The Hanged Man is suspended, upside-down, by his still-incomplete thesis. Given the calm expression on his face, it appears he hasn’t been on any academic job-search boards yet. Around The Hanged Man’s Head is a yellow halo, depicting the fondness he feels toward his Freshman seminar students. This fond feeling will soon cease. The Hanged Man’s number is 12, reflecting the number of years he has spent in grad school thus far.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The High Priestess is high. She sits at the gate before the great mystery of experimental literature, passing beneath a narrative arc on ionic corinthian pillars. She no longer goes from point A to point B, but from point B to point J. She sits between darkness and light, half enlightened by the experimental text on her lap and half not knowing what the hell is going on. The tapestry hung between the pillars keeps punctuation out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Knight of Wands is an impulsive type of dude who frequently posts his rough drafts to Fictionaut. He provides status updates about his divorce roughly every four – six minutes. Drawing The Knight of Wands card in a tarot reading may foreshadow an unexpected event in one’s life, such as being cornered by The Knight of Wands at a “literary reception” and forced to talk with him about Bolano for over an hour. The Knight of Wands is the patron saint of open mic nights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nine of Swords is the card of nightmares invoked by twitter, twitter-envy, unfollow-fear and generally comparing and despairing one’s own feed to that of another. The troubles conveyed in the Nine of Swords are solely of a psychological nature and bear no resemblance to concrete reality. The man depicted on the card is a writer attempting to use twitter in a “new” or “innovative” way. Carved on his bedframe are two more writers on residency in a forest, debating whether twitter has any literary merit. Above his head are nine swords, or tweets, which — though they may be favorited by some in his “community” — will eventually kill him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The card of Judgement depicts a number of nude male and female writers rising up from a grave of poetry and responding to the trumpet call of prose, as symbolized here by a secularized and blonded Philip Roth blowing a shofar in the skies above them. The planetary ruler of this card is Pluto–planet of very long prose readings wherein a reader goes on for 20 minutes though the audience is lost after the first sentence is read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Eight of Cups is a card of transition and melancholia. The man in this card has turned his back on food, drink, friends, lovers, and laughter for the internet. He has chosen to forsake the familiar for the litblog. He is embarking on a litblog journey. The mountain to the left of him is Montevidayo. The mountain to the right is HTMLGIANT. Above him is an emoticon of his own making. It appears perplexed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Seven of Pentacles portrays a young indie lit boy, or “boykitten,” taking a rest from the difficult work of harvesting an abundant crop of images for his tumblr. He has been labouring long and hard on his tumblr. The foliage is expansive and the buds budding. At his back, fading into the distance, is the text-based litblog. His boots are vegan.