Atlanta Nights
My original plan for this evening was to write a measured, judicious review of A. S. Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories. This, however, is not that review. In fact, what I'm about to write is neither measured nor judicious. For I have read a book of such cosmic awfulness, such cloacal badness, such unmitigated horror, that I can do nothing but sit numbly at the keyboard, futilely nursing ribs sore with hysterical laughter.
You have got to buy this book. Pronto.
As regular readers of Making Light know, Atlanta Nights is, in fact, meant to be the quintessence of godawful. (Follow the links for an in-depth explanation of what game is afoot.) Both editors and college professors will find themselves simultaneously giggling and groaning at the misused apostrophes, misplaced modifiers, tense shifts, run-on sentences, and erratic accidentals. Pronouns switch gender in the middle of a sentence. The prose practically swarms with botched word choices. The formatting is beyond fascinating. And I haven't even mentioned the story yet! Characters kick the bucket, only to return a few pages later--or, even more bizarrely, eat ham sandwiches on one page, then declare themselves vegans; there's a wedding in the middle, except that nobody seems to remember it afterwards; the plot lingers somewhere in the vicinity of a Hawking black hole; someone undergoes a miraculous sex change; and so on. At random intervals, the authors toss in "social commentary" (sort of bargain-basement Marxism, except when a libertarian moment creeps in), noir, and would-be softcore porn. Let's not forget the delightfully inept handling of terminology relating to everything from business mergers to computers to French cuisine. And you'll thrill to the glory that is Chapter 17, given that it is also Chapter 4.
There's ever so much more. Since the analytical faculties falter and die when faced with a book like this, I can only offer some select quotations. (All typos reproduce the originals.)
I try to keep this blog PG-13, but I've never encountered erotica quite like this before:
As I felt his missile seeking my silo with all the power of American know-how behind it, I readied for the first strike. (91)
This exchange achieves real profundity, I think:
"I'm sorry, Callie," Yvonne sighed sorrowfully. "I wish I could help you but I have my own green pastures to think about. Roberto and I--what we have been a beautiful thing. A truly beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing, and I can't risk losing such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing."
Callie eyes narrowed, so imperceptibly that no one even noticed. "Even for a friend?" she warned.
"You're a beautiful friend," Yvonne sighed. "But what Roberto and I share are more beautifully beautiful than our commonly beautiful friendship." (195)
Chapter 34 appears to have vaguely Joycean aspirations (according to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, it's actually the product of a "text generator that had been fed some earlier chapters"):
I know I was hungry, and impelling him lying naked. She slowly made for a man could join you I know what I ought to take you probably should have. He wants it worriedly. About think what to wear? (246)
And then, there's a moment that seems like a bad hangover from Moby-Dick:
Usually he caressed the hamburger like a lover, loving the way the soft red meat squished yieldingly between his hands and the sensuous sucking sounds it made when he pulled his hands away once he got the round shapes just the way he wanted them, not too thick and not too thin, not too wide and not too small, but just right, like the Three Bears, except it was hamburger and not porridge. (79)
I'll end with a paragraph from Chapter 10, which must have been written by 1776's Richard Henry Lee:
Swiftly, she sveltely walks up tot he bar and smoothly orders a Bloody Mary. The bartender sagaciously nods. He competently takes a crystal glass. He swiftly gets the cold ice and put it in the empty glass. Consequently, he gets the imported, foreign vodka and put it in the glass with the red, opaque tomato juice. He sticks a fair wedge of easy lemon on the edge of it and promptly gives her it. (66)