Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The Pynchonian Mad-Lib - Feb 9 2007

Create Your Own Piece of Experimental Literature!

In the 1950s, Leonard Stern and Roger Price created “Mad Libs” a word game that requires players to fill in the blanks of a short story with an example of the specified lexical category (ie. a noun or an adjective). The result was a humorous, absurd and often nonsensical short story that broke every rule of the English language. 20 years later, Thomas Pynchon released his epic Gravity’s Rainbow, a dense work of post-modernism renowned for its abstract construction, digressive plot, and general genius-ness. Coincidence? I think not.

In a continuing effort to refine the UW student body into culturally aware and artistically productive citizens of the world, the Art Snob presents “The Pynchonian Mad Lib”, an adventure in post-modern indulgence, hysterical realism, and neo-surrealism. Just fill in the table with your response to the italicised suggestions, plug them into the short piece that follows, and find yourself proclaimed the greatest literary provocateur of the Twenty-First Century. Enjoy!

1. A Dinosaur from the Triassic period.


2. Your Favourite Insect from the 1987 Royal Entomological Association Journal. (plural)


3. Any demon from Eastern European folklore


4. An adverb related to chewing broken glass


5. An adjective to describe the later incarnations of Basil Hallward’s painting of Dorian Gray.


6. An object from your favourite René Magritte piece, preferably pre-WWII.


7. The name of a British officer in the Civil Service during the Colonial Era


8. Derogatory term for an Anatolian as cited by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War.


9. A curse word likely uttered in Civil War-era America


10. A household object that can be used alternately as an insulting term for a human being.


11. A noun, plural, preferably drawn from Victorian slang.


12. A word to describe your emotional state at this very moment.


13. Third World Liberation Movement Leader


14. Your least favourite pan-Arabist.


15. Verb, past tense, indicating movement.


16. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, or, your favourite Restaurant.


17. Name the home stadium of a second-rate soccer team in the German Bundesliga. .


18. Class of Warship from the U.S. Navy


19. Something ancient, something sacred.


20. One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.


IF YOU’RE HONEST, YOU WON’T READ THE PASSAGE BELOW UNTIL AFTER YOU FILL IN THE BLANKS. HONOUR, FRIENDS, HONOUR!

In another day and age, I was a ____________.(1) Every day I would wake to feed the ______________ (2), only to find myself being bothered incessantly by the neighbourhood ___________ (3). _____________ (4), I chased the __________ (5) creature around the _____________ (6) until I was rudely interrupted by ____________(7), who thought it inappropriate that I harm the poor ____________. (8) “__________” (9), I exclaimed, pushing the ____________ (10) into a conveniently located pile of _____________ (11). Now that I was feeling right ___________ (12), I set off on my chase with great speed, imagining myself a modern-day ____________ (13) pursuing the elusive ____________ (14). The object of my pursuit ___________ (15) effortlessly, and I began to worry it would lose me past the ________________ (16). Passing ___________ (17), I grabbed my trusty _______________ (18) and hurled it forward. My aim was off, and, missing the target, the projectile collided forcefully with the ___________ (19). At that moment, _____________ (20) appeared on the road and I knew my chase was over. “_________” (9), I repeated, and turned to head back home.

posted by HLL @ Tuesday, February 13, 2007

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