Fountain City

[skwantz]

I

There's this book I love.  It's called Wonder Boys, and it's by Michael Chabon. It appeals to my sensibilities in that it's simple--it's the story of a guy with a problem that he needs to overcome in order to move forward and be functional, and it all takes place over the course of a weekend. It has focus. It is tight. And I like it that way, for

Comments

[zakablade]

joe,
perhaps you're too smart,
and still learning but grounded in your preferred aesthetic...
this post is actually a compelling hybrid of what you claim to prefer and what you have a problem with; i think perhaps you're getting more out of infinite jest than you are consciously aware... or, maybe you're just a big fat liar, fatty fat pants man with burning liar like pants that are on fire with his lies, fatso...
but the point remains, as someone that has read your "shit" (and i use shit in the way of stuff with an edge, not in the pejorative sense), i would say that you're fine... and would second ted's "great essay"... you should submit this somewhere... seriously... it's better than most book reviews and nonfiction (read: short essays) that i have read and that it actually can be seen as an example of what it talks about, well, that's icing; it's thematically relevant, there's actually a nice narrative, and it's a bit meta... and if it gets published, then i could write something about your essay and submit it... and then it could go on ad infinitum... like this post... which clearly doesn't know where to stop... i swear it started with a purpose, i had an idea, i wanted to convey something and then i just lost the drive, the commitment to produce what it was i wanted, but somewhere in the middle--perhaps closer to the end--i found something else that i was even more interested in and then i went with it and kept going... there's actually a fairly committed school of poetry to this idea, the connections between lines, the leaps of logic that can be complicated but the reader is forced to follow and try to understand not just the material but the mind behind it, it's kind of intimate... and masturbatory... and may have value, and i think is what you're hinting at on a fictional level... but i can see how one would find it distasteful, especially after hundreds of pages...
the end...
love you,
blade

[zakablade]

as an endnote to my previous post, i would like to add, that in a way, the loose connections between seemingly tangential subplots and whatnot could just be thought of as producing a meta-narrative; consider it as a underscored thought, the background of a painting, the bass line in a song; even when you're dreaming, your brain is producing more material to be used in the next dream and sometimes they get fused with even more subthoughts and pretty soon you're in 3rd grade staring at your wife that happens to be the teacher and your dog is catching a frisbee thrown by the fat kid (that's you, fatso)... and it doesn't make sense initally and may not later, but the connections overlap, the logic might be found, like a puzzle, and perhaps the next piece, the next story can be predicted or even created by you before you turn the page because you've connected with the mindset of, the actual characterization of the writing itself... yeah...