Pop Quiz (Hotshot) 10

You are, unfortunately, a fiction reader who has purchased a book by a fiction writer of whom you were formerly very fond, but who has tried your patience in his latest volume by including not only a short story whose climax is worked out in story-outline form, for some reason you are sure is artistic and does not have to do with former or current deadline pressure but which your brain keeps identifying as sheer laziness instead of the metafictional commentary or sudden efficacious tone shift it is most likely supposed to be, in the land of people who have more time to read fiction than when they are riding the bus home from their jobs after having spent another eight hours dodging Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but also a piece labeled "Octet" (although it is only possessed of five distinct sections) which starts with "Pop Quiz 4" and moves through a bunch of other numbers with disconcerting randomness until it gets to "Pop Quiz 9," which is basically eight or ten pages of jacking off about how this fiction writer (who keeps referring to himself as a writer of "belletristic" fiction, which coinage is incredibly annoying to you for some inscrutable reason until the author refers to his posterior appendage later on as his "belletristic ass," which you delight in and keep for later usage, although this may only be on account of "ass" being hands-down your favorite word in the English language) cannot finish the supposed "Octet," with a bunch of lamenting about how much he (i.e., the fiction writer) feels an incredible urgency to communicate what he can't seem to communicate, only wrapping it in so many layers of metatextural obfuscation by making the cud-chewing into a quiz for the reader, although it is certain that the fiction writer had himself and only himself in mind when he addressed this dilemma to the "you" of the piece, that it becomes at the same time rather funny and completely pointless, until by the end of the piece it resembles a withered limb, although a completely useless one and not like the withered but functional limb of the protagonist of another story in this volume. It seems more like one of the author's endless sentences, in the way the beginning makes sense but the author then piles on appositive phraseology, neologisms, parenthetical insertions, and footnotes1 until the whole endeavor seems to collapse of its own absurdity, not so much from a distinct lack of quality as the fact that the author seems incapable of leaving anything out or even trying to be vaguely understandable.

This feeling of the essay-slash-story-slash-series of Pop Quizzes with unknown interlocutor having sort of an unfinished tumor hanging off the back end of it is pretty annoying, but is done in such a way that it seems almost likably honest, although of course it metacomments on itself eventually trying to be likably honest with deceptibe pronomology to the extent that it is pretty annoying too, in the way that metahumor has become excruciatingly annoying in any dose larger than 30 seconds or more, at least to you, humble resident of Silver Spring MD that you are –– as I say, that written-tumor-esque feeling consonates nicely with the feeling you get when reading the above-mentioned story which ends with a mere story outline instead of any actual prose, and the two feelings sort of combine and metastasize in you while you are considering what you have just read while trudging from drugstore to drugstore trying to price-shop for splints to wear in bed so you can attempt to stave off any future attacks of the dreaded C.T.S., and the feeling they create in you is something like, "These splints cost $20 each, but the manufacturer has at least completed their manufacture, whereas I have just spent $21.602 on a book in which the author has not had the basic human decency, never mind the courtesy to his devoted readers, to finish two stories contained therein. And I know there must be many valid and wholly belletristically imposingly brilliant reasons behind the nonfinishing of these two stories, but frankly if my CD player came in the box like this I'd take it back, regardless of what Sony might spew at me about the missing frontispiece being a symbol of its eternal longing for a manufacturing perfection that can never be wholly achieved."

(a) Evaluate.

(b) You have in the past written to and recieved answers from said belletrist, who has been unfailingly courteous and grateful for your admittedly fawning and hyperrespectful correspondence, and who indeed has written back when you yourself did not expect him to expend one more iota than necessary on reading and disposing of said fawning correspondence, yet you are now feeling an urge to compose a vicious parody of the piece which has especially offended your suddenly-delicate sensibilities and send it off to him in some sort of interpretive huff by the same good old U.S. Mail which you used to send the previous fawning-oriented correspondence, which broaches the possibility that the belletrist will recognize your return address3 and open up your envelope expecting further life-enriching and chicken-soupish correspondence and instead find this vicious parody. So what to write, or what not to write, has become a question as well, which should probably be (b).

(c) Assuming you have already written the vicious parody, come up with a punchline that makes comedic-timing sense yet which fulfills the metafictional-parodical aims of the previous pages in such a way that the reader him- or herself ends up questioning not only how to fix it but whether we (i.e., you writing the vile parody to the belletrist, who is probably hurt by this point but who doubtless appreciates a good punchline in a way that everyone who has ever tried to write anything humor-centric can) can truly say that anything's broken, here.

1And don't think you've read a long footnote until you've read this author's long footnotes. I mean they are long. You've read footnotes of his that are substantially longer than anything in the work of fiction presently under consideration, but those footnotes were novel and these seem more like the author has forgotten how to incorporate things into the text, or even how to decide whether things belong there or not. You also realize that the extensive use of footnotes fulfills a purpose that parenthetical insertions never could (as evidenced by his near-constant use in the Pop Quizzes in question of parenthetical phraseology in addition to these epic, sprawling footnotes), establishes a narrative separate from and yet not secondary to the main text, &c, but you're also feeling a little pissed off at this point that it's taken him so much textual complexity to explain why his text is not working, when perhaps the text's unworkability might be in fact be partly due to the house-of-cards nature so much of the text seems to be evincing (which house-of-cardly feeling is only intensified when reading a later story which ended up with only a story outline instead of any actual prose, which is discussed at more length above but later on in the text {meaning this text here}, and God of course help you if you haven't read the footnotes before trying to read the rest of the text in the essay that used to be currently under discussion).

2{$24 w/appropriate hardcover discount at local Borders bookselling appliance}

3You know that the correspondence could not possibly have meant as much to said belletrist as it did to you, but you are possessed now with an egocentrism brought on by feelings of a workplace conspiracy centered around their disapproval of the dreaded C.T.S. which (the egocentrism) is so powerful that you cannot possibly extricate yourself from the box around you and see that not only does the belletrist probably not really give two shits either way about you but that he will also most likely not give two shits if he happens to open the envelope with your return address on it and find this vicious parody in the mail, that he will probably give it a resting place in the nearest trash can and think about it not ever again. You know this in your semiconscious mind, but your conscious mind is totally bent on revenge for this percieved slight, which you know cannot possibly be meant even as a slight specifically to you as the belletrist could not possibly have known or cared that you were going to purchase his book at the abovementioned Borders bookbuying appliance. You're in your own world now.

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