We’ve grown accustomed to using categories — like “Literature” on the one hand and “Horror,” “Science Fiction,” and “Fantasy” on the other — to divvy up the world of fiction into the “serious” and the “not-so-serious.” When literary writers David Markson and Graham Greene slipped off into genre territory for a book or two, they called what they were doing “entertainments”; conversely, the renowned crime novelist Georges Simenon dubbed his ventures into psychological realism “hard novels” — as opposed, one guesses, to his “easier” detective fiction. These writers felt they could move from one world to the other only as long as they gave the reader notice that they were crossing the border.

Contemporary authors are much less interested in keeping that distinction between genres clear. Authors like Kelly Link, Jonathan Lethem, Elizabeth Hand, and John Crowley — who are capable of writing well within literary and popular genres and who don’t hesitate to mix the two — make distinctions between popular and serious fiction seem increasingly meaningless. Such distinctions tell us almost nothing about the quality of individual works. Others were quicker to recognize this than the American mainstream: indeed, while American critics were dismissing hardboiled and weird fiction as mere entertainment, the French were discussing its power and artistry; while we were deriding comic books as kid stuff, the French, Belgians, and Italians were making it into an art form.

We’ve grown accustomed to using categories — like “Literature” on the one hand and “Horror,” “Science Fiction,” and “Fantasy” on the other — to divvy up the world of fiction into the “serious” and the “not-so-serious.” When literary writers David Markson and Graham Greene slipped off into genre territory for a book or two, they called what they were doing “entertainments”; conversely, the renowned crime novelist Georges Simenon dubbed his ventures into psychological realism “hard novels” — as opposed, one guesses, to his “easier” detective fiction. These writers felt they could move from one world to the other only as long as they gave the reader notice that they were crossing the border.

Contemporary authors are much less interested in keeping that distinction between genres clear. Authors like Kelly Link, Jonathan Lethem, Elizabeth Hand, and John Crowley — who are capable of writing well within literary and popular genres and who don’t hesitate to mix the two — make distinctions between popular and serious fiction seem increasingly meaningless. Such distinctions tell us almost nothing about the quality of individual works. Others were quicker to recognize this than the American mainstream: indeed, while American critics were dismissing hardboiled and weird fiction as mere entertainment, the French were discussing its power and artistry; while we were deriding comic books as kid stuff, the French, Belgians, and Italians were making it into an art form.

Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play

PARIS—Just weeks after the centennial of the birth of pioneering minimalist playwright Samuel Beckett, archivists analyzing papers from his Paris estate uncovered a small stack of blank paper that scholars are calling “the latest example of the late Irish-born writer’s genius.”
Enlarge Image Scholars-Discover-C.jpg

O’Donoghue shows off what could easily be the play’s whimsically tragic opening scene.

The 23 blank pages, which literary experts presume is a two-act play composed sometime between 1973 and 1975, are already being heralded as one of the most ambitious works by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting For Godot, and a natural progression from his earlier works, including 1969′s Breath, a 30-second play with no characters, and 1972′s Not I, in which the only illuminated part of the stage is a floating mouth.

“In what was surely a conscious decision by Mr. Beckett, the white, uniform, non-ruled pages, which symbolize the starkness and emptiness of life, were left unbound, unmarked, and untouched,” said Trinity College professor of Irish literature Fintan O’Donoghue. “And, as if to further exemplify the anonymity and facelessness of 20th-century man, they were found, of all places, between other sheets of paper.”

“I can only conclude that we have stumbled upon something quite remarkable,” O’Donoghue added.

According to literary critic Eric Matheson, who praised the work for “the bare-bones structure and bleak repetition of what can only be described as ‘nothingness,’” the play represents somewhat of a departure from the works of Beckett’s “middle period.” But, he said, it “might as well be Samuel Beckett at his finest.”

“It does feature certain classic Beckett elements, such as sparse stage directions, a mysterious quality of anonymity, a slow building of tension with no promise of relief, and an austere portrayal of the human condition,” Matheson said. “But Beckett’s traditional intimation of an unrelenting will to live, the possibility of escape from the vacuous indifference that surrounds us—that’s missing. Were that his vision, I suspect he would have used perforated paper.”

Scholars theorize that the 23-page play might have been intended to be titled Five Conversations, Entropolis, or Stop.

In addition, an 81-page document, also blank, was found, which, for all intents and purposes, could be an earlier draft of the work.

“I suspect this was a nascent stream-of-consciousness attempt,” O’Donoghue said of the blank sheets of paper, which were found scattered among Beckett’s personal effects and took a Beckett scholar four painstaking days to put into the correct order. “In his final version, Beckett used his trademark style of ‘paring down’ to really get at the core of what he was trying to not say.”

Some historians, however, contend that the play could have been the work of one of Beckett’s protégés.

“Even though the central theme and wicked sense of humor of this piece would lead one to believe that this could conceivably be a vintage Beckett play, in reality, it could just as easily have been the product of [Beckett's close friend] Rick Cluchey,” biographer Neal Gleason said. “And if it was Beckett, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that, given his sharp wit, it was just intended as a joke. If Beckett were alive today, he might insist that it’s not even a play at all. It could be a novella, or a screenplay.”

Enthusiasts still maintain that the “nuances, subtleties, and allusions to his previous works” are all unmistakably Beckett. They also claim to have found notes and ideas for this play in the margins of Beckett’s earlier works.

There are already plans to stage the play during the intermission of an upcoming production of Waiting For Godot.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33186

My Novel Addresses Universal Themes Of Humanity And Has Fucking

By Steve Sloate
October 23, 2002 | Issue 38•39

I have finally put the finishing touches on my novel, Westbound 90, and though it took forever, I am extremely pleased with the end result. It’s a modern-day Candide, a coming-of-age tragicomedy in which the reader is taken on a great journey, both geographically and emotionally. I am confident it will be widely appreciated, as it addresses themes that speak to the human condition and, coincidentally, has loads of fucking.

In Westbound 90, I touch on two universal themes. One is the battle against the void, a war waged by countless souls. In short, I explore the duality of sentience: to be able to analyze, ponder, use tools, and create creature comforts, yet still be driven mad with the repetitiveness of life. The other theme, of course, is that everyone needs a series of explosive, mind-expanding fucks.

Although I don’t believe “The Great American Novel” can be written, Westbound 90 is a close approximation. Its 864 pages examine the broad tapestry of American people, confronting issues of race, culture, and religion. Steve, the protagonist, travels all over America, much like Huckleberry Finn, in search of an unspecified object that will either save his life or make him complete. The object is never named, so each reader may project onto it his or her own personal Holy Grail. I also hope readers will project themselves onto the character of Steve, as he indulges in amazing feats of acrobatic fuckery with women of all backgrounds and body types.

The depth and weight of my novel is likely to put some people off, but I believe there’s something in it for everyone. For example, who among us hasn’t feared losing his identity to the hive-mind of society? In Chapter 15, Steve feels trapped by his job, smothered by his family, and overwhelmed by the dictates of a consumer culture. He finally snaps and heads to the desert to find an autonomous zone where he can reconnect with his true self. I won’t give too much away, but he only begins to experience clarity after he bangs a particularly buxom Navajo chick and realizes that true peace can only be found through fucking.

I believe all readers will see something of themselves in Steve as he rails against the darkness of ignorance, chipping away at his own capacity to reason. Westbound 90 will inspire people to break free of their self-imposed holding patterns, and it will inspire them in other ways with a totally hot scene in a convent where Steve has sex with a gorgeous anarchist posing as a nun.

Is technology dehumanizing us? Are the very items that enable us to function using us as much as we use them? Steve begins to feel that way when he spends a week without a meaningful encounter with another human being. But by chapter’s end, Steve—and, by association, humanity—is redeemed by a six-way orgy of sloppy, fluid-soaked, triple-penetrating, bed-frame-splintering überfucking, proving to him once and for all that some human acts can never be replicated by machine.

I would ask you to keep an open mind while reading Westbound 90. Whether or not you agree with my conclusions, you can take something away from the book, and if nothing else, it will make you think. It may raise points you had never considered before. And it will make you see fucking in a whole new light.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel inspired to write a new short story about a woman, her dreams, and her cunnilingus.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39205

Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner

September 23, 1997 | Issue 32•08

STORRS, CT—A major contribution to the study of 19th-century literature was made Monday with the handing-in of “Silas Marner: Paper #1″ by Lori Durst, a freshman at the University of Connecticut.

Enlarge Image Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner

College freshman Lori Durst’s recent English 140 paper about Silas Marner has electrified the academic world.

According to leading experts on Silas Marner, George Eliot’s 1861 fable of cruelty and redemption in the rural English countryside, Durst’s three-page work contains a revolutionary insight into a key piece of symbolism in the novel which had previously escaped scholars.

“It’s a staggering observation, one that’s certain to alter the way we approach this text forever,” said Harold Bloom, Yale professor and author of The Western Canon. “On page two, Durst makes a connection between the golden hair of the child left on Marner’s doorstep and the misplaced heap of gold coins with which he is obsessed. While it may take decades for the full significance of this ‘chromatic objective correlative’ to ripple through academia, in my mind it has already opened the door to a rich, fertile, and heretofore virgin soil of Eliotian structural analysis.”

“Yeah, the girl’s hair is gold, and then [Silas Marner] is also looking for his missing gold,” Durst said. “So in my paper I said how that was symbolic of something.”

“Stunning,” is how Jay Kushner, 23, a teacher’s assistant in “English 140: 19th Century British Fiction,” described his pupil’s double-spaced manifesto. “As a section leader, I am lucky enough to read dozens of breathtakingly insightful two- to three-page papers from undergraduates each week. But even in the rarefied world of first-year papers, Lori’s towers above the rest.”

Durst, a native of Holmdel, NJ, who plans to major in psychology, said the idea for the essay came to her approximately three weeks ago, when her professor instructed the students to “start thinking about which book we’d want to write our first papers on.” Durst said she chose to focus on Silas Marner “because it looked pretty short.”

“My friend Lisa did hers on Middlemarch,” Durst said, “and I was like, ‘Are you crazy?’ That thing is like 10 times longer.”

Professor Thomas Perkins, who teaches English 140, was unavailable to comment on the paper. But another University of Connecticut English professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Perkins and his colleagues were “stunned and somewhat embarrassed” by Durst’s 12-point, Chicago-fonted magnum opus.

“You have to understand, many of us have read Silas Marner 10, 20 times,” the professor said. “Maybe we had a vague sense that this adorable, golden-tressed waif who comes along to redeem Silas’ soul could have something to do with the gold coins that, prior to her arrival, had been the focus of Silas’ life. But we, and apparently every reader before Ms. Durst, simply dropped the ball.”

Word of Durst’s groundbreaking observation has spread quickly through academic circles, sending Victorian scholars scrambling to their annotated Norton editions of the novel and prompting at least a dozen major academic conferences to extend invitations to her.

Enlarge Image Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner jump

A key passage from Durst’s “Silas Marner: Paper #1″

Widespread publication and dissemination of “Silas Marner Paper #1,” however, will have to wait: Only one copy of the paper currently exists, and, despite the enormous demand, Durst has been unable to print more due to what she terms “some kind of total screw-up with my StyleWriter.”

Though Durst’s frequent absences from lecture and much-publicized May 1996 dismissal of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House as “unbelievably boring” had previously earned her a reputation as a rebel in the field of literary criticism, her status as a rising star of academia now seems assured.

While Durst declined to reveal the exact direction she would take her scholarship in the near future, she did express a strong, long-term commitment to the study of English literature. “I still have to take three more English classes to fulfill my minimum distribution,” Durst said, “so I guess I’ll be stuck reading books for a while.”

Indeed, Durst’s far-reaching intellect may soon become a lodestar for an entirely different academic field. French linguists around the world breathlessly await the completion of her next project, “French 110: Essaie Mandatoire,” due next Thursday.

Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play

PARIS—Just weeks after the centennial of the birth of pioneering minimalist playwright Samuel Beckett, archivists analyzing papers from his Paris estate uncovered a small stack of blank paper that scholars are calling “the latest example of the late Irish-born writer’s genius.”
Enlarge Image Scholars-Discover-C.jpg

O’Donoghue shows off what could easily be the play’s whimsically tragic opening scene.

The 23 blank pages, which literary experts presume is a two-act play composed sometime between 1973 and 1975, are already being heralded as one of the most ambitious works by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting For Godot, and a natural progression from his earlier works, including 1969′s Breath, a 30-second play with no characters, and 1972′s Not I, in which the only illuminated part of the stage is a floating mouth.

“In what was surely a conscious decision by Mr. Beckett, the white, uniform, non-ruled pages, which symbolize the starkness and emptiness of life, were left unbound, unmarked, and untouched,” said Trinity College professor of Irish literature Fintan O’Donoghue. “And, as if to further exemplify the anonymity and facelessness of 20th-century man, they were found, of all places, between other sheets of paper.”

“I can only conclude that we have stumbled upon something quite remarkable,” O’Donoghue added.

According to literary critic Eric Matheson, who praised the work for “the bare-bones structure and bleak repetition of what can only be described as ‘nothingness,’” the play represents somewhat of a departure from the works of Beckett’s “middle period.” But, he said, it “might as well be Samuel Beckett at his finest.”

“It does feature certain classic Beckett elements, such as sparse stage directions, a mysterious quality of anonymity, a slow building of tension with no promise of relief, and an austere portrayal of the human condition,” Matheson said. “But Beckett’s traditional intimation of an unrelenting will to live, the possibility of escape from the vacuous indifference that surrounds us—that’s missing. Were that his vision, I suspect he would have used perforated paper.”

Scholars theorize that the 23-page play might have been intended to be titled Five Conversations, Entropolis, or Stop.

In addition, an 81-page document, also blank, was found, which, for all intents and purposes, could be an earlier draft of the work.

“I suspect this was a nascent stream-of-consciousness attempt,” O’Donoghue said of the blank sheets of paper, which were found scattered among Beckett’s personal effects and took a Beckett scholar four painstaking days to put into the correct order. “In his final version, Beckett used his trademark style of ‘paring down’ to really get at the core of what he was trying to not say.”

Some historians, however, contend that the play could have been the work of one of Beckett’s protégés.

“Even though the central theme and wicked sense of humor of this piece would lead one to believe that this could conceivably be a vintage Beckett play, in reality, it could just as easily have been the product of [Beckett's close friend] Rick Cluchey,” biographer Neal Gleason said. “And if it was Beckett, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that, given his sharp wit, it was just intended as a joke. If Beckett were alive today, he might insist that it’s not even a play at all. It could be a novella, or a screenplay.”

Enthusiasts still maintain that the “nuances, subtleties, and allusions to his previous works” are all unmistakably Beckett. They also claim to have found notes and ideas for this play in the margins of Beckett’s earlier works.

There are already plans to stage the play during the intermission of an upcoming production of Waiting For Godot.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33186

My Novel Addresses Universal Themes Of Humanity And Has Fucking

By Steve Sloate
October 23, 2002 | Issue 38•39

I have finally put the finishing touches on my novel, Westbound 90, and though it took forever, I am extremely pleased with the end result. It’s a modern-day Candide, a coming-of-age tragicomedy in which the reader is taken on a great journey, both geographically and emotionally. I am confident it will be widely appreciated, as it addresses themes that speak to the human condition and, coincidentally, has loads of fucking.

In Westbound 90, I touch on two universal themes. One is the battle against the void, a war waged by countless souls. In short, I explore the duality of sentience: to be able to analyze, ponder, use tools, and create creature comforts, yet still be driven mad with the repetitiveness of life. The other theme, of course, is that everyone needs a series of explosive, mind-expanding fucks.

Although I don’t believe “The Great American Novel” can be written, Westbound 90 is a close approximation. Its 864 pages examine the broad tapestry of American people, confronting issues of race, culture, and religion. Steve, the protagonist, travels all over America, much like Huckleberry Finn, in search of an unspecified object that will either save his life or make him complete. The object is never named, so each reader may project onto it his or her own personal Holy Grail. I also hope readers will project themselves onto the character of Steve, as he indulges in amazing feats of acrobatic fuckery with women of all backgrounds and body types.

The depth and weight of my novel is likely to put some people off, but I believe there’s something in it for everyone. For example, who among us hasn’t feared losing his identity to the hive-mind of society? In Chapter 15, Steve feels trapped by his job, smothered by his family, and overwhelmed by the dictates of a consumer culture. He finally snaps and heads to the desert to find an autonomous zone where he can reconnect with his true self. I won’t give too much away, but he only begins to experience clarity after he bangs a particularly buxom Navajo chick and realizes that true peace can only be found through fucking.

I believe all readers will see something of themselves in Steve as he rails against the darkness of ignorance, chipping away at his own capacity to reason. Westbound 90 will inspire people to break free of their self-imposed holding patterns, and it will inspire them in other ways with a totally hot scene in a convent where Steve has sex with a gorgeous anarchist posing as a nun.

Is technology dehumanizing us? Are the very items that enable us to function using us as much as we use them? Steve begins to feel that way when he spends a week without a meaningful encounter with another human being. But by chapter’s end, Steve—and, by association, humanity—is redeemed by a six-way orgy of sloppy, fluid-soaked, triple-penetrating, bed-frame-splintering überfucking, proving to him once and for all that some human acts can never be replicated by machine.

I would ask you to keep an open mind while reading Westbound 90. Whether or not you agree with my conclusions, you can take something away from the book, and if nothing else, it will make you think. It may raise points you had never considered before. And it will make you see fucking in a whole new light.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel inspired to write a new short story about a woman, her dreams, and her cunnilingus.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39205

Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner

September 23, 1997 | Issue 32•08

STORRS, CT—A major contribution to the study of 19th-century literature was made Monday with the handing-in of “Silas Marner: Paper #1″ by Lori Durst, a freshman at the University of Connecticut.

Enlarge Image Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner

College freshman Lori Durst’s recent English 140 paper about Silas Marner has electrified the academic world.

According to leading experts on Silas Marner, George Eliot’s 1861 fable of cruelty and redemption in the rural English countryside, Durst’s three-page work contains a revolutionary insight into a key piece of symbolism in the novel which had previously escaped scholars.

“It’s a staggering observation, one that’s certain to alter the way we approach this text forever,” said Harold Bloom, Yale professor and author of The Western Canon. “On page two, Durst makes a connection between the golden hair of the child left on Marner’s doorstep and the misplaced heap of gold coins with which he is obsessed. While it may take decades for the full significance of this ‘chromatic objective correlative’ to ripple through academia, in my mind it has already opened the door to a rich, fertile, and heretofore virgin soil of Eliotian structural analysis.”

“Yeah, the girl’s hair is gold, and then [Silas Marner] is also looking for his missing gold,” Durst said. “So in my paper I said how that was symbolic of something.”

“Stunning,” is how Jay Kushner, 23, a teacher’s assistant in “English 140: 19th Century British Fiction,” described his pupil’s double-spaced manifesto. “As a section leader, I am lucky enough to read dozens of breathtakingly insightful two- to three-page papers from undergraduates each week. But even in the rarefied world of first-year papers, Lori’s towers above the rest.”

Durst, a native of Holmdel, NJ, who plans to major in psychology, said the idea for the essay came to her approximately three weeks ago, when her professor instructed the students to “start thinking about which book we’d want to write our first papers on.” Durst said she chose to focus on Silas Marner “because it looked pretty short.”

“My friend Lisa did hers on Middlemarch,” Durst said, “and I was like, ‘Are you crazy?’ That thing is like 10 times longer.”

Professor Thomas Perkins, who teaches English 140, was unavailable to comment on the paper. But another University of Connecticut English professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Perkins and his colleagues were “stunned and somewhat embarrassed” by Durst’s 12-point, Chicago-fonted magnum opus.

“You have to understand, many of us have read Silas Marner 10, 20 times,” the professor said. “Maybe we had a vague sense that this adorable, golden-tressed waif who comes along to redeem Silas’ soul could have something to do with the gold coins that, prior to her arrival, had been the focus of Silas’ life. But we, and apparently every reader before Ms. Durst, simply dropped the ball.”

Word of Durst’s groundbreaking observation has spread quickly through academic circles, sending Victorian scholars scrambling to their annotated Norton editions of the novel and prompting at least a dozen major academic conferences to extend invitations to her.

Enlarge Image Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner jump

A key passage from Durst’s “Silas Marner: Paper #1″

Widespread publication and dissemination of “Silas Marner Paper #1,” however, will have to wait: Only one copy of the paper currently exists, and, despite the enormous demand, Durst has been unable to print more due to what she terms “some kind of total screw-up with my StyleWriter.”

Though Durst’s frequent absences from lecture and much-publicized May 1996 dismissal of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House as “unbelievably boring” had previously earned her a reputation as a rebel in the field of literary criticism, her status as a rising star of academia now seems assured.

While Durst declined to reveal the exact direction she would take her scholarship in the near future, she did express a strong, long-term commitment to the study of English literature. “I still have to take three more English classes to fulfill my minimum distribution,” Durst said, “so I guess I’ll be stuck reading books for a while.”

Indeed, Durst’s far-reaching intellect may soon become a lodestar for an entirely different academic field. French linguists around the world breathlessly await the completion of her next project, “French 110: Essaie Mandatoire,” due next Thursday.

Science-Fiction Novel Posits Future Where Characters Are Hastily Sketched

OREGON CITY, OR—Science-fiction author Morgan Richards announced Monday completion of his long-awaited novel, Zeppelins Of Phobos. The swashbuckling tale of the battle for control of the solar system depicts a terrifying future filled with virtually indistinguishable characters who only communicate through stilted and shallow dialogue. “I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of the two-dimensional, almost caricatured human race spreading to nearby planets,” said Richards in the April/May issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. “I wanted to capture the sense of adventure, lust, and peril that these characters would feel, along with their utter lack of social context or emotional complexity.” Richards said the very nature of his characters demanded that they live in the unlikely, unrealistic, and overly cinematic society he painstakingly details in the book.

Science-Fiction Novel Posits Future Where Characters Are Hastily Sketched

OREGON CITY, OR—Science-fiction author Morgan Richards announced Monday completion of his long-awaited novel, Zeppelins Of Phobos. The swashbuckling tale of the battle for control of the solar system depicts a terrifying future filled with virtually indistinguishable characters who only communicate through stilted and shallow dialogue. “I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of the two-dimensional, almost caricatured human race spreading to nearby planets,” said Richards in the April/May issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. “I wanted to capture the sense of adventure, lust, and peril that these characters would feel, along with their utter lack of social context or emotional complexity.” Richards said the very nature of his characters demanded that they live in the unlikely, unrealistic, and overly cinematic society he painstakingly details in the book.