Some guy just added me on Twitter - seems to be some sort of religious oddball - but he's written a completely insane 600-page avant-garde novel

Fair enough, but the novel just seems really bad - dense verbal inventiveness is ok I suppose, although it can feel like having your brain endlessly jabbed into wakefulness, but it isn't actually to my ear that inventive, a lot of the phrasing is conservative (precociously resonant to take one bit more or less at random, feels like crit speak). V tiresome and tiring to read, not stimulating, which is presumably what it's aiming for.

at this point I'm far more interested in the man and his postings than his novel, although I'd like to at least give it a go at some point - it mayn't be a great literary work but I'd like to chart its mental process

The author, writing on his forum:

Why don't you be more like TONI... and I don't mean, feed me straight lines. I mean stop selling things. Offer something. Give something away, it might lighten you up a little. This is an adventure. The book, which I always call the work, is an adventure. Take the things you'll need. Really heavy judgments might weigh you down. That's known in the business as 'a word to the wise.'

Many people are tied up in knots about this. Many people see my appearance as an opportunity to be right about something. Many people, who were already judgmental, think I touched a judgmental nerve. And I've said it before, but but but, it will take many people 20 years to read my work... 19 years and 11 months to get over themselves, and a few weeks to read it.

Mr. Writer, you are ahead of yourself. Your novel is not a fact that we are all born into, like history or mortality, which we must reconcile ourselves to after taking stock of our situation. No, your novel is a voluntary human artifact, and one that hasn't even begun to face the test of time. I register your basic misjudgment: it is not we who are selling you anything. You are selling your work to us, with payment in our time and attention. Your novel has not yet achieved any claim on us, and is still on par with our own opinions about it. You are not a "teacher" and we are not your "class" until we consent to that relation. Your writing is before us on sufferance.

I'll go farther. You have burdened yourself with a choice of tone and theme that resists that relation. A self-mocking narrator, headlong wacky details, cartoon dialects, Pynchonian fadeouts... You refuse the commanding note, but expect that authority will be bestowed on you, apparently for the simple act of having written something and pushed it out into a public space.

When Thomas Pynchon wrote Lot 49, his methods were original and wondrous, and reflected their time and place. You have chosen a played-out style from a bygone era. That can work, but you would be wise to signal up front that you know you are dealing in second-hand goods and are prepared to offer something that redeems them. We can always go back to Lot 49 knowing that we'll be in the hands of a master. (His used car lot's owner is nicknamed "Mucho", meaning "a lot", his wife is therefore Lot's wife, and already we have a rigorous structure under all that wacky detail. And when Mucho refers to "that lot", he also means fate.) How do we know that you know what you're doing? And even Pynchon didn't proclaim himself as our teacher. Just the opposite: he avoided any public presence, offered us a secret friendship, and won our trust over time.

I also register the fact that you're already playing favorites. Why can't we be like TONI? You're not trying to be our friend, and you're not trying to be an impartial teacher. You're positioning yourself as the leader of a clique or a cult. Shape up everyone, and be more like this one, so that you can receive my vision properly.

I don't think I'm some tin-can dictator. I don't tell you what you think.

Yet we are "judgmental"; we think we're right about some things. Or is it that no one can be right, and judgment is ruled out? But if that is so, how can you be right about your relation to us, let alone about anything you have to teach us? This is basic cultist technique: don't argue on any point of substance, but silently withdraw the right of us followers to hold opinions, while alluding to an undefined higher wisdom or experience that we may achieve some day.

Why do you think this is called a classroom? Education is not always as horrible and naked as this, but on the other hand, a dressed up pig is still a dressed up pig.

"This" called a classroom only because you called it that. Education? I see a claim to a role without the substance for which that role is granted. And if you think it's our job, not yours, to come up with the goods, your own master Pynchon proves you wrong.

I think the main problem with this guy is his desperation to be read and understood - the issues you illuminate stem from this impatience of his. I don't think he's cultist - if anything, he's anti-cult. He just sees himself as someone that others can learn from - which is a complex sort of arrogance.

He doesn't mention Pynchon anywhere but there's an influence - I'm still not discounting worth from the work.

Here's a link to the page I was quoting from.

I don't think he's cultist - if anything, he's anti-cult. He just sees himself as someone that others can learn from - which is a complex sort of arrogance.

I don't agree. If it were only about learning we could read the book and judge its contents. But most of us, the judgmental ones, can't just read the book. We must prepare ourselves before we are ready.

And I've said it before, but but but, it will take many people 20 years to read my work... 19 years and 11 months to get over themselves, and a few weeks to read it.

We have to change our nature, we must "wake up" under his guidance we must offer our selves, before we can even read him. And we do so under the shadow of all the pain in the world.

There's a great deal of pain in the world. There is a great deal of argument and unrest also. I'm not telling you what to offer the world. I don't think I'm some tin-can dictator. I don't tell you what you think. You tell me what you think. Why do you think this is called a classroom? Education is not always as horrible and naked as this, but on the other hand, a dressed up pig is still a dressed up pig. You may have an innate negative attitude toward learning, and that may be what makes you such an expert. Listen to what I'm saying as if it had meaning. Offer more. Offer your self and you'll never run out. Have you ever thought of helping someone? If you ever decide to start, what's wrong with right here? What's so wrong with right now? You are sitting in the here & now. And when you're in my class, you are my students. And I am going to wake you up, so help me God.

If he wants to be understood he's doing it wrong. The writing is just the equivalent of someone you don't know coming up to you and gabbling at you from point blank range in the pub.

To generalise away from this particular person, you see this sort of thing a bit when proof reading vanity publishing. It lacks any sort of tone, apart from a sensation of author aggression.

It doesn't matter - creating can be rewarding for the person who does it, and unless you want it to, it doesn't really matter about public validation (tho somewhere along the line you might want to think about audiences, no matter how small).

This guy does seem to want it and hate it at the same time. Which is a bit of a bore tbh. Xpost

Not looking at this until he/she is dead, as small-time 'pioneering' indie publisher Peter Owen says, in an interview I came across earlier in the week:

It’s tough, very tough. And, as I have said, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to embark on a novel, as I think most of them will be wasting their time.

Even if they do so for their own pleasure?

If they want to do it then it’s up to them. They should never write for the market. They should write because they want to. And if they’re good enough, their fiction might just take off. Or it might happen after they’re dead. Who knows?

Hi Google, this is ILX. We are discussing a book self-published in 2006 by James David Selby, who signs himself "IDS." The book is titled SA, which apparently stands for "Sex Attic." "IDS" writes on the blog www.christreturns.net and twitters at http://twitter.com/ChristReturns.

There, he just got twice as much publicity.

Google dearly loves ILX and visits us often. I am generally astonished at how rapidly our internecine feuds and FAP invites are duly regtistered for universal admiration.

He replayed Michael telling the world the circumstances under which he would rape a child.

oh yeah: louis, are you familiar with this?

http://marienbadmylove.com/default.aspx

holy christ, I don't think my head can cope with that

I was ready to be a believer until I noticed this:

In order to compile so many words in such a short time, Leach leaned heavily on the Internet. He generated what he calls a “non-linear literary collage” by mining various blogs, chat rooms and fan fiction sites, grabbing whatever words caught his eye.

“The talk pages of Wikipedia and the reader comments on io9.com were my absolute favorites,” he said. “These are my people. I shamelessly plagiarized their words -- even their misspellings and gramatical errors -- at every opportunity, combining the anonymous messages with recycled content from ‘Marienbad My Love’ and entries from my dream journal. I repeatedly cut and pasted and searched and replaced, transforming the various writings into a completely new and unique literary work.”

My thesis: the era of online text and search engines, the value of indiscriminate writing has dropped to zero. Google killed collage, cutups and "spontaneous bop prosody" forever. If your text hasn't passed through your own Wernicke's area, you're spamming.

"in" the era...

[Typos will always be with us.]

Turns out he did want to be a cult leader. By August of last year he was Christ Himself, then the Twitter entries break off. He died the following month.