Blowhard, Esq. writes:
Sometimes, you come across something so jaw-droppingly bad that the ridiculous awfulness must be shared. This is the first page of The Adventures of Lucky Pierre by Robert Coover:
Me, if I continue any further.
BTW, the author is a graduate of the University of Chicago and a literature professor at Brown.
(H/T to ghostinmarble who naively purchased this at the recommendation of a bookstore clerk and is currently plotting her revenge.)
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Epiodion?
LikeLike
I’m as lost as you, dude.
LikeLike
Synclinal? Epicedial? (And that one comes up underlined in red.)
LikeLike
This should be entered in the Bulwer-Lytton contest. The third sentence could be considered the opening one. A sure winner. http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Come to think of it, we could enter this thing in the name of the real author. Who will volunteer?
LikeLike
You had me at “unisonously.”
LikeLike
I love a writer who knows how to ply his fricatives.
LikeLike
The only nodes I like are synclinial ones. Non-synclinial nodes can eat shit.
LikeLike
My thoughts precisely. The nerve!
LikeLike
“Implications of tangible paraboloids amid the soft anguish.”
That’s the best evocation of the need-to-take-shit sensation I’ve ever read.
LikeLike
How do I “like” comments around here?
LikeLike
I just experienced a piangevole wind . . . followed closely by the implication of a tangible paraboloid.
LikeLike
The passage is much funnier in Italian.
LikeLike
I found this powerfully resistant to being read. The first sentence defeated me three times.
LikeLike
Alright, first paragraph. I’m not counting those dangling fragments he opens with.
LikeLike
Ever since Ernest Hemingway gave English prose a long-overdue airing-out, there is no excuse for anyone to write like this except as a parody. There is nothing wrong with waxing lyrical, but before you sit down at your keyboard, read Isak Dinesen’s short stories to see how it is done (and the Baroness wasn’t even a native speaker of English).
LikeLike
Waxing lyrical is one thing, masturbating with a thesaurus is quite another.
LikeLike
Reminds me of the episode of MASH, when Radar enrolls in a correspondence course for writers, and narrates the episode with log entries in ludicrously purple prose, which culminates in relating an attempt by Corporal Klinger to secure a Section 8 discharge by feigning a suicide attempt. Wearing his usual frock, Klinger douses himself with what people are supposed to think is gasoline, what he thinks is water, but really is gasoline (someone pulled a switcheroo on him). “He left with his nonchalantness not too nifty”, was Radar’s log entry, whereupon Colonel Potter breaks in the narration and commands him to stop. I’d rather read Radar.
LikeLike
I watched that show religiously as a kid and totally remember that episode.
LikeLike
currently plying my own fricatives.
how many have died here? or left to find a weapon to shoot the author?
LikeLike
I misread the first word as “Cactus” and so doubtless misinterpreted the rest. Though who could tell?
LikeLike
You guys, it gets better. Here’s page 2. Do we make this our first UR Book Club selection?
iwasborngood points out that the terrible writing could be intentional. Transgressive, postmodern fiction and all that. If so, that makes it worse, right?
LikeLike
It was probably a dark and stormy night when he started writing it.
LikeLike
There are at least a half dozen words there that are now dead to me.
LikeLike
Pingback: Daily Linkage – November 26, 2012 | The Second Estate
A postmodern English class would doubtless plumb unforeseen depths of meaning in that abyss.
LikeLike
Better them than me.
LikeLike
Good Lord! That’s a party of flagellant self-indulgence rarely seen outside of Academe.
LikeLike
IT’S A GAG. He’s pulling our leg. Don’t be taken in…
LikeLike
I like it. It’s musical; there’s rhythm; the consonants sing. You don’t think an author like Coover would compose something as baroquely pretentious as this without a big shit-eating grin on his face, do you? I don’t how the rest of the book goes, but the man is having fun here.
LikeLike