A Sharp Knife Is Safer 3: Sound It Out
"Nth thus hum mar beet wee nice cool land call edge, ice old kitsch and nigh fuzz fora muck at tall lug."
This year I’m writing the same story, oh I don’t know, 100 times? and posting one here each week. Today:
Sound it out
Nth thus hum mar beet wee nice cool land call edge, ice old kitsch and nigh fuzz fora muck at tall lug. Eye cull dent conveyance pea pull tube I’m hutch, bah tide id convent smize elf thee’s worth ebb est knee hives a tinny prize. I’d hid git mime ohm two ore door edge ack ken eye fur mid adze burr the dye. Eat Cayman them ale; zip ack heh jaw Zinn thick are -ism I’m armed rove meet tooth a heir poured 4-H er chum ish Hun strip. Nth up ass 'n' Jersey tie oh pen dopp then I feh ’tude demons trade thus eh pho teem egg anus ’em, an din thee uh tempt ice lice dope in napalm. Neck tsundere soul donates fur um bee high end account her.
As mentioned in my introductory post, my project is a direct lift of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style. The original contains similarly “pointless” exercises, and of course that’s the point. While some are pleasurable literature in themselves, many are a sweaty ordeal.
If you did struggle through it, you may have notice I got very cheaty at the end, partly in trade for flourishes like “napalm” and “tsundere” and partly because I had exhausted all other options. Again I appeal to the pedigree of the approach: Queneau, or his English translator Barbara Wright, occasionally steps past the line for fun.
Audio drama recommendation: Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature
I’ve been listening to more audio fiction again, and I can recommend Modes of Thought in Anterran Literature (Apple, Spotify, RSS).
Half the episodes are fictitious lectures about a long-lost civilization that far predates all others—Atlantis, but a magical-realist Atlantis, with idiot kings and hypergraphia. These are delivered with admirable verisimilitude by a Jeff Daniels/Bridges type.
The other episodes follow a present-day plot centered on the professor and his TA. (Early in the series, someone raises a question about these lectures, and I assure you the show chooses the fun answer.)
I haven’t read Dictionary of the Khazars so I’ll have to compare the show, as I compare everything, to Borges—both the fictitious essay-stories and the frame-story thrillers like The Garden of Forking Paths.