Ms. Mystery
Seymour Grass
Subject: Ms. Mystery
Date: Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:16 PM
NOTE: This stands revised from the former edition appearing in
alt.fiction.original as "Miss Mystery". The latest continuation of the
story appears after the line of asterisks [* * *] below.
--
Some nights as Seymour arrived downtown after a day of classes, he would be
of a certain frame of mind which would lead to the libertine practice of
letting the allotted time punched into his bus transfer expire, leaving him
free to just be downtown, free of any purpose except to be sort of aimlessly
shopping, not for a shirt or pair of socks, but for circumstance, and so he
would be like the Monopoly player who was "Just Visiting", not "Jail" but
that big statuesque '?' in the Square of Chance where he would be kind of
walking around feeding the pigeons, just waiting for that really great peach
colored card with notice of a Bank Error in his favor, something like that
to turn up sometime, somewhere along the street or in a record shop, a
department store, some café, coffee shop or diner.
For this manner of worthless, time wasteful, largely anarchical malingering
in Free Parking there was notwithstanding perhaps something to be said, some
desire being expressed--not that he'd ever taken pause to consciously
consider the least part of it, this will to meld into the anonymous urban
mass, to merge the tread of his well-scuffed tan suede boots with the pace
of all the busy shining shoe-leather, the glistening vista of sleek
nylon-clad legs, to just move in step with the beat of the street.
In the occasional brush of shoulder, hand or hip, amid all the hustle there
was for this young fellow a fantasy afoot somewhere in the cosmopolitan
crush of it; somewhere in the stream moving among the crowd along this block
or the next there was a certain pair of heel points delicately clicking over
concrete, coming to the verge of the curb just opposite, or of taking a seat
just one stool down the counter or in the booth across from his: she was out
there, a Mystery, demure and dark, but daring him to be ready at first sight
to bear up under a smoldering stare of narrowing eyes able to burn away any
fear and turn an all too often daunting self-consciousness to smoke, and by
that be taken at a glance, upon a parting of lips that speak silently a
force of command to slow him, stop him, back him into the glass to say, "The
jig's up, buster: come quietly now--or else."
Seymour had no way of knowing whether other guys went around having such
fantasies, as little would he know till after he'd studied more psychology
that it was mainly certain types of women with whom he shared that dream.
His best old buddy from high school, Clyde probably never went around having
such erotic abduction fantasies as this, considering especially what a
despicably handsome, precociously mature bastard he was, seeing how he had
to shave twice a day even before he'd hit 17. So, it was Clyde, naturally,
who would always be landing the leading role in all the school plays, and
the leading ladies to go with it, while in the glory of it all, Seymour had
to be content with his role in those plays as just some face in the crowd,
or at best, he'd be dancing in a kilt over swords in Brigadoon near the
wings. And just to think of it, oh the pain of it, the disgusting habit
Clyde had of always winding up with just exactly *that* girl on his arm who
above them all, Seymour would most have liked to have for his own girl.
At least, through it all, the poor boy had at least the compensation of
knowing that of all the guys in school, such a star as Clyde had picked him,
Seymour for his very best pal, and for an introverted sort of guy who never
was out-going enough to become "popular", it was hard not to take a certain
pride in that. Since graduating from high school, they weren't chumming
around together so much, and even though they were attending the same
college, both were now busy with their own separate interests, Clyde with
his spot as singer (or you could say 'crooner') for a Rock n' Roll band that
had even, no less, started playing, for some of the Frosh class sock hops.
Seymour with his interest in folk music and blues was strumming, howling and
stomping in a highly cramped, smoke choked, Student Union so-called "coffee
house". So the two former chums were headed in vectors of increasingly
disparate directions, which were, for Seymour, getting pretty far gone from
Clyde over on Fraternity Row with the "Louie, Louie", the "Wooly-Booly", and
the "Charlie Brown", to be tending toward something a lot more like "Drill
Ye Tarriers, Drill", "John Henry", and the "Ballad of Joe Hill": it came to
a widening, ever the chillier crevasse cracking open in the glacial plane of
what looked cool from one to the other.
So it was going with Veronica too, she who was to his mind, nevertheless,
such a nice person, and yet it seemed they were just not finding that click
of mutual mindedness that meant something like "made for each other" which
just must happen for the rhapsody of romance to begin. They both knew this
relationship for a holding pattern of convenience, seeing especially how she
had all this time been keeping in touch with a boyfriend from high school
who was going to a different college, a guy she had no intention of jilting,
and this had been an understanding between them from the first. It was
accepted by Seymour that he would be acting as a stand-in for this guy to be
a sort of surrogate, a mere toy for Veronica. This he could live with, while
he was all the time keeping a constant eye out for his Miss Right.
Meanwhile Veronica was a good pal; she even came over the night before
deadline to type up that term paper on the history of the American penal
system, which is a pretty fine thing to be doing for a mere sex toy, an
object like Seymour. And that's the kind of person she was, very, very
nice, decent, well brought up, very Varsity, not in the least way cheap,
lurid, lascivious or for all that, mysterious, interesting, or essentially
alluring to Seymour's highly prurient interest. She was a sweet kid even if
she was given, only just of late to an occasional discouraging word
concerning that 'scroungy' looking beard and mustache he'd been sporting to
sort of off-set the effect of that Joe College looking haircut. She just
wanted to know, by the way, on that subject, why he would want to go around
looking like some "Maynard G. Krebbs" of a deadbeat, given the choice that
is, for something more clean cut like "Dobie Gillis", what with his "Many
Loves", and all?
Final exams came and then they were gone, with a B+ for his term paper, plus
a B for that course in Criminology, to offset the nadir tending force of
three C's and a D for the others. Even so, the pressure was off, leaving
only the guilt attending that low grade in Adolescent Psychology, a course
which much to Seymour's disappointment and extreme dismay had roundly
ignored the least passing mention of Freud, Jung and Adler, only to replace
them with that rat and cat tormenting, veritably dart-tailed, cloven-hoofed,
be-horned Satan of Behaviorist Psychology whose name and method being
beneath mention brought to Seymour's most ungrateful attention an infernally
endless study in the chemistry of the human endocrine system, which went a
long way toward explaining why teenagers get zits.
So there was that; it was par for the course, and demonstrated in the
laboratory by experiments which nevertheless--or so Seymour was coarsely
informed, in response to his query in a challenge for "proof"--had not
resulted in any attempt to produce pimples on a rat, white, brown, pink,
adolescent, male, female or otherwise, and certainly not in order to observe
empirically whether or not "teenage angst" might be observed in rats as that
might be statistically correlated to the experience of human teenagers with
zits plus angst.
So, there was that D be-smudging his record, but Seymour would not let it
dampen in the least way the jollification he felt lightening his spirits in
the season of Goodwill toward Men now come upon all but for a few, like the
strippers, bouncers, musicians and bartenders down at Jack Ruby's Carousel
Club in Dallas, ever since, just of late, their beloved boss had, for once,
gone not "Just Visiting".
* * * * * * * * * *
Seymour and Veronica rode home together for the holidays, third class coach
via Great Northern to the big city two hundred miles to the south. They got
together for a few dates, the last of which turned out to be the most
momentous event thus far in Seymour's life. Veronica had managed to get the
use of her mother's car, and after taking in a James Bond movie downtown
they drove over to Lake Calhoun and parked along Shoreview Drive.
Since they had never till this night found themselves in a place where they
could be entirely alone while enjoying their amorous pastimes, they had
always been restricted to making out standing up until they got tired and
had to go sit down somewhere, like out on the steps of the library--and then
it was back to some secluded corridor in the stacks. Now for the first time,
on this date they had obtained some space all to themselves, and wasn't it
just like Seymour's life and luck, that Veronica's mother had to have bought
herself a Volkswagen?
There, on a public thoroughfare by a lake with ice magnified luminance of
the full moon brightly glittering in the window frost generated of much hot
breath, once again as always there was no prospect of being able to get
stretched out against each other, not even by so much as standing between
old dusty folios of Milton on the one side, quartos of Dryden on the other,
under which conditions they could at least have enjoyment of their ritual
dance, that marvelous mash of smashing pubic bones one upon the other which
is the thing that life, love and liberty, let alone lurking in the library
is all about.
What with that moon conspiring with ice to turn darkness to light, there was
also that gearshift between them acting its staunch duty as chaperone but
really, the backseat was not an option, it being a public street, and
besides, cold as it was, they needed to start the engine once in a while to
get the heater going, so . . .
Their love-famished lips had met and gearshift be damned, the passion of
possibility was omnipresent as it was omnipotent if not sort of omnivorous
and omnidirectional as well, while the enforced separation made the hunger
in their bodies all the more fiercely intense. So, it was hands, hands
across the divide, hands reaching for the kiss that only belly buttons can
provide. By force of necessity, Seymour dared what he'd never tried
before--and the closer he crept on five little feet of fingertips toward
that source of the warmest of all warmth, the more amazed was he to see how
his progress was being permitted to proceed unimpeded. Thrilled he was, and
far beyond being merely pleased to see how his advance up over the tight
expanse of denim had gone without a hitch, slap or scratch and how
astonishing to feel the summit, the Everst peak of his climb looming ever
nearer, as without even so much as a shout of "Open Sesame!" the two blue
canyon walls were parting for the magic Aladdin's Lamp rub of that damp hot
brass.
What a marvel to hear with the song of that zipper, the wind in her breath,
to feel beneath his touch the subtle pressure upward, yet then the
urgency--as if by the merest tug of a rein such sleek flanks might be moved
to buck, up, up, all the way up to the face of the very moon.
No, it was a flashlight, and there was a gruff blast of "Alright! What's
going on in there?"
"Omigod, Seymour." Veronica's whisper came sharp to his ear, and she being
petrified, he pulled her blouse down over her lap for her, then his
shirttail down over his own; he reached over to turn the window down a
crack. He peeked through and squinted against the light. "Oh, hello there,
Officer." Seymour tried a big smile.
--
JP David http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8
PButler111
>From: "Seymour Grass" dadd...@yahoo.com
>Date: 10/24/2004 2:21 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <2u2dljF...@uni-berlin.de>
>
>From: "Seymour Grass" <dadd...@yahoo.com>
>Subject: Ms. Mystery
>Date: Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:16 PM
>
>NOTE: This stands revised from the former edition appearing in
>alt.fiction.original as "Miss Mystery". The latest continuation of the
>story appears after the line of asterisks [* * *] below.
>--
>
>Some nights as Seymour arrived downtown after a day of classes, he would be
>of a certain frame of mind which would lead to the libertine practice of
>letting the allotted time punched into his bus transfer expire, leaving him
>free to just be downtown, free of any purpose except to be sort of aimlessly
>shopping, not for a shirt or pair of socks, but for circumstance, and so he
>would be like the Monopoly player who was "Just Visiting", not "Jail" but
>that big statuesque '?' in the Square of Chance where he would be kind of
>walking around feeding the pigeons, just waiting for that really great peach
>colored card with notice of a Bank Error in his favor, something like that
>to turn up sometime, somewhere along the street or in a record shop, a
>department store, some café, coffee shop or diner.
Was this your winning entry in the longest run-on sentence competition?
Seymour Grass
"PButler111" <pbutl...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041024165349...@mb-m12.aol.com...
| >Subject: Ms. Mystery
| >From: "Seymour Grass" dadd...@yahoo.com
| >Date: 10/24/2004 2:21 PM Central Daylight Time
| >Message-id: <2u2dljF...@uni-berlin.de>
| >
| >
| >Some nights as Seymour arrived downtown after a day of classes, he would
be
| >of a certain frame of mind which would lead to the libertine practice of
| >letting the allotted time punched into his bus transfer expire, leaving
him
| >free to just be downtown, free of any purpose except to be sort of
aimlessly
as one might say, for circumstance, and so he
| >would be like the Monopoly player who was "Just Visiting", not "Jail" but
| >that big statuesque '?' in the Square of Chance where he would be kind of
| >walking around feeding the pigeons, just waiting for that really great
peach
| >colored card with notice of a Bank Error in his favor, something like
that
| >to turn up sometime, somewhere along the street or in a record shop, a
| >department store, some café, coffee shop or diner.
|
| Was this your winning entry in the longest run-on sentence competition?
How typical of you, Patty Baby, that you should be yet so remarkably
ill-read as not to recognize the difference between a run-on sentence--a
chain of clauses connected not by thought, but by flagrant overuse of
conjunctives and a sentence that is just plain long. In that entire
sentence there is but one instance of the word "and"--and there just ain't
no "if's" or "but's" to it--you are dead wrong to label it "run-on".
Get a copy of something by Faulkner or D.H. Lawrence ferthecrissake . . .
"He was anxious for his future, and anxious for his place in the world, he
was poor, and suddenly wasteful in spite of all his tension of economy, and
suddenly spiteful in spite of all his ingratiating efforts and suddenly
ungrateful in spite of all his burden of gratitude, and suddenly rude in
spite of all his good manners, and suddenly detestable in spite of all his
suave, courtier-like amiability." --D. H. Lawrence, elegantly in pursuit of
the arcane art of the "run-on sentence."
As Mrs. Dorothy Parker once said, "Brevity is the soul of lingerie" . . .
not literature.
"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is
unreadable and literature is not read."
-Oscar Wilde-
--
From: "Seymour Grass" <dadd...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Ms. Mystery
Date: Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:21 PM
NOTE: This stands revised from the former edition appearing in
alt.fiction.original as "Miss Mystery". The latest continuation of the
story appears after the line of asterisks [* * *] below.
--
Some nights as Seymour arrived downtown after a day of classes, he would be
of a certain frame of mind which would lead to the libertine practice of
letting the allotted time punched into his bus transfer expire, leaving him
free to just be downtown, free of any purpose except to be sort of aimlessly
shopping, not for a shirt or pair of socks, but as one might say, for
circumstance, and so he would be like the Monopoly player who was "Just
Visiting", not "Jail" but that big statuesque '?' in the Square of Chance
where he would be kind of walking around feeding the pigeons, just waiting
for that really great peach colored card with notice of a Bank Error in his
favor, something like that to turn up sometime, somewhere along the street
or in a record shop, a department store, some café or diner.
PButler111
>From: "Seymour Grass" dadd...@yahoo.com
>Date: 10/24/2004 6:10 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <2u2r2mF...@uni-berlin.de>
Get a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style ferthecrissake (whatever that means
-- even your words know no boundaries). If someone -- anyone -- is so bored by
your opening graph that the biggest thrill they get from it is the hunt for the
first period, maybe your writing -- like your punctuation -- is somehow
lacking.
Seymour Grass
| >|
| >| Was this your winning entry in the longest run-on sentence competition?
| >
| >How typical of you, Patty Baby, that you should be yet so remarkably
| >ill-read as not to recognize the difference between a run-on sentence--a
| >chain of clauses connected not by thought, but by flagrant overuse of
| >conjunctives and a sentence that is just plain long. In that entire
| >sentence there is but one instance of the word "and"--and there just
ain't
| >no "if's" or "but's" to it--you are dead wrong to label it "run-on".
| >
| >Get a copy of something by Faulkner or D.H. Lawrence ferthecrissake . . .
|
| Get a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style ferthecrissake (whatever that
means
| -- even your words know no boundaries).
This Fourth Edition of the Little, Brown Handbook here in my desk has been
serving that purpose just fine for a long time, thank you. That being said,
however, it may come as a big surprise to you Patsy Cakes, to learn just now
all of a sudden that when it comes to matters of style, well, it's kind of
like the difference between painting and painting by numbers--don't you
know? It's not that the real painter can't paint by numbers, not that he or
she doesn't know how that's done, not that such writers don't know all the
rules about which color goes with such number.
It's like this: you can't expect somebody like Picasso in his Cubist period
to be painting according to the dictates of style that define what is the
art of Impressionism. I'm sure you didn't understand that, which you will
prove by getting all tricky when you say, "So I suppose you think you're
another Picasso?" So let me save you the trouble: Even Picasso considered
himself to be "another Picasso" in the hour that his Blue Period came to an
end.
But you didn't follow that either, did you, dearie? We don't all of us
strive to be just competent or merely adequate at the craft, Patty, where
such a writer as yourself perceives that a stringent observation of some
standardized set of rules (for style, not grammar, mind you, for an
adherence to that goes without saying for any writer) will be your guarantee
of success in a popular market. Some writers are moved to discover new and
different, if not better means of expression . . .
"Painting is stronger than I am. It makes me do what it wishes."-Pablo
Picasso
And what "manual of style" do you suppose he was following when he painted
*Les Demoiselles d' Avignon*? There was no such manual, Patty my dear--not
for the artist who is writing the new book on a new style.
But that will make no sense to a person who reads the work of another not
for the rhapsody that words formed into ideas can play to the mind's ear,
because what gets a reader like Ms. Patty off is as you put it . . .
| If someone -- anyone -- is so bored by
| your opening graph that the biggest thrill they get from it is the hunt
for the
| first period, maybe your writing -- like your punctuation -- is somehow
| lacking.
For one such as yourself, you poor thing, of that there can be no doubt. ;-)
But that being said, perhaps you'll be pleased to see if your criticism of
that paragraph has had it's effect . . .
--
From: "Seymour Grass" <dadd...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Ms. Mystery
Date: Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:21 PM
Some nights as Seymour arrived downtown after a day of classes, he would be
of a certain frame of mind which would lead to the libertine practice of
letting the allotted time punched into his bus transfer expire, leaving him
free to just be downtown, free of any purpose except to be sort of aimlessly
shopping, not for a shirt or pair of socks, but for--shall we
say--circumstance? Yes, and then he would be like the Monopoly player who
was "Just Visiting", not the "Jail" but that big statuesque '?' in the
Square of Chance where he would be kind of walking around sort of feeding
the pigeons, just waiting for that really great peach colored card with
notice of a "Bank Error' in his favor, something like that to turn up
sometime, somewhere along the street or in a record shop, department store,
some café or diner.
For this manner of worthless, time wasteful, largely anarchical malingering
in Free Parking there was notwithstanding something perhaps to be said, some
desire being expressed--not that he'd ever taken pause to consciously
consider the least part of it, this will to meld into the anonymous urban
mass, to merge the tread of his well-scuffed tan suede boots with the pace
of all the busy shining shoe-leather, the glistening vista of sleek
nylon-clad legs, to just move in step with the beat of the street.
In the occasional brush of shoulder, hand or hip, amid all the hustle there
was for this young fellow a fantasy afoot in the cosmopolitan crush of it;
somewhere in the stream moving among the crowd along this block or the next
there was a certain pair of heel points delicately clicking over concrete,
coming to the verge of the curb just opposite, or approaching the chrome
pillar of a stool just one place down along the counter, or across an aisle
lifting from the floor with a whisper of nylon as knee crosses knee: in
sharp heels, black and shining, out there along that street was a Mystery,
demure and dark, on the way soon to be daring him at first sight to bear up
under a smoldering stare of narrowing eyes able to burn through fear and
turn an all too often daunting self-consciousness to smoke, smoke curling
upon a parting of lips silently speaking a force to slow him, stop him, back
him into the glass and say, "The jig's up, buster: come quietly now--or
PButler111
>Message-id: <2u3ob8F...@uni-berlin.de>
>
>
>"PButler111" <pbutl...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20041024192238...@mb-m14.aol.com...
>
>| >|
>| >| Was this your winning entry in the longest run-on sentence competition?
>| >
>| >How typical of you, Patty Baby, that you should be yet so remarkably
>| >ill-read as not to recognize the difference between a run-on sentence--a
>| >chain of clauses connected not by thought, but by flagrant overuse of
>| >conjunctives and a sentence that is just plain long. In that entire
>| >sentence there is but one instance of the word "and"--and there just
>ain't
>| >no "if's" or "but's" to it--you are dead wrong to label it "run-on".
>| >
>| >Get a copy of something by Faulkner or D.H. Lawrence ferthecrissake . . .
>|
>| Get a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style ferthecrissake (whatever that
>means
>| -- even your words know no boundaries).
>
>This Fourth Edition of the Little, Brown Handbook here in my desk has been
>serving that purpose just fine for a long time, thank you. That being said,
>however, it ma
Sorry, I had to cut you off here. Your posts are simply too long. Unlike you,
I'm a working writer who doesn't have time to wade through a lot of garbage to
try to figure out what someone's trying to say, if anything. If you can't
capture your reader's interest in the first sentence, you're fucked. And you,
dear, are the very definition of "fucked."
Seymour Grass
| >This Fourth Edition of the Little, Brown Handbook here in my desk has
been
| >serving that purpose just fine for a long time, thank you. That being
said,
| >however, it ma
|
| Sorry, I had to cut you off here.
Ah yes, the old Lorena Bobbit approach.
|Your posts are simply too long.
Not "long" dearie, "well endowed".
| Unlike you,
| I'm a working writer . . .
My sympathy is with you, you poor stiff. For me, it always seemed to come
just sort of naturally--easy as pie as you might say. First article I ever
sold was a corrected, hand-written first draft. But for you, a person who
must work, work, work at it, I'm sure you do well to have your style manual,
i.e. if you want to write with any style at all--better the Chicago, than
nothing.
| who doesn't have time to wade through a lot of garbage . . .
Yes, I see what you mean. I like that you "teach by example." Stunning.
"A book is a mirror, if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to
peer out." - Georg Lichtenberg
--
As further revised and emended . . .
From: "Seymour Grass" <dadd...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Ms. Mystery
Date: Sunday, October 24, 2004 2:21 PM
NOTE: The latest continuation of the story appears after the line of
asterisks [* * *] below.
--
Some nights as Seymour arrived downtown after a day of classes, he would be
upon a parting of lips silently speaking with a force to slow him, stop him,
back him into the glass and say, "The jig's up, buster: come quietly now--or
else."
Whether other guys went around having such fantasies, little would the young
student of psychology yet know that it was mainly certain types of women
with whom he shared that dream. Seymou's best old buddy from high school,
Clyde probably never went around having such erotic abduction fantasies,
despicably handsome bastard that he was, so precociously mature that he had
to shave twice a day before he'd even hit 17. So, who would always be
landing the leading role in all the school plays, and the leading ladies to
go with it? Clyde. And who meanwhile in the glory of it all, had to be
content with his bit part as just some face in the crowd, or at best, over a
kilt, dancing in *Brigadoon* near the wings? Seymour. And there he would be
to see Clyde always winding up with just exactly *that* girl on his arm who
above them all, he would most have liked for his own girl.
At least, through it all, young Seymour had at least the compensation of
knowing that of all the guys in school, such a star as Clyde had picked him,
as his very best pal, and for an introverted sort of guy who never was
out-going enough to become "popular", it was hard not to take a certain
pride in that. But now, since graduating high school, they weren't chumming
around together so much, and though attending the same college, both were
now busy with their own separate interests, Clyde with his spot as singer or
you might say 'crooner' for a Rock n' Roll band--one that had even, no less,
started playing, for some of the Frosh class sock hops. And out there ever
yet at the wings on the stage of existence was Seymour, strumming, howling
and stomping in a highly cramped, smoke choked, Student Union so-called
"coffee house". That the two former chums were headed in vectors of
increasingly disparate directions, was just the way of it with Clyde over
there on Fraternity Row grooving on the old "Louie, Louie", the
"Wooly-Booly", and the "Charlie Brown", while Seymour was gettting with the
"Drill Ye Tarriers, Drill", "John Henry", and the "Ballad of Joe Hill": it
had come to a widening, ever the chillier crevasse cracking open in the
glacial plane of what looked to be the most cool from the eyes of the one
young man to the other.
PButler111
>Message-id: <2u4qrjF...@uni-berlin.de>
>
>
>"PButler111" <pbutl...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20041025103619...@mb-m17.aol.com...
>| >This Fourth Edition of the Little, Brown Handbook here in my desk has
>been
>| >serving that purpose just fine for a long time, thank you. That being
>said,
>| >however, it ma
>|
>| Sorry, I had to cut you off here.
>
>Ah yes, the old Lorena Bobbit approach.
>
>|Your posts are simply too long.
>
>Not "long" dearie, "well endowed".
>
>| Unlike you,
>| I'm a working w
Sorry, if you want your message read, you'd better learn to be concise.
Grande Mal
. Unlike you,
> I'm a working writer who doesn't have time to wade through a lot of
Yeesh.
Charley Reed
The story wasn't all that interesting; it seemed to me just a kid
wanders the streets for no reason and then tries to fuck some college
chick. I lost concentration in the first sentence four times before
finally reading the whole thing through. The ending came out of nowhere,
and in a bad way. It's not horrendous though, so overall you get a D-.
Charley Reed
writing if it takes hours of meditation to be able to follow it?
If you had a following, maybe I'd back off, call your writing an artform
that I just don't like. But trust me, you're no Picasso.
BTW, manuals piss me off. It's people like Seymour here who write those
things.
Seymour Grass
"Charley Reed" <reed...@stiny.com> wrote in message
news:LOGdnRgutJE...@telcove.net...
| Well, the content was pretty trite . . .
So one may say, but absent an offer of proof, quotation of something
glaringly "trite" from the text, what is to stop anyone from suspecting that
"trite" is just an ill-understood term that some ill-read people of dim
perception use to describe the material that they cannot comprehend?
| and the writing gave me a headache.
That's one of its compensations for the author of prose like this, that it
should do that for a certain sort of 'reader'. ;-)
So very pleased.
Thanks for the report.
--
JP David http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
"A book is a mirror, if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to
Seymour Grass
| What's the point of painting if nobody cares?
Are you including yourself under the heading of "nobody?" Yes, indeed, it's
plain to see that you are. And since you are by your own definition,
*nobody* why should the said "painter" care whether some nobody cares or
doesn't care?
| What's the point of
| writing if it takes hours of meditation to be able to follow it?
Ever hear of Shakespeare, Dante, Proust, Joyce, Faulkner?
|
| If you had a following, maybe I'd back off, call your writing an artform
| that I just don't like. But trust me, you're no Picasso.
Trust who? Mr. Nobody?
Ever hear of Vladimir Nabokov? Ever try to get through the first chapter of
Lolita with that Philistine attitude of yours? Go ahead, you do that, read
that and don't come back around here speaking of Picasso or anything else
until you've done that, because *trust me*--you'll only be hearing the echo
of your own snot hitting the walk, Mr. Nobody.
--
John P David http://jpdavid.freewebspace.com/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/m/520b8/
"No less amusing was it to envisage the inevitable pack of crooks and
ninnies abusing the smiling marble, and ill with envy, maddened by their own
mediocrity, rushing in pattering hordes to the lemming's doom but presently
all running back from the opposite side of the stage, having missed not only
the point of my book but also their rodential Gadara." Vladimir Nabokov:
_Look at the Harlequins_
Seymour Grass
|
| Sorry, if you want your message read, you'd better learn to be concise.
Oh just dry up. It's not like we haven't seen the "rave reviews" for *your*
latest masterpiece at Amazon. I'll reserve judgment on the book till I've
seen it, but not on this: how could you have been so incredibly dim as to
have been posting here under your published name? You got some kind of
Jeanne d'Arc complex going for you there or something?
How stupid can anyone get?
"It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it.
-Oscar Wilde-
Seymour Grass
"PButler111" <pbutl...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20041025150028...@mb-m22.aol.com...
|
| Sorry, if you want your message read, you'd better learn to be concise.
Oh just dry up. It's not like we haven't seen the "rave reviews" for *your*
latest masterpiece at Amazon. I'll reserve judgment on the book till I've
seen it, but not on this: how could you have been so incredibly dim as to
have been posting here under your published name? You got some kind of
Jeanne d'Arc complex going for you there or something?
--
Newly Revised--but a word to the wise: if you're looking for some light
reading, something along the lines of Harry Potter or a biography of Barry
Manilow, you know, puffy, airy, yuppie stuff like Star Trek, Jaws, Lord of
the Rings, Seinfeld or Cheers, Gilligan's Island and the like, well, just
one more time--a word to the wise: 'Oh the shark has, pretty teeth dear,
and he shows them, pearly white, but just a jackknife has old . . ."
From: "Seymour Grass" <dadd...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Ms. Mystery
Date: Monday, October 25, 2004 12:18 PM
". . . and he keeps it, out of sight."
under a smoldering stare of narrowing eyes, ember eyes able to seer through
fear and turn an all too often daunting self-consciousness to smoke, smoke
curling upon a parting of lips silently speaking with a force to slow him,
stop him, back him into the glass and say, "The jig's up, buster: come
quietly now--or else."
Whether other guys went around having such fantasies, little would this one
know, nor yet that it was mainly certain types of women with whom he shared
the delicacies of such an exquisite perversion. Seymour's best buddy from
high school probably never went walking around adrift in such erotic
abduction wishes, despicably handsome bastard that he was, old Clyde, a guy
so precociously mature that he'd been shaving twice a day since a day or two
before he'd even hit 17.
So, who would always be landing the leading role in all the school plays,
and the leading ladies to go with it? Clyde. And who meanwhile in the
glory of it all, had to be content with his crumby little bit part as just
some face in the crowd, or under a tam-o-shanter, doing the jig in a kilt,
over near the wings? Seymour. But there, again was Clyde, the
Irish/Italian star of *Brigadoon* under the colored spot, standing with arm
extended over the footlights, his voice raised in song: "What a day this has
been, what a rare mood I'm in, why it's almost like being in . . ." any
girl's pants he wanted, for he did indeed have his pick of any girl in the
junior and senior classes, old Clyde did--and the worst thing was the way he
was always winding up with just exactly *that* girl on his arm who above
them all, Seymour would most have liked for his own.
At least, through it all, there was the compensation of knowing that of all
the guys in school, Clyde had picked him, Seymour to be his very best pal,
and so it was hard not to take a certain pride in that. But now, since
graduating high school, they weren't chumming around together so much
anymore, and despite attending the same college, both were now busy with
their own separate interests. But there was Clyde, sunning himself yet
again in the limelight as lead singer for a Rock n' Roll band--one that had
even been playing for most of the Frosh class sock hops--no less, Seymour
had been discovering a whole new venue far better suited to his own style
such as there was much of anything yet to it, as he took his place Friday
and Saturday nights strumming, howling and stomping in a highly cramped,
smoke choked, Student Union so-called "coffee house".
But that the two former chums were headed in vectors of increasingly
disparate directions, had just become the way of it, with Seymour
gravitating toward a very, sort of Spanish Civil War spirit of thing, to
find *his* thing among the Lost Generation(s) of the past, in aesthetic
space which lay also with the forever striking coal miners of West Virginia,
who by force of their struggle managed as a by-product of it to have
inspired in Seymour a taste for that "Nine Pound Hammer", or "Dark as a
Dungeon" sort of thing, and this, just all of this was happening while Clyde
remained out in the surf and the sun of Fraternity Row grooving down with
"Little Honda", "Louie, Louie", and the "Wooly-Booly": it had come to a
widening, ever the chillier crevasse cracking open in the glacial plane of
what looked to be the most cool from the eyes of the one young lad to the
other.
So it was going with Veronica too, she who was to his mind, nevertheless,
such a nice person, and yet it seemed they were just not finding that click
of mutual mindedness that meant something like "made for each other" which
just must happen for the rhapsody of romance to begin. They both knew this
relationship for a holding pattern of convenience, seeing especially how she
had all this time been keeping in touch with a boyfriend from high school
who was going to a different college, a guy she had no intention of
jilting--but this had been an understanding between them from the first. It
Seymour Grass
PButler111
>Message-id: <2u6b5pF...@uni-berlin.de>
>
>
>"PButler111" <pbutl...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20041025150028...@mb-m22.aol.com...
>|
>| Sorry, if you want your message read, you'd better learn to be concise.
>
>Oh just dry up. It's not like we haven't seen the "rave reviews" for *your*
>latest masterpiece at Amazon.
And what was said about your latest masterpiece on Amazon? Oh, that's right --
you don't have one.
I'll reserve judgment on the book till I've
>seen it, but not on this: how could you have been so incredibly dim as to
>have been posting here under your published name? You got some kind of
>Jeanne d'Arc complex going for you there or something?
My "published name" is my name. If you want to say something that you're too
ashamed to put your name to, then perhaps you shouldn't be saying it.
>How stupid can anyone get?
I guess we'll have to use you for that measurement.
PButler111
>Message-id: <2u6cooF...@uni-berlin.de>
>
>
>"PButler111" <pbutl...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20041025150028...@mb-m22.aol.com...
>|
>| Sorry, if you want your message read, you'd better learn to be concise.
>
>Oh just dry up. It's not like we haven't seen the "rave reviews" for *your*
>latest masterpiece at Amazon. I'll reserve judgment on the book till I've
>seen it, but not on this: how could you have been so incredibly dim as to
>have been posting here under your published name? You got some kind of
>Jeanne d'Arc complex going for you there or something?
>--
>
>Newly Revised--but a word to the wise: if you're looking for some light
>reading, something along the lines of Harry Potter or a biography of Barry
>Manilow, you know, puffy, airy, yuppie stuff
Aren't you the person who just got done writing, " I'll reserve judgment on the
book till I've seen it"? Wow. From zero to hypocritical zero in just one
post.
Charley Reed
get people to read it?
Charley Reed
Charley Reed
like it is immediately a "philistine" or some crap like that. Good
writers knew when to take advice. You are a god among men, don't let
anyone ever attack your over-inflated ego, lest it come crashing down.
You are not as talented as you think you are. You got some talent, but
it'll be wasted as long as you keep being such a long-hair.
By the way, you're a published author, right? I'd like to know what
work you've had published.