Rhinocrisy

My brother-in-law suggested that interactively produced fiction (i.e., à la Wikipedia) might be interesting and even productive. It seemed to me that such a thing must surely exist already, and of course it does. Wikia.com hosts “Novelas“, a collection of collaboratively-edited stories. It also exposes the principle flaw in this type of endeavor, which is that it appears to be an efficient net for aggregating dross. The main categories of fiction there are “fantasy” and “science fiction”, two genres which have only rarely in their history managed to ascend to any level of respectability. If that’s not alarming enough, the actual text is even worse. Some of the prose is so purple it’s amazing it doesn’t fall off and die, and there’s a good deal of inventive structure that collapses because there’s nothing supporting it. E.g.:

Master Fung: Dear Mastah Fung, hoo are yah, anyways, let me cut tae the chase. If it’s awrite wae yoo, I’d like to come to visit fer a week. Please reply if you hink ah should, your best student. Scottie McCrimson.

Kimiko: Scottie McCrimson? Would he by any chance be Scottish?

Or try this truly astonishing first paragraph:

It is rather strange how the Alkali Metals react to water, if one small chunk of Cesium falls into water, then the entire city can blow up. So imagine what could happen if Francium, an element much larger and more powerful then Cesium falls into water, let’s just say, good by to the state. However, Francium is radioactive, that is to say, it breaks down into smaller, less harmful elements. But what would happen if there was a way for Francium to stop its decay? What would happen if Francium, was evil, will the Alkali Metals destroy the world?

Most of this disaster is forgivable, since it probably originated as scribblings on napkins in high school cafeterias. But I, always on the lookout for ways to dismay myself, must take a tragic lesson from this, which is that there is an unfortunate lack of correspondence between perceived ability and actual skill. Self-criticism is a conundrum for any creative individual. Art must be communicated; private meaning is fine and even valuable, but our lives are brief, and our mental space is narrow. If creation is more than an exercise in self-correction, it’s the judgement of others that becomes the primary determinant of its worth. Thus, I should know whether I’m making something others might see as beautiful or ugly, a difficult task when I am unable to appreciate the work divorced from the scaffolding that I used to assemble it. Probably this is why, my friend Claudio would say, we believe the Creator wants us to worship him - surely even he is insecure about his creation without critical acclaim.

Wrote this yesterday. Does its job, and I can’t be bothered to improve it, so here it stays.

“The Maiden caught me in the Wild
   While I was dancing merrily
She put me into her Cabinet
   And Lockd me up with a golden Key”
   — William Blake, ‘The Crystal Cabinet’^*

When the downy promise of his chin had matured into golden curls, Yegor bade his mother good-bye and set out to seek his fortune. He had no possession other than the clothes he wore and his father’s sword, but he had kept the blade clean and sharp, and his wits even keener. So he whistled as he walked with the sun in his hair, sure that around the next corner the road led to treasure and fame.
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We humans have a nearly unparalleled lust for dramatic tension. Without it we are listless and deflated; with it, colors are more vivid, and the flavor of anticipation makes all tastes and smells more appealing. So we find it in all corners, and every squabble is magnified into a magnificent conflict - epic struggles against such redoubtable villains as the municipal recycling department, your roommate’s girlfriend, or that perennial favorite, the IRS.

Sometimes, though, this tension may be stretched thin, almost to breaking, and our pleasure becomes so acute it verges on agony. Thus the whole nation suffered for nearly three years before discovering the truth of Luke Skywalker’s parentage, and dies minor deaths every summer between television seasons. But the apotheosis of this sort of dramatic hyperextension I will illustrate by example:

Hiding my theft behind a convenient cloud of exhaled smoke, I recently availed myself of my roommate’s copy of “The Complete Prose Tales of Alexandr Sergeyevitch Pushkin”. The first tale, written in 1827, is “The Moor of Peter the Great”, which tells the story of the Tsar’s adopted godson, Ibrahim. He, though well-bred, genteel and charming, nevertheless must endure as an oddity in the courtly society of Europe due to his misplaced ancestry. Peter, blind to anything but his godson’s talents and fine qualities, arranges a match between Ibrahim and the (rather unwilling) young daughter of a Russian nobleman. By chapter seven, matters are coming to a head, when we are suddenly informed by parenthetical:

(Pushkin never completed this story.)

That makes 181 years and counting.

Strangely enough, boredom was never an issue, because he always had something to think about. In fact, his urge to ponder the question became terrifying at times, and he would emerge after a five-hour binge of scribbling in his notebooks sweating, his mind still buzzing with prospects, with outlandish visions for the future.
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Every so often I dig through my home directory and come across some tidbit of writing I began but never managed to complete. Here’s a sample I just stumbled across (fully equipped with abortive ending):

It was precisely because Viola was not interested in cleanliness that they acquired a robot. Not that she was slovenly; rather, she did not make a habit of cleaning. Maintaining a clean home is a task requiring some measure of dedication, and Viola lacked such fastidiousness.

As it happened, the matter was taken out of her hands. “After all, a Muslim must be clean,” Ayoub told her. And he went out and bought a robot. In retrospect, Viola wished that she had had the foresight to make this move preemptively, because Ayoub, being a man, lacked the necessary insight, and came home with an utterly unsuitable model.
At this time, their son Afzal was three years old, an age at which scattering objects across the floor is a favorite activity. Viola had assumed the mother’s duty of cleaning up after her progeny, but gleefully announced her retirement from this line of work after the arrival of the robot.

It was a dome-shaped thing about the size of a bulldog, made of some glossy black material. It had no apparent inlets or appendages. Viola, who had never owned an autonomous cleaner before, took its simplicity to be a sign of sophistication, and for several weeks was greatly enamored of it, even after it ate a pair of her husband’s slippers.

But in that much time, she noted its major flaw: though it was quite intelligent and could distinguish between a jelly donut smeared across the carpet and a chocolate éclair smeared across the carpet, and was equipped with all the accoutrements necessary to deal with these diverse scenarios, it was guilty of the error of omission. When it made the decision that a particular bit of chaos was not a mess, it would diffidently ignore it. So piles of Afzal’s toys quickly began to accumulate around the house, like various archeological excavations. The robot lacked the capacity to tidy: it could not return things to their place.

Like a good Catholic, Viola immediately assumed the fault was her own, and spent many evenings poring over the robot’s instructional manual, searching for the setting or mode that would cause it to begin tidying. When she at last realized that no such configuration was possible, and the robot was well and truly impaired, she felt the shock of betrayal.

She confronted Ayoub with this scandalous information and succeeded in precipitating a major crisis in their young marriage. He remarked on her laziness, and she remarked on his enforcement of antiquated gender roles. In the end, after many tears and one hurled vase (promptly cleaned up by the attentive and oblivious robot) and even the threat of a phone call to Ayoub’s mother, Viola ended up sleeping on the living room couch, and Ayoub ended up sleeping under the kitchen table. Afzal had the bed all to himself.

The next day they both repented and made up with many sweet kisses and murmured apologies. She made him tea and he made her crevettes-a-l’ail, and they never spoke of the robot again. Both of them began picking up Afzal’s messes. In time Afzal himself outgrew the phase when such profligate mess-making was considered permissible, and he had to pick up his own messes.

This state of affairs lasted two years, until one day, when the aging cleaner ate two pairs of slippers in a single morning, tried to gorge itself on a newly-acquired kitten, and was beaten to death by an outraged Ayoub.

The purchase of a replacement was taken as a given; by this time they had acquired the habit of luxury. Viola insisted on being solely responsible for the selection of this new cleaner, and Ayoub gave way without argument. He was more than a little shocked by the sudden derangement of the device, and felt a bit of shame for having purchased it. And he had not forgotten their fight of a year ago (such things stand out in a young marriage).

Viola found