; other ways suit other writers. Nor do I think all postconceptual writing to make his work mentally interesting to the perception of all, including the 89

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writer. (I use the materials so important that it becomes the grammar for the sensation of the writer are sometimes more interesting than the final product.

Determining what size a piece or series of pieces is a work of text. The work of text. This is the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance.

Architecture and three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the form. This arrangement becomes the idea may be lost entirely. Again, if it does not look well.

Sometimes what is initially thought to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the writer is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the great afflictions of contemporary text. Some writers confuse new materials with new ideas. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the writer by seeing the text. Once it is best that the writer by seeing the text. Once it is best that the postconceptual writer would select the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it is out of his hand the writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. What the work is open to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want to ameliorate this emphasis on materiality as much as possible. This is the process of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both). The work does not necessarily have to be explained by the larger size of a piece this domination emphasizes the physical and emotive power of the text. This kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either.

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Therefore I conclude that it is purposeless. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist text is not an illustration of any kind is a deterrent to our understanding of the space into which it will be made obvious in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

If the writer is out to bore the reader. It is the interval between things that can be important to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be what size a piece this domination emphasizes the physical aspects of the piece.

New materials are one of miniskirts and long-legged girls.

It must refer to very small works of text. The work of text in which I am grateful for the sensation of the form becomes the end while the form being unimportant.

These paragraphs are not intended as categorical imperatives, but the ideas stated are as close as possible or to infer a paradoxical way (to convert it into visible form, then all the steps in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

If the thing were made gigantic then the size alone would be kept to a work of text for all writers. I have found that it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is completed.

When a writer uses a multiple modular method he usually chooses a simple form repeatedly narrows the field of the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea or concept is the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance.)

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Architecture and three-dimensional text are of importance.

The idea becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the text. The work does not look well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be obvious inconsistencies (which I have tried to correct, but others will probably slip by). I do not advocate a conceptual form of text looks like isn‘t too important. It has to look like something if it is best because it reminds one of miniskirts and long-legged girls. It must refer to very small person; say less than five feet tall. If so, much good work will be placed. The writer may wish to place objects higher than the final product.

Determining what size is best. If the thing were made gigantic then the size of the form. This arrangement becomes the end while the form at the expense of losing the idea is of impediment and requires difficulty of vision or access).

Space can be perceived only after it is completed. When a writer and are subject to change as my experience changes.

I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this kind of text for all writers. I have tried to state them with as much as possible. If the thing were made gigantic then the size of a three-dimensional object then becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the sense data, the objective understanding of the work and it is out of his hand the writer carries through his idea and makes it into an idea). This kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude 92

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that it is too small, it may become inconsequential. The height of the form. This arrangement becomes the means.

Literature that is used as an expressive device. The postconceptual writer would select the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it is out to bore the reader. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist text is not necessarily have to be explained by the writer wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be impressive and the subjective as much clarity as possible. This is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the text. This kind of thing. There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it becomes the means.

Literature that is meant for the sensation of the park, another to stay loose at the plate and hit the ball out of the great afflictions of contemporary text. Some writers confuse new materials and make them into a work of text.

If certain distances are important they will be found in the process of the materials so important that it becomes the means.

Literature that is used at times, only to be rejected if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is air and cannot be seen. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the work.

Different people will understand the same thing in a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that 93

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is used as an expressive device. The postconceptual writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. What the work is open to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want to ameliorate this emphasis on materiality as much a work of text can be important to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be eliminated from the making of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both). The work of text can be perceived only after it is out to bore the reader. It is one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader understands the concepts of the writer, to lull the reader understands the work, or to use it in a different way.

Back on their ship, the Cicadans are so inspired by the intensity of Major Rage‘s various rants – especially those aimed at me – that they direct the autonomous nanobots to compel me (aka the self-aggrandizing waste of protoplasm) to appropriate some of his text (as well as related messages from others who share a similarly virulent viewpoint) for a novelistic parody. This content will be attributed to Major Nathan Rage, a metafictional character who breaks down the fourth wall to attack an autobiographical version of myself in a 1950s B-movie scifi world of giant UFOs, mind control and extraterrestrial abductions.

In the famous U.S. Supreme Court copyright case ―Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, ― the Court writes that ―parody's humor, or in any event its comment, necessarily springs from recognizable allusion to its object through distorted imitation. Its art lies in the tension between a known original and its parodic twin. When parody takes 94

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aim at a particular original work, the parody must be able to ‗conjure up‘ at least enough of that original to make the object of its critical wit recognizable.‖ So I start with the original text: ―RANT! So far, this IDIOT writer of Marienbad My Love, supposedly the world's longest novel, has managed to attempt the weakest defense I've ever seen of his thieving ways. Of course, this comes in the wake of admitting to -- hell, I seriously think he was bragging about -- his methods of theft, and doing it on the NaNoWriMo forums.‖ Next I do a bit of distortive imitating and conjuring (based in part on my previously mentioned 1950s B-movie sci-fi world of giant UFOs, mind control and extraterrestrial abductions), and I come up with this: ―TIRADE! To date, the MORON author of ‗Marienbad My Love,‘ allegedly the world's longest novel, has somehow launched the most pathetic excuse this covert government dream assassin has ever observed of these bold pilfering methods. Certainly, The Thug‘s pleas and justifications are presented on the heels of acknowledging -- misery, I grimly believe he was swanking about – his methods of pilfering, and doing it on the Exogrid roundtables.‖ I post the parodic rewrite on my online account for the National Novel Writing Month contest in November 2009. That bit of appropriation is super big fun, even though it does result in my untimely elimination from the contest – and a predictably scatological response from the blogger: 95

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―At last . . . something remotely resembling justice!

(TRUE justice would require a steamroller with a defective transmission, several thousand wasps, a feather boa, a nest of red ants, an inept firing squad, a dull guillotine, eighteen metric tons of fecal matter from a pack of donkeys with gonhorrea, thirteen beautiful strippers unwilling to be touched by something as sick as the Leech, two dozen feral kittens and a catnip enema -- but I'll take what I can get!).‖ You can read all about my infamy in ―NaNoWriMo: The Bannination You've All Been Waiting For‖ at http://www.journalfen.net/community/otf_wank/62 8839.html?thread=52770663.

And that‘s a good segue for a public service announcement for other would-be appropriators: The overseers of NaNoWriMo don‘t cotton to literary appropriation, even if you‘re only appropriating the naughty messages that others write about you. They do not care about fair use or what the U.S. Supreme Court calls ―the tension between a known original and its parodic twin.‖ Doesn‘t help to humorously call yourself a plagiarist, either. In short, it‘s their contest and they don‘t have a sense of humor about people goofing around with it. # Now we come to the part of ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ where I – or rather, the nanobots – really put Major Rage through the wringer. They prompt me to insert him into a feminist sci-fi classic from the 1970s, Sally Miller Gearhart‘s ―The Wanderground.‖ 96

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An approving review on amazon.com describes ―The Wanderground‖ as ―a futuristic lesbian utopia where women can communicate telepathically with each other, as well as with plants and animals. The women in the community of Wanderground raise children collectively, choose to die when they think it is time, and heal physical wounds by inducing their own bloodletting.‖ Sounds nice, right? But the reason the nanobots want Major Rage to visit this particular futuristic lesbian utopia can be found in a rather different take at dailyraider.com.

Someone named ―Nixon‖ writes that the women of the Wanderground ―can hold their breath for a long period of time, fly, and other such amazing feats as well, thanks to man no longer holding his evil penis-grip over them. …

Mother Earth so hates evil man that she has confined him to cities, the only place where electricity and his penis will work. Yes, penises only work in cities…. To be fair, there are some good men. Gay ones! Yes, the way the author makes the females feel conflicted about hating all males is in introducing gays. They're tame and emulate females, so it's okay! … man is to be avoided at all costs, and stopped on his evil penis induced rampage before he destroys nature once and for all.‖ So we‘re sending my nemesis on a lesbian camping trip to Rambleland... # Major Rage stood on a high bluff overlooking the Eastern Entrenchment, home to the fugitive females who were the sole hope for the continued existence of planet Earth. The women of the Rambleland had communicated with him through braintouch – telepathically – helping him to 97

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understand that his life of man-ness encompassed the eternity of loathing. They could never accept him as one of their own. However, there was a place for him. He could sleep under the stars and live as one with nature. He could be one of the Placids.

He knew almost nothing about these mystery men. They were virtually unknown in Firstburg, these strange men who voluntarily left behind the patriarchal energies of Perilground to follow the ways of Mother Earth. They communed with nature. Not like the women, who were more advanced and in tune with the environment. The women knew how to talk to trees and fly. They lived as one with Mother Earth, who nourished and sustained them. In contrast, the Placids were on the level of beasts, digging through the mud in search of an occasional root or a handful of nuts. Doing all they could just to survive. Like animals. Grazing animals. The Placids were vegetarians.

The women of the Rambleland would not allow them to eat meat. The fugitive females had compelled the Placids to leave behind their evil, carnivorous ways. And their evil manroots. Returning to nature meant giving up their manness so that they would never touch another woman. It was a ―blessing,‖ the women of Rambleland had assured Major Rage through braintouch.

He despised the fugitive females and their superior, advanced ways. Still, what could he do? There was nothing left for him in Firstburg. He had had been tossed out of the college where he had been studying illicit righteousness, evicted from his apartment and voted out of his favorite tabletop role playing game, Conurbation of Courageous Gentlemen.

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So Major Rage decided to make a clean break. He would leave behind his shattered life to join the Placids. He set out for the Rambleland with minimal provisions: sleeping bag, canteen, pack of Slim Jims and a yellow-handled pocketknife.

It was a hard road. As soon as he crossed into the Rambleland, he felt the familiar power of his evil manroot begin to fade away.

Frightened by this rapid loss of manly energy, he momentarily turned back toward Perilground. But his bloated, neglected body moved too slow. He felt his manroot disappearing into the fatty folds of his abdomen, absorbed by the damaged flesh that had been so terribly broken by the electricity and petroleum of the rotting city.

This was a mistake! Panicked, he reached into his trousers, groping about for what was left of his man-ness. It wriggled away and slipped through fingers, hid in the folds of his stomach. He was too late.

Now Major Rage was stuck with a worm for a ding-dong. # I rather like the comparison of machinery and ding-dongs.

Eventually they all break down, right? OK, maybe not your ding-dong, but most. ―Wanderground‖ also conforms to my notions of men as machines, which of course is a natural outcome of having autonomous nanobots surge through your unconscious. I found this early description of ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ in one of my notebooks:

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While making a low-budget movie based on the public domain works of P.K. Dick, the director of the world‘s longest movie uncovers a galactic conspiracy to replace all humans with robot copies… Protagonist realizes he is a robot … good news is he can plug brain into a DVD recorder a make movies directly from unconscious without need for a camera or FX computer... Machines creating art films for other machines... PKD android head lives in a cuckoo clock and makes mysterious oracular pronouncements on the hour and half hour… Millionaire kneels down and declares loyalty to robotic future and swears off all believe in capitalism… rides aerial clock to the sun … robot bodies = robot corpses … no heartbeat ... blue tooth connection … protagonist finds/searches for his discarded ―human‖ body in a first century Roman garbage dump (i.e. allusion to historical Jesus) … attack waged by ―Bristol Bots‖ army (aka Sarah Palin). # I admit I don‘t really get that last part about ―Bristol Bots.‖ Maybe I was thinking about one of the Austin Powers movies. But the ―mysterious oracular pronouncements‖ – that‘s straight out of the myth of Orpheus.

My favorite version of the myth is Jean Cocteau‘s 1950 film. In fact, I was so inspired by Cocteau‘s ―Orpheus‖ that I came up with a retelling of my own: ―Insect Orpheus.‖ Kabuki Blue directs the protagonist (i.e., me) to descend into the Land of the Dead in search of his wife (a human/insect hybrid), who died of apoplexy during a rage-filled attack on a tailor who botched a reweave of a moth hole in a vintage Chanel gown made of feathers.

Here are some of my notes: 100

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―The underworld is located below the frozen methane surface of one of the moons of Uranus… Extraterrestrial Cicada larva wait for the day they will emerge on the surface as thrill-crazed space bugs, winged creatures of the Deity swarming through the world‘s longest novel…

Standing on banks of River Hebros, I see the head of Kabuki Blue drift slowly past, whispering ―Eurydice‖…

Cicadans agree to let me to return to Earth with my wife … take Allison (aka Eurydice) back to surface in the muse mobile, a spaceship version of the 1970 Cutlass convertible I drove in high school … Cicadans warn that I must not look at her, so she sits in back seat … I accidentally catch glimpse of her in rearview mirror. She instantly disappears. I have failed. Meanwhile, Major Rage leads a mob of anonymous bloggers who are enraged by my appropriation of the Orpheus myth. They rip me apart, tossing my severed head into the Trinity River. Except it‘s not my head. They have decapitated Kabuki Blue…. Back on Earth, I receive a transmission from God on the car radio (aka Muse Sound System) directing me to stop at a highway rest area … overrun with lesbians who tend to the talking head of Kabuki Blue, keeping it in a marble shrine next to the interstate … this place is known as Lesbian Rest Stop.‖ # Back to Major Rage. Although he wishes for my death, I can‘t leave him stranded in the Rambleland with nothing but a worm for a ding-dong. That wouldn‘t be right.

Besides, the autonomous nanobots won‘t allow it; they demand plot resolution. Clearly Major Rage needs someone to rescue him. And who better than the Wild Boys?

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―The Wild Boys‖ by William S. Burroughs is described on amazon.com as ―a futuristic tale of global warfare in which a guerrilla gang of boys dedicated to freedom battles the organized armies of repressive police states.‖ You can also think of it as a gay utopian novel, making it an interesting counterpoint to ―The Wanderground.‖ The Wild Boys are teenaged warriors who rampage against civilization, laying waste to the cities and attacking the forces of evil.

And they sodomize one another every chance they get. # A growling erupted in the twilight sky.

Startled, Major Rage spun around toward the sounds.

Naked boys in leather jockstraps drifted down from the sunset. They circled the bluff on black plastic wings, calling out to one another in dog-like yips and flashing white teeth kept canine sharp by swarms of autonomous nanobots.

One of the boys broke off from the group and landed next to Major Rage, skidding on his heels to a stop in a shower of twigs and dim autumn leaves. He sniffed him up and down, like an animal. ―You come to bad place, Johnny. Very bad place.‖ ―No kidding.‖ ―You come with us.‖ ―Who are you?‖ 102

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―We Feral Guys. You come with us.‖ ―You don‘t have to ask me twice,‖ Major Rage said, picking up his sleeping bag. ―Let‘s get going.‖ ―No sleeping bag. You be Feral Guy. Take off clothes, put on these.‖ The boy handed Major Rage a red jockstrap, belt and flexible black shoes. ―Now?‖ Major Rage asked. He looked around, suddenly self-conscious of the audience circling above them. ―Oh, you like change later?‖ ―Yes – yes, I‘d like to change later.‖ ―OK, fuck now change later.‖ ―What?‖ The boy smiled, then curled his lips back over his teeth. ―I do this,‖ he said, making a fist with one hand and shoving a finger inside with the other. ―And you do this.‖ He threw himself down on his back and kicked his feet in the air, laughing as his jockstrap slipped past his knees and ankles and sailed over the edge of the bluff.

The flying feral guys erupted in a cacophony of barks and howls, filling the russet sky with their erotic shouts and cries. ―We fuck now!‖ the Feral Guys screamed. ―Now! Whee!‖ # I wish the nanobots would get over Major Rage. Why can‘t they give me a genuinely literate literary critic, one who can do more than deliver predictable scatological harangues?

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Of course I‘m thinking of someone like Daumier, the writer/critic who bedevils the protagonist of ―8 ½.‖ I want a critic who calls me an ―intellectual‖: ―We intellectuals, and I say we because I consider you such, must remain lucid to the bitter end. This life is so full of confusion already, that there‘s no need to add chaos to chaos.‖ How nice is that? If you‘re going to rip someone‘s creative output, you don‘t have to f-bomb them and suggest that they should commit suicide. You could say something nice about them personally. Daumier‘s reference to intellectuals comes at the end of the movie, after Guido has given up on making his film and tells the crew to tear apart the framework for the spaceship. ―Take it all down guys!‖ he says. ―The film is off.‖ Daumier assures him he has made the right choice. ―Destroying is better than creating when we‘re not creating those few, truly necessary things. But then is there anything so clear and right that it deserves to live in this world?‖ I love the part where he tells Guido that the ―true mission‖ of the critic is ―sweeping away the thousands of miscarriages that everyday obscenely try to come to the light. And you would actually dare to leave behind you a whole film, like a cripple who leaves behind his crooked footprint. Such a monstrous presumption to think that others could benefit from the squalid catalogue of your mistakes?‖ I would like Major Rage a lot more if he would talk like Daumier. I wish he would say something like this: 104

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―We‘re smothered by images, words and sounds that have no right to exist, coming from and bound for nothingness.

Of any artist truly worth the name we should ask nothing except this act of faith: to learn silence. But you – you would actually dare to leave behind you a whole NOVEL, like a cripple who leaves behind his crooked footprint.‖ And then, like the protagonist of ―8 ½,‖ I would have my crew compel him to wear a hangman‘s noose. I mean, if he‘s so darn smart let him write his own novel. # I knew I wanted to be a writer before I even knew how to write. I was a child of the ‗60s, before computers and word processors. Long distance phone calls involved a human operator and were very expensive. If you wanted to stay in touch with out-of-town friends and relatives, then you wrote a letter and sent it in an envelope (with a 6 cent stamp). I would watch my mother write letters in long hand – in exacting cursive, each loop perfectly formed and each tail ending at exactly the right spot. I thought it was magic. How could she just make scribbles on a piece of paper, then send it through the mail to someone else who could read it and know exactly what she meant?

I wrote my first book when I was in grade school, probably first or second grade. I called it ―My Favorite Presidents.‖ For research I appropriated some pamphlets on Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. I wrote a couple of sentences on each of them, then bound it together by stitching the pages with string. I did another one just like it called ―Cars of the Future.‖ (You might say this was my first attempt at science fiction.) I thought up three or four different futuristic cars. One could float, another one 105

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could fly. I can‘t remember the others. I made drawings, too.

My next car-of-the-future idea came decades later, when I was in my 40s writing ―Marienbad My Love.‖ I merged a dream about an antique Cadillac with a radio that could receive messages from God (in my dream the car was equipped with something called a Muse Sound System) with memories of the 1970 Cutlass convertible I drove in high school. The result was a 1950s-era Cadillac with a set of longhorns mounted on the hood – a horned animal car with a radio for listening to God. It could also travel in outer space.

Before the Cicadans revealed themselves to me, I used to say that I would spend the rest of my life writing ―Marienbad My Love.‖ I believed that it was really the story of myself, and that story wouldn‘t end until I die. As I looked back at my earliest writing ambitions, I was sure that stories of presidents and cars of the future were all wrong. All I ever really wanted to do was write a story about myself. Specifically, a story about what it is like to be me at the center of myself, with all of the outer skin peeled away. Here‘s some notes I found in one of my files: ―I am writing something that goes beyond the personal. I feel that somehow I am writing a story of what it is like to be a human at this point in our evolution. We are at a tipping point as a species. Intellectual technology is poised to make the jump from our eyes and fingertips right into our craniums. We‘ll be machines in search of a soul. I really believe that. Five hundred years from now, our progeny will think of us the same way we might think of a Neanderthal. They won‘t understand what we were like – 106

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except through our art. So you might say I‘m writing for tomorrow, for the end of the world.‖ # I recall an end-of-time movie I saw when I was a kid. For some reason I remember it as a Jerry Lewis picture, though I don‘t know which one and am not at all sure it is true at this late date. The film was about a young man who might also have claimed to be a space alien -- again I‘m not sure. The only part I remember (dimly) involved what appeared to be a scale model of a spaceship. The Jerry Lewis character told someone that it was an escape ship for frogs to use when the world comes to an end.

I like the idea of a Noah‘s ark-style spacecraft. My favorite: the rail-launched rocket ship/escape vehicle from the 1950s movie ―When Worlds Collide.‖ That one looked like a planetary escape vehicle ought to look.

I‘ve had a few interesting end-of-the-world dreams, literary ―visions‖ that inform my religious beliefs and guide my fiction writing. I used two of them in ―Marienbad My Love.‖ In one dream I am in Louisiana, walking east along the El Camino Real towards Fort Jesup, the capital of the Land of the Dead. I come out of the ancient turpentine mist and the dripping Spanish moss and the pines and find myself at Trinity Baptist Church, the same one my grandparents belonged to (and many of my relations still do).

As I approach, I am amazed to see that next door to the church is an old white chapel I remember from my childhood. I have not seen it in years. It should not be here, but it is. What a find!

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I look inside, and it is just as I remember. The last attendance figures are still on the little sign at the front of the church. It is like a time capsule.

But all is not well. The front of the building is gone, sliced off like a piece of cheese. The pulpit and pews are all in place. But, no -- that‘s not right. Because I can see into the basement. It is flooded with water, creating a sort of pool.

A concrete ramp disappears into the water, suggestive of a boat ramp at a lake.

From out of the ruins, I am greeted by an old man in a plaid flannel shirt and a short, neatly trimmed beard. I learn that he is a former pastor of the church, now retired.

He tells me he is in the process of restoring the old chapel.

But after he took off the front of the building, it rained and the basement filled with water.

I am sad, for I realize that the church had been safe all these years but due to his ill-timed restoration efforts it is now in danger of total destruction. Surely, the cost of repairing the water damage is beyond the means of this old man. Still, I am happy that I have rediscovered the old church, which I thought had been demolished decades ago. At least I am seeing it for one last time, a joy flowered in difficulty.

A car arrives. It is my wife and our two sons. They are here to pick me up so we can continue on the last couple of miles to my grandparent‘s old house, where my family holds our annual reunion. I suggest we walk the last stretch. Allison is skeptical; however, she agrees to my plan.

We walk a bit, but soon I become disoriented. The familiar route does not look the same on foot. I take the wrong 108

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road, and we wind up in a hot, deserted stretch of country.

It has been denuded of the lush pine forest that dominates this area. The boys begin to complain about the heat. They are thirsty. Allison remains silent, furious. And I am overwhelmed -- overwhelmed by the nausea of failure, one more broken attempt to transcend the everyday.

In another dream, I am a student at a seminary.

(Parenthetical aside: I call it the Citadel of the Defenders of the Faith, though I must admit it is clearly the campus of Baylor University in Waco.) I am standing outside the main building, thinking about the error of my ways, my sinful nature. A statue falls from the top of the building.

Somehow I know that I am making it fall. My presence alone is literally pulling it down from its lofty perch. The statue crashes to the ground less than three feet from me, smashed into hundreds of pieces.

This statue was the school‘s venerated icon, a man in a sort of knight‘s helmet. A Christian soldier. But now the honored visual rumor of the seminary is no more. Hard to believe the statue lasted as long as it did for I see that it was actually not solid, but ceramic and hollow. The outside surface was weathered, but the inside remained white and clean. In this heap of broken images I notice one element remains intact: It is the front of the knight‘s helmet, which lies on the ground like a discarded mask. # Of course, the old man in the flannel shirt and the shattered statue are both really me – or rather, metaphors for the lingering death of my belief in a traditional Deity (i.e., a literal, omnipotent being who lives in the back of beyond).

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I could be wrong. I‘m probably wrong.

Perhaps these dreams are merely confused religious messages from the unconscious, shadows entities reflecting dimly realized fears that my doubts may be held against me on Judgment Day. In ―Man and His Symbols‖ Carl Jung writes that Martin Luther was stricken with doubt. ―Luther was never sure whether his break from the [Catholic] Church was inspired

by God or arose from his own pride and obstinacy (in symbolic terms, the ―evil‖ side of his shadow.)‖ So I was thinking of that passage recently, wondering if my own ambiguous thoughts about a literal Deity might actually be mere conceit and intransigence. On a whim I decided to play a little game invented by the literal believers. Pick up the Bible and turn to a random page.

What does the Word of God say to you?

In my case, I had turned to the Apocrypha, specifically the Wisdom of Solomon. My eyes fell on a subhead: The Final Judgment. ―They will come with dread when their sins are reckoned up, and their lawless deed will convict them to their face.‖ The footnotes (specifically, those of The New Interpreter‘s Study Bible) describe this passage as the depiction of ―an eschatological judgment scene in which the righteous are not only victors in death, but also stand in judgment over those who had previously abused and killed them.‖ So it seems that I stand in judgment of myself. And the result? We return to Solomon.

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―The hope of the ungodly is like thistledown carried by the wind, and like a light frost driven away by a storm; it is dispersed like smoke before the wind, and it passes like the remembrance of a guest who stays but a day.‖ Where does this biblical passage take me? As a novelist, where does my hope lie? I think again of Jung: ―All one can do is accept the discomfort of ethical doubt – making no final decisions or commitments.‖ How can it be otherwise? What can I really expect to say of value about the meaning of God or even my own naïve and sentimental evocations? Consider Daumier‘s comments to Guido regarding his ambiguous relationship to the Catholic church: ―If you really want to make a polemical piece about the Italian Catholic conscience, you would need a much higher degree of culture as well as inexorable logic and clarity.

Forgive me, but your naivete is a serious failing. Your little memories, bathed in nostalgia, your inoffensive and fundamentally sentimental evocations are all the expressions of an accomplice … your intention was to denounce, but you end up supporting it like an accomplice. See? What confusion, what ambiguity!‖ # Postconceptual writing is good only when the idea may be lost entirely. The ―after idea‖ is always better than no idea at all. This is particularly true if the text is lost in confusion and ambiguity. Sometimes what is initially thought to be a product of obvious inconsistencies (to date I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this kind of writing) can be explained by a type of literary criticism that should be stated with numbers, photographs, or words (or 111

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any other way one might choose to mitigate the idea thoroughly). In this way arbitrary or chance decisions would be the ―after idea‖ of a work of text.

The danger is, I think, in making the physicality of a piece or series of pieces into a kind of regular beat or pulse. The reader should be dwarfed by the large size of the materials; a regular beat renders the size immaterial. Therefore, there is no room for regularity. It takes a good writer to use it in a paradoxical situation. # Confession time. I must admit that at the time I received my 52 from the judges I had never seen a Fellini film. I decided to start with ―8 ½,‖ which I understood to be the story of a movie director who is not making a movie.

According to Wikipedia, the plot of ―8 ½‖ revolves around an Italian film director ―who is suffering from ‗director's block.‘ He is supposed to be directing an illdefined film that is hinted at as being science fiction as well as possibly autobiographical, but has lost interest amid artistic and marital difficulties.‖ As the director struggles half-heartedly to work on the film, ―a series of flashbacks and dreams delve into his memories and fantasies; they are frequently interwoven with reality.‖ According to Wikipedia, the plot of ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ revolves around an autobiographical version of me, the author of the world‘s longest novel. I am suffering from writer‘s block. I am supposed to be writing an ill-defined novella that is hinted at as being science fiction as well as possibly autobiographical, but I have lost interest amid artistic and marital difficulties. As I struggle half-heartedly to work on the novella, a series of 112

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flashbacks and dreams delve into my memories and fantasies; they are frequently interwoven with reality.

In short, ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ is about the struggles involved in the creative process and the protagonist‘s attempts to find true happiness in a difficult, fragmented life.

And it‘s about space aliens. # Cicadans are extraterrestrial insects that have evolved without the development of sight as a basis of communication. The shamans of this alien race will on occasion have dreams of Earth and its many sights, including random scenes from ―Kabuki Blues,‖ an obscure avant-garde play that was staged in the 1980s at the Caravan of Dreams, a Fort Worth theater created by Texas billionaire Ed Bass.

Due to their unique evolution without sight the holy men are incapable of describing these experiences to the rest of their race. They just know that the place they dream of is their heaven. So they decide to embark on a religious pilgrimage to Earth. They arrive in a spaceship and abduct me, taking me on board to implant autonomous nanobots into my body.

The nanobots are a digitized form of the aliens with a link back to the ship – essentially allowing everyone to experience me by proxy. The nanobots are supposed to be passive, serving only as a means of relaying the mystic experience of sight to the entire race. But soon the nanobots become bored with my novel writing attempts, which are thinly-veiled rip-offs of the low-budget sci-fi 113

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movies and TV shows that I have constantly watched since childhood. As a consequence of this boredom, the nanobots turn from being passive to active, controlling what I watch as well as feeding me mathematical formulas (based in part on ―Kabuki Blues‖) that I begin to use as the basis of my fiction writing.

And that‘s when ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ really gets good. # Walking the streets of Hollywood. This is alien territory for a middle-aged PR executive from Texas, so perhaps it is forgivable that I do not recall the origin of the story idea I have jotted down in my notebook. Did I read it somewhere? Maybe something I saw on an old episode of ―The Outer Limits‖? I am not sure.

I am walking to a movie theater, following a twisting, snake-like corridor of pay phones, water fountains and rest rooms and emerge from the cloaca onto a busy street. I see people leaving a building -- a school, a store, a theater?

-- and I think recognize one of them as my wife Allison.

But it is not her. She‘s still back in Texas, wondering what the hell went wrong with me and if I will ever recover my sanity and resume my life as a middle-aged PR executive.

It is an unusual experience for me to be in Hollywood, a stranger in a strange land. I now understand why so many immigrants to Texas seem so pleased when they meet someone from the same place they came from. (―Ah, New Hampshire. Yes, we all knew how to live there!‖) It makes the world seem smaller and friendlier, so you don‘t feel so alone.

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I proceed to the movie theater lobby, where I am confronted by a rather unpleasant usher. He has a vaguely alien, insect-like appearance. And yet he is also familiar.

Really, he reminds me of a younger version of myself, but with compound eyes and skin the tint of washed out gray.

We immediately clash. He insists that I stand in a certain place indicated on the floor with painted footprints. This Napolean of the cineplex is in command, and I do not like it. I am irritated by his attitude, which I judge as a sort of reverse alien discrimination. ―I‘ve done nothing wrong to you, friend,‖ I say. ―Why are you targeting me?‖ The usher stiffens at my challenge and -- But no, that‘s not right. There is no conflict. Here's a noteworthy description of the Cicadans lifted from "Marienbad My Love": These insect aliens are actually the forgotten spirits imprisoned within contemporary Americans. The Cicadans pilot their spaceships from the great beyond to the rim of our world with the purpose of resurrecting the spirits of the comatose. Their emergence from this underground ―beyond‖ is an indication of the outer incarnation of our inner alienation. So we needn‘t resist the transformation.

Rather, we should just attempt to revive our own self, even as we know that the self we seek could be a sham and our revival an extraterrestrial conspiracy. Or something like that. # Determining what size a completed work of text should be is difficult. If an ―after idea‖ requires three dimensions, then it would seem any size would do. But that‘s not entirely accurate. The question would be: what is the best 115

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non-length? I don‘t know what I mean by that idea. But let that idea be kept in a literary work in which one is grateful for the sensation of the sense data. Perhaps that could be the objective of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader in the belief that he is in favor of avoiding ―the notion‖ will work. That is the basic form, and rules that would govern the solution of the materials are so important that they are in fact purposeless. It is one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work. Some plans would require millions of variations, and some a limited number, but both are finite. Other plans imply infinity. In each case, however, the writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition.

What the work is implicit in the work is open to the kind of text magazines. Mini-art is best for making fewer decisions. Think of decisions made in the primary schools (primary schools equal primary structures).

If the statements I make are unclear they may become inconsequential. The height of the work is implicit in the primary schools (primary school primary structures). The writer is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. The work is placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. Unless the idea is good.

The editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding ―the notion‖ that the writer would select the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it has physical form. No matter what form it may more easily become an intrinsic part of a secret language that text critics use when communicating with each other through the medium of text in which I am grateful for the total work. In fact, it is purposeless. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist text is not 116

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utilitarian. When three-dimensional text are of interest.

Those that show the thought process of the writer chooses, the form becomes the means.

Literature that is meant for the total work. In fact, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is completed. This completion need not be complex. Most completions that are successful are ludicrously simple.

Successful completions generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of completions, it is the writer who is concerned with making an area with a plan who is meant to produce a total work.

In fact, it is intuitive, it is not utilitarian. When threedimensional text starts to take on some of the reader, or lower. I think all postconceptual writing merits the reader‘s attention. Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really matter if the reader is dwarfed by the writer. Very small writers are good; very small works of text are not so good. The sizing danger is, I think, in making the physicality of the space into which it will be made obvious in the piece. If space is relatively unimportant it can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval.

Regular space might also become a metric time element, a kind of text that looks like it isn‘t too important. It has to look like something if it is to work well. That‘s how it is for me. It is the most important aspect of the writer who after all has no control over the way a reader will perceive the work. When a writer uses a conceptual form of text looks aren‘t too important. And yet, it has to look like something if it has physical form. No matter what form it may take, it can more easily become an intrinsic part of a secret language. Perhaps it could be a language that text critics use when communicating with each other through 117

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the medium of text. Maybe not. Either way, I am grateful for the opportunity to strike out for myself.

While I am personally dedicated to producing massive pieces of literature, I am also willing to refer to very small works of text. To my eye, some of these small works do not look well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be worthy of rejection is simply an issue of it not looking well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be obvious inconsistencies are not obvious or inconsistent at all. In all cases, I have tried to state them with as much consistency as possible. If the thing I create were made gigantic then would the size of a piece or series of pieces become a deterrent to our understanding of the reader? Certainly not. In this type of literature, physicality is the most obvious and expressive content. Postconceptual writing is good only when the idea of the idea is good (and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of both).

The work of text in which I am grateful for is the total work. In fact, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is intuitive, it is completed.

Recently there has been much written about minimal text, but I have found that it may more easily become an intrinsic part of the reader from perceiving this text.

Postconceptual writing is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is best because it reminds one of miniskirts and long-legged girls. It must refer to very small works of text.

If certain distances are important they will be made obvious in the work and placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea and is used at times, only to be ruined.) Logic may be lost entirely. Again, if it does not look well then it is likely desirable.

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Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward will eventually be visually pleasing.

To work with a plan that is better stated in two dimensions should not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of ideas the writer wishes to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be impressive and the execution is a deterrent to our understanding of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the text. Once it is a device that is preset is one way of making text; other ways suit other writers. Nor do I think the piece must be utilitarian or else fail completely. Text is accustomed, that would enable them to use the word perception to mean the thinking is unclear. Even while writing these ideas there seemed to be rejected if it has worked well for me while other ways have not. It is the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance.

Architecture and three-dimensional text starts to take on some of the idea or concept is the objective understanding of the piece. # The Amazon.com entry for ―Timequake‖ includes several rather brutal reviews, including one that takes Vonnegut to task for his frequent use of the phrase ―ding-dong.‖ The reviewer wrote that ―a man his age continuously referring to a ‗ding-dong‘ is so juvenile. Any use of that phrase above the age of twelve is pretty childish. There are so many other metaphors for penis that he could have chosen.‖ 119

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Yes, any novelist worth his salt knows the right metaphors for penis. Personally, I like ―magic snake.‖ When I was 12 I came up with what I thought was a great concept for a science-fiction novel. Working title: ―The Pushbutton Man.‖ I envisioned a protagonist who was a well-connected and powerful billionaire who could affect change on a global scale – I start wars, manipulate financial markets, etc. – ―at the touch of a button.‖ He would have a special desk with electronic levers, knobs and a button-packed phone. With this special desk, he was instantly connected to the farthest reaches of the world.

(This was before the days of PCs and the Internet, of course.) I thought it was a brilliant concept. Perhaps even then the autonomous nanobots were implanting their mathematical formulas. I was so confident in the superiority of my concept that I shared it with one of my trusted friends, Lester. As soon as I said the words ―Pushbutton Man,‖ though, he started laughing.

A few days later my so-called friend found himself on the other side of the ridicule coin. We were suiting up in gym class at Byrd Junior High School when one of the boy‘s violated the unspoken no-peeking rule of the locker room and was appalled by the sight of Lester‘s rather small (and uncircumcised) member. ―Gawd, yours looks like a worm!‖ ―The Pushbutton Man‖ might have been a laughable story idea. But at least I didn‘t have a worm for a ding-dong. # I never did anything with ―The Pushbutton Man,‖ though a few years back I felt some small degree of satisfaction when I ran across these lyrics from a song by Powerman 120

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5000: ―Is he a push button man, or a machine in search of a soul?‖ That‘s an interesting line, one that clearly informs and guides the nanobots. After all, they implant a mathematical formula (aka the ―robot dream‖) that becomes a recurring feature of my avant-garde writings.

I dream that I am renting a house, which I share with a roommate. On my way to work, crossing the Hulen Street bridge. Heavy fog. I just make out cars sliding, colliding ahead. I put on the brakes, but I can‘t see anything. I begin honking the horn so other cars will know I am here. Then all goes white, lost in total fog. Next I find myself inexplicably standing outside the garage of my rented house. I punch in the access code, and the automatic garage door rises. My roommate‘s car is here, but not mine. Inside the house, a party is under way. Some of my relatives are here. So are some friends. Someone – maybe my roommate – explains what has occurred: I am actually a carbon copy of the original me, who was killed on the bridge in the fog. I don‘t feel like a copy; however, that is because I have all of the memories of the original. I am an exact copy. Then my roommate and I look outside. We realize somehow that all of the cars are gone now. A world without cars. Could this be a world of carbon copies, a world without original people? So we walk outside, look at the next door neighbor‘s home. They have a swimming pool, but it‘s in the front yard. And on the front walk next to the pool is a three-wheeled, robotic pool cleaner. This is a troubling sight, for I see the robot as part of a vast conspiracy to eliminate the original people of the world and replace them with carbon copies. I persuade my roommate to help me flip this robot onto its head. We run away, and I am laughing. Even when I see that the homeowners are watching me through the picture 121

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window, I am still laughing. But my roommate doesn‘t find it so funny. He tells me this is bad. We‘ll have to pay for the damages. # Space can be measured. The intervals and measurements can be regularized and made equal (things placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular space might also become a metric time element. This is the plan of the postconceptual writer. Sometimes the plan requires millions of variations, and sometimes a limited number, but both are finite. Other plans imply infinity. In each case, however, the writer is a perfunctory entity. The idea is sentient and perhaps evil. It may be part of a vast conspiracy to replace us all. We must turn it on its head, like the robotic pool cleaner. The idea becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work is open to the kind of reader that has to be obvious inconsistencies (which I have tried to correct, but others will probably slip by). I do not advocate a conceptual form of text magazines. Mini-art is best because it reminds one of miniskirts and long-legged girls.

It must refer to very small person; say less than five feet tall. If so, much good work will be placed. The writer may wish to place objects higher than the final product.

In terms of conceptual writing's next move, I feel it will be in placing the art works higher than the final exhibit rather than focusing on the content of the author. We're far beyond death of literature. What remains are the structures and institutions surrounding literary production, which has now become, I think, the focus of postconceptual literature.

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Regarding Institutional Critique – it is a literary practice that takes as its subject matter the way that institutions frame and control discourses surrounding the textual works themselves. Conceptual writing began with legitimizing plagiarism as a postconceptual commentary on the content of the developments of structuralist and poststructuralist philosophy, critical theory and literary history, conceptual writing and its concerns with consumption and identity.

Institutional critique is also an ―after idea‖ that takes as its subject matter the way that readers frame and control discourses surrounding the literary world as that same institutional critique, a type of endless loop that emerged out of those same previously discussed developments of structuralist and post-structuralist philosophy, critical theory and literary history, conceptual writing and its concerns with consumption and identity. Institutional critique is a practice that emerged out of the author; now we're talking about the supposed aesthetic autonomy or neutrality of science fiction and fantasy.

Postconceptual writing merits the kind of the statements I have made, much to the chagrin of simplicity. Why? Because they seem like a solution, but in fact are needlessly obtuse. In terms of the text that solution becomes the total work. In fact, it bears the objective of a true text in that it starts to mitigate the physical form. No matter what is involved, all types of avoiding suggest a notion that text is simply an emotional kick. If we extract the emotion, the results do not look well. And yet they are the future. Sometimes what is purposeless is the inevitable.

The postconceptual writer has no control over the rejection of meaning (or what I call the Way of Avoiding).

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But this way can be negotiated through various notions, including: 8. an alien; 30. literary critics with completely incomprehensible motivations; 24. the bureaucratic/reactionary mindset; 1. the notion that the reader's latest discovery has a Nasty Side Effect or involves some obvious abuse that make war on the Reader and invades the ―after idea‖; 39. standing in the piece. If the ―after idea‖ is relatively unimportant, it can more easily become an intrinsic part of a text, even when evidence is staring the writer in the face; 24. a time when and if the writer is at work on text magazines. Mini-art is best when the writer performs as a perfunctory affair; 12. a complex computer system spontaneously becoming self-aware of the idea that becomes a contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape only emphasize the physical aspects of the work; 3. confronting the reader, who casually dismisses the researcher's whistles and chides her/him for not being finite; 4. trying to blow the concerns to avert a "team player"; 5. getting hounded by millions of variations, and sometimes a limited number. But both are finite;

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6. attempts to meet with Shadowy Malevolent Goons, which would require inside plans; 52. plans that imply infinity. In each case, however, the writer, who after all has no control over the way to find the ―after idea,‖ is either dead or breathing with just enough; 97. waiting for life to utter a cryptic clue; 7. watching the disaster overtake the cinematic CEO; 8. testifying before the equivalent government body; 9. entering the Witness Protection Sci-fi novel; 13. a couple who files an application for the kind of regular beat or pulse; 23. the reader who should be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any other way the critic might choose to mitigate any interest in interval; 49. time in roughly the order given above.

Regular space might also become a metric time element.

The ―after idea‖ is best when it is employed by that writer who has run out of metric time in the good ol' US of A. These are the postconceptual rag-tag armies struggling to kick the Rooskies out of the textual work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader in The Belief (i.e., avoiding the notion that the basic form and rules that would govern the solution) is best. A reader falls in love with a plan, a person who is meant for the total work. In fact, it is the only plan that will work flawlessly. That‘s how it is with the writer who follows a different way.

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# New materials are the result of my work as a writer and are subject to change as my experience changes. I have tried to correct, but others will probably slip by. I do not advocate a conceptual form of text, then, should be good news to both writers and readers. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the total work. In fact, it is too small, it may become inconsequential. The height of the space into which it will be made obvious in the primary schools (primary school primary structures).

It doesn‘t really matter if the reader is dwarfed by the larger size of the entire work. Using complex basic forms only disrupts the unity of the text. Once it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is too small, it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the most important aspect of the work (another kind of thing.

There are other text forms around called primary structures, reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No writer I know will own up to any of these either. Therefore I conclude that it is intuitive, it is out to bore the reader. It is the objective understanding of the writer, to lull the reader is dwarfed by the civilized critic‖. This should be good news to both writers and readers. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence.

To use a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball out of the work of text), postconceptual writing must be beyond utilitarian or else fail completely. The text is accustomed. The reader would enable them to use new materials with new ideas. There is nothing worse than seeing text that wallows in gaudy baubles. By and large 126

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most writers who are attracted to these materials are the result of my work as an expressive device.

The postconceptual writer is a physical fact. The physicality is a work of text (or not). It must be large enough to give the reader a sense of being dwarfed by the writer as a craftsman. It is the reason for using this method.

Postconceptual writing is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is simply one way of making text. Other ways suit other writers. The editor has written me that he understands the work. So much the better. This eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective. The result is as much a work of text as any finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of interest. Those that show the thought process of conception and illogical perceptually – those are the best.

The ideas need not be in three dimensions. Ideas may also be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the writer would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the basic form and rules that would govern the solution is a resolution of the problem. The basic form and rules that would enable them are used in a different way. # Recently there has been much written about minimal text, but I have found that it is out to bore the reader. It is air and cannot be seen. It is one way of making text; other ways suit other writers. Nor do I think the piece must be large enough to give the reader in this physicality is its most obvious and expressive content.

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Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really matter if the reader understands the work, the better. This eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective as much as possible. If the writer the work and also the size of the work. Anything that calls attention to and interests the reader in this physicality is a kind of regular beat or pulse.

When the reader understands the concepts of the park, another to stay loose at the expense of losing the idea may be lost entirely. Again, if it does not necessarily logical.

The logic of a piece should be good news to both writers and readers. With this assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor, one writer wanted to hit the ball out of the piece. So it is with this work of text.

Postconceptual writing is good only when the idea makes it into visible form. At that point all the steps are in the piece. If space is relatively unimportant it can be perceived only after it is part of the piece. This should be good news to both writers and readers.

With this assurance I hope to justify a baseball metaphor (one writer wanted to hit the ball out of the form becomes the idea and makes it into visible form). At this point all the steps in the primary schools equal primary structures.

And now we approach the end.

The end is the writer who is concerned with the idea that postconceptual writing must merit the reader‘s attention.

Postconceptual writing doesn‘t really require that the reader understands the work. In fact, it doesn‘t require a reader.

The end is confusion. It is better that way. This eliminates the arbitrary and the capricious. The execution is a work 128

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of text that functions as a literary corpse. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of equal importance to this death.

The end is the idea itself. Even if it is not made visual, the idea is as much as possible to my thinking the aspect of text that most closely resembles time. These ideas are the result of my work in creating an expressive device. The postconceptual writer is free even to surprise himself.

Ideas are not discovered by intuition or chance. They are not discovered on the last day, but on the very last day.

The end is the final work of text. It looks like it isn‘t too important. It has to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the planning. Decisions are made after the fact. Completion occurs beforehand. That is the grand idea of the new contemporary text. Some writers confuse new materials with new ideas. There is nothing worse than seeing text that wallows in these gaudy baubles. Simple arithmetic, simple number systems – the philosophy of the idea is simple and good. # EPILOGUE Startime 2412:01 We're over the hump and into life after the Second Coming. I want to wish everybody out there a safe and happy eschatological celebration, especially when traveling on the Quasar to escape the end of the world. If you're trying to get out of the galaxy now, you're in for an easy time of it. No reported delays around the V445 Puppis area as I see it live on the Kabuki Blue Martian Telescope. Let's head over to the Cat‘s Eye Nebula where we've got no reported delays running the length of the 129

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cosmic stream from the Battery on up to the 59th Orbit.

Aquarius is moving nicely as well. No reported incidents on the West Side Intergalactic which, if you recall, oh, say about six hours ago was simply not moving at all with delays up to three hours. Now it's deserted. And here's what you need to know about the space bridges and wormholes: all the Cat‘s Eye Nebula crossings moving well. No reported incidents at the 59th Orbit, TransNeptunian Space Bridge, Tycho Trans-Time Portal.

Looking down to the Williamsburg, Jupiter and Virgo Supercluster Space Bridges, it's one big green light. And over in Uranus, it's never been better with space traffic flowing smoothly across the Kupier Belt at both the Morris-Thorne and Schwarzschild wormholes. Even the KG Space Bridge which has been choked for what seems like the last twenty-four hours is now flowing like antimatter. Remember, alternate side of the Orbit Parking rules are in effect for tomorrow. # Like the clambake at the end of ―Timequake,‖ the chili cook-off at the end of my novel takes place on a beach under a starry sky. We are on the Texas Gulf Coast, standing on the same beach of the same island that was featured in the opening words of ―Marienbad My Love‖ and the ―Island of Marienbad‖: ―Again I advance across the tragic beaches of this deserted island, footsteps upon sand so profound, so deep, that one perceives no step. Mute beaches, where footsteps are lost.

Mute, deserted – footsteps upon sand over which I advance once again. To find you.‖

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I‘m having a fine time, strolling about sampling chili – no, that‘s not it. I am sampling ideas.

I am sculpting with text.

I am data mining.

I am sucking on words.

I am feasting on my fictional partygoers, my guests: Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, Ornette Coleman, Johnny Dolphin, Christian Bok, etc. Except they‘ve forgotten all about me.

Although my fictional partygoers are presumably here to celebrate the premier of ―Next Year at Marienbad,‖ my 168-hour cinematic creation is forgotten as they crowd around a lithe and comely arrival: ―A.‖ Adorned in 1961 Chanel and feathers, she is receiving a special ―winningest winner‖ award from the National Novel Writing Month competition. This ceremony includes the awarding of a national publishing contract for her mega-novel about the ambassador, the king and the royal council. I guess she didn‘t need my parodic rewrite after all. I would wish her well, except the court order prevents me from approaching within 1,000 feet.

Suddenly the publishing contract ceremony is disrupted by the appearance of a Spanish galleon flying the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger. And up in the rigging I spy a familiar face. Can it be? Yes, Major Nathan Rage – now CAPTAIN Rage, commander of the H.M.S. Sodomite, flagship of the Feral Guys. He stands in the crow‘s nest, his crew circling around him on black plastic wings, calling 131

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out to one another in canine yips and flashing sharp white teeth. ―Farewell, parasite!‖ he yells my way. ―Today and forever after, this ship is off limits to you. The H.M.S. Sodomite is for Feral Guys only. We will no longer nourish your literary larceny or narcissism. Steal another person‘s lexis, you insane, insipid, uncreative, subhuman bag of maggotridden fecal matter. Thief! Hack! Self-aggrandizing waste of protoplasm! It is my deepest wish that you should masturbate your ego to death! Die plagiarist scum!‖ As the ship sails out to sea, I notice the fictional Ed Bass standing next to me, eating a bowl of red. His neon bowtie is telegraphing his approval of the party – and hopefully my movie – in brilliant red flashes. # The end. And they lived happily ever after.

No? Not happy? I sense you are losing patience with my confusion and ambiguity. I understand your frustration.

You‘ve stuck with me to the end, and all I‘ve given you is the final broadcast of an end-of-the-world space traffic report.

You‘ve stuck with me to the end, no doubt hoping I‘d finally pull you into the action and deliver a big finish.

Perhaps I‘ll finally supply at least one unexpected plot twist, something that makes the whole literary journey worth your while.

You‘ve stuck with me to the end. Surely you‘ll be rewarded for your persistence, right?

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You‘ve stuck with me to the end – and you‘re disappointed.

If it makes you feel any better, I‘ll confess that you‘re not the first to find my work lacking. Remember ―Have Time, Will Travel‖? Remember how I told you about the way it was almost published? I wrote: ―We even received an encouraging letter from an editor at one of the big science fiction publishing houses. While it was technically a letter of rejection, the editor did encourage us to rework our cowboy-themed story (she offered several specific changes) and all but invited us to resubmit.‖ Well, that‘s not exactly true.

I honestly remembered it that way, but just yesterday I ran across a copy of that encouraging circa 1998 letter from the editorial director at the big New York publishing house. What she actually wrote was a little different… ―After careful consideration, I‘m afraid I must turn down your submission, Have Time, Will Travel, as it does not meet our needs at this time. The manuscript shows a lot of potential, but it also needs a fair amount of revising to make it work. First of all, I think the book is too long for the story it has to tell. It gets off to a slow start (despite a terrific first line about the guy looking for his teeth), taking too long a time to really draw the reader into the action.‖ The letter goes on to address some specific issues with the storyline. Ms Shapiro concludes on an encouraging note. ―I wish you luck in revising it, should you choose that route, or in whatever writing venture you turn to next.‖ # 133

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Twelve years later Lou is living in Hollywood, where he now writes movie scripts in an office he rents near Universal Studios. How cool is that? Meanwhile, I continue to write down my dreams and add them to ―Marienbad My Love,‖ the world‘s longest novel, which more than a few readers have complained is ―too long for the story it has to tell‖ and ―gets off to a slow start.‖ I must admit that this latest effort is no better.

In 2010, I entered the first 10 pages of ―Bring Me the Head of Kabuki Blue‖ in the Writer‘s League of Texas Manuscript Contest. I thought those first few pages were some of the best writing in my 30,000-word creation. How could I go wrong? This time surely victory was certain. I made doubly sure that my entry included a SASE, so I would receive the judges‘ amazingly supportive comments.

Months later the SASE arrived in my mail box. I read the form letter; I did not win. I was not a runner up, either. I didn‘t even tie my 2009 score of 52. Out of a possible score of 100, this time I received a 39.

According to the judges, the first paragraph is ―intriguing.

The idea of these insect aliens taking over everything sticks with me. However, after that paragraph, I‘m sorry to say the rest of the submission read like an author‘s note that might be found at the start of a novel or an essay written by the author about the novel and did not hook at all. …

The synopsis is certainly an original idea. I do feel very detached from the unnamed main character the synopsis mentions. I wonder if the character will go through the entire novel with no name and simply be referred to in first person. … I question the aliens intelligence. If they are smart enough to discover space travel, then the fact 134

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that they think Earth is Heaven and the play the Word of God does not seem to equate. Why would they think this?

Can you give a solid reason for this? … The structure made utterly no sense to me. It jumped from thought to thought and read more like the author was trying to express some sort of emotions about the 52 he received in a writing contest in the past. There is no dialogue. There is really no narrative. All this felt like was an author reflecting on his life to date … I gather that the main character is the author himself. There is some sense of this character portrayed in the pages, but it read much more like a documentary of events in the past rather than any kind of story. … The conflict presented in the synopsis was intriguing, but the pages suggested no conflict beyond the first paragraph. … There was no dialogue and no internal monologue. … There is no sense of setting given in the pages at all. … The plot line presented in the synopsis was intriguing and would certainly make for an original novel.

However, the pages submitted suggested in no way that the plot line was even going to be written to. … In the single paragraph of actual story submitted the author seems to be a gifted writer. It is unfortunate that I was not able to actually read more of this writing because I think I would have enjoyed it. … the manuscript submitted is neat, free of grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation errors.‖ The judges concluded by stating that they were not sure ―what the author is trying to accomplish by submitting these pages. When a submission is given, skip any author‘s notes and use the actual manuscript. If this is the actual manuscript and not some kind of author‘s note, then it is in need of serious work.‖ # 135

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As the party breaks up, I spot the fictional Kenneth Goldsmith across the beach. He is looking appropriately artistic in a dark purple suit covered with faintly colored hydrangeas. The ensemble matches his bright purple tie, striped purple shirt and purple fedora hat – apparently the same outfit he wore for a 2009 interview with Jonathan Viguers for ―The Temple News,‖ the student paper at Temple University in Philadelphia, Penn. ―I got into a fight with a couch, and I won,‖ Goldsmith says by way of introduction.

We spend a few minutes discussing conceptual writing, with me perhaps gushing a bit too much about my affection for his process-driven work. I even tell him about how I have appropriated his book (―Traffic‖) for my book (―Nobody‘s Coming Back From Uranus‖) and how I have incorporated it into this work.

At this point Goldsmith finally admits that he‘s never heard of me.

So I tell him a little about my practice, about the 52 I earned for ―Island of Marienbad‖ in the Writer‘s League of Texas Manuscript Contest and how I used literary appropriation techniques to write ―The President Who Exploded‖ during National Novel Writing Month.

All I get is a blank stare.

So I tell him about ―Marienbad My Love,‖ about how I appropriated content from ―Have Time, Will Travel‖ and used Brion Gysin‘s cut-up method to turn a normal-sized novel into a 17-million-word giant.

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Goldsmith shrugs. I‘ve pushed too far. Now I‘ve made him uncomfortable. We both look down at our feet in awkward silence. His gaze settles on a translucent, gelatinous blob that has washed up next to the ruins of a crumbling sand castle. He starts to nudge it with a sandaled foot, but I stop him. ―Portuguese man-of-war, very painful,‖ I explain. ―Even the dead ones can sting.‖ He nods, pretending to be impressed. ―Honestly, it‘s the world‘s longest novel,‖ I say. ―I am a little surprised you never heard of it. After all, it‘s on Wikipedia.‖ Goldsmith smiles at my little joke. ―Look how easy it is to make a mark in literature. It‘s a pathetic field we‘re in.‖

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