Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Monday, October 13, 2008 )

When did we realize that this novel wasn’t going anywhere?

–*When we entered the mind of the family dog.

–*When God tries to fool Abraham a second time by telling him to sacrifice his other son Smitty, but this time Abraham’s not going for it.

–*When Raskalnikov is feeling too guilty from murdering his landlady to have sex with his girlfriend Sonia and Sonia is OK with that. Whatever.

–*Daisy’s water has broken while she makes her speech on the floor of the U.S. Congress (starring Julia Roberts in the movie.)

–*Christopher, having found out about his father’s affair with member of the House of Lords, makes a psychological cry for help by falling down a neoclassical staircase with astonishing frescos painted by Tiepolo to his untimely demise, leaving his unborn son an orphan.

–*Dante goes with his lover Beatrice to heaven but admits that the cosmology is ambiguous and that much of it is veiled to his eyes, which is a real cop out.

–*The author goes on 100 pages longer than he should describing the tundra.

–*The psychologist starts to identify with the face eating cannibal dentist who is a linguistics hobbyist with a sharp eye for New Century Modern.

–*The homemaker from Columbus tames the heart of the Bavarian born Secretary of State who helped craft the policy of detente with the Chinese but never really learned how to love.

–*Dobie Gillis seems doomed to fail with this love interest Sasha, the money grubbing blonde whore.

–*The communist partisans take over and a priest falls in love with a goat.

–*A bizarre performance artist who walks around in a suit of pennies walks into what is surely to be an obnoxious and pedantic Tom Robbins scenario to talk about Goddess worship.

–*After poring over 2000 pages of linguistic and comparative religions studies to prove that the cult of the Templars doesn’t exist, Umberto Eco temporarily revives them just to kill off a minor prelate.

–*An anus starts talking.

–*…in imabic pentameter.

–*Whenever somebody ends up dead in a Michael Crichton novel and a small-town doctor begins talking about organized complexity theory.

–*Kathy Acker. Page One. Looks like somebody’s going to be gang raped. Lots of French post-structuralist theory discussed.

–*Harry Potter uses his magical herbs to get the dog drunk.