Faux Faulkner

July 23, 2003 6:37 AM

"GOLDILOCKS. Slim blond avatar of unreasoning womankind: who loved not the porridge itself, nor even the act of receiving it from whatever unknown animal might have been responsible for its preparation..."

From the winning submission of the Faux Faulkner contest. Also check out Faux Hemingway.
posted by Pinwheel (11 comments total)

Fecundfertile primoprogenitive matriarch of the clan, who each day carelessly and without ratiocination made the beds and prepared the bowls of liquefied cereal, forgetting in her imbecility that not only her husband and child but she herself, and indeed all others of her species, were carnivores.

Sorry to regurgitate, but that is class.
posted by Frasermoo at 6:56 AM on July 23, 2003

I, troglodyte, wept.
posted by Ryvar at 6:56 AM on July 23, 2003

The 2002 Hemingway winner:

She had yelled at him that time, screaming terrible things in that way women do when you have broken their trust and trampled on their hearts and urinated on their pillow. Bad dog, she’d said.
posted by coelecanth at 7:38 AM on July 23, 2003

I'm not impressed with the 2003 winners ("I can no longer remember the subject of my sentence"? "the spike heels making her walk funny like the picadors when they stuck those things in your hump"? This is high school stuff), but the 2002 faux-Hem coelecanth links to is classic.
posted by languagehat at 8:18 AM on July 23, 2003

Nothing beats Hemingway's answer to why the chicken crossed the road: "To die, in the rain."

I love that one.
posted by tommasz at 9:36 AM on July 23, 2003

no one can be perfect, language hat

furthermore it's not high school stuff esp if English were taught poorly, i.e. no creative writing - altho I do dislike the picador quote, however I did not read its corresponding article

tommasz, that is a great quote
posted by firestorm at 10:35 AM on July 23, 2003

I think writing may well be impossible to teach.

Reading certainly was taught poorly

creative writing was nonexistent - altho there was once such a project, it was for AP, of whom only a few were natural creative writers (I did not make AP, in fact I've failed English and am proud of it ^^)

Literary criticism is the most useless of pursuits - I wonder what are the evolutionary pressures that could create such a mentality willing to embark on such a thing
posted by firestorm at 10:38 AM on July 23, 2003

I wonder what are the evolutionary pressures that could create such a mentality willing to embark on such a thing.

Well, we only have a certain ammount of time on Earth with which to read. I imagine criticism was initially intended to help us determine which works were worth our time.
posted by Pinwheel at 11:13 AM on July 23, 2003

no one can be perfect, language hat

In case you hadn't noticed, the point of the whole thing is to parody the styles of Faulkner and Hemingway. I was not criticizing the English as such, I was saying they were lousy parodies (the kind we used to produce in high school). I agree that English is taught poorly these days but am not sure how that's relevant.

Literary criticism is the most useless of pursuits - I wonder what are the evolutionary pressures that could create such a mentality willing to embark on such a thing

And yet, here you are, wasting your time criticizing literary criticism. Go figure.
posted by languagehat at 11:41 AM on July 23, 2003

Of course, there's always the automatic hemmingway generator. My choices gave:

It was evening. So this is how it is, this is how it always happens in the evening. Obscenity your evening. With my last 50 Francs I purchased some true and honest orange soda; I took a pull from the bottle. It was good. It burned my mouth and felt good and warm going down my esophagus and into my stomach. From there it went to my kidneys and my bladder, and was good. I remembered then when I last saw Kafka who was still a damn fine writer. It was in Copenhagen and we looked out the windows at the river and drank orange soda in the evening. It was evening and had been evening for some time.

posted by Tlogmer at 3:04 PM on July 23, 2003

I admit that "and I can no longer remember the subject of my sentence" is a cheap shot, but I still enjoyed the piece, and in no small part because it reminded me of the throwaway parodies that I wrote in high school English classes. I still feel a twinge of sympathy and much affection for all those downtrodden English teachers who, grateful for any sign of interest, encouraged the puerile ramblings of me and kids like me.
posted by cobra libre at 7:35 PM on July 23, 2003