The Never Ending Story recap&commentary thread

[Alex K]

BOOKS

A Stunning Deconstruction Of The Narratives Underlying Literature

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by Brian "Brian" Hackjob, Feb. 11, 2015

There are not many moments in a literary critic's life when complete confusion gives way to enlightenment so abruptly, yet so charmingly, as when "reading" The Never Ending Story of AF, part 4. It is an enlightenment, however, which so brightly illuminates our preconceptions of what literature is that it left me blinded, with more questions than answers, and a profound inability to appreciate writing in the conventional sense for the time being.

The quantum uncertainty principle, discovered by Heisenberg in the first half of the 20th century, has shaken the foundations of the classical paradigm underlying the very concept of reality. Yet, I must come to the conclusion that it may only have been truly realized in this work for the first time. It is therefore impossible even in principle to read, let alone summarize this - despite its superficial brevity - monumental text without losing the deeper layers of meaning which define its workings on a subtextual, intratextual and intertextual level.

The anonymous authors have created a text with an astonishingly short correlation length, removing the dangerous urge in the reader to construct a cohesive narrative which - in the end - can only be a flawed reconstruction of author intention by the reader. This stroke of genius allows the reader to throw overboard the ballast of comprehension, which must necessarily be burdened by the constraints of bimodal logic, opening up the deeper levels of inter-subject communication which are all but eliminated in the appreciation of conventional literature. In this sea of decoherence, sudden intratextual cross-referencoids have an all the more poignant effect, contrasting stream of consciousness with a deeper geometry of textual self-awareness, which ultimately forms the substrate on which this text develops its sense of dread, humor, and carnal desire. But let me give an example. Towards the end of the first third, we read: I forgot my head in the anus of Vorlon. This statement, in its stunning simplicity and multi-layered expressiveness, seems at first glance disconnected from the passages immediately preceding and following it. When suddenly, a paragraph later, we are told that Anal sex is absolutely feasible with more cocks per arse than the current EU limits on gayness, a daring reprise of the theme of anal penetration, which subtly weaves an undercurrent of sociopolitical commentary into the - to the naive reader - crass tableau of bodily fluids and functions. In the best postmodern tradition, further "name-droppings" in the rectal context are broken up by ironic self-conscious meta-commentary - "STOP IT VORLON!" the narrator pleaded. "Why are you always reminding us of your colon? Can't this story simply go on colonlessly?". The ingeniously constructed adverb is reminiscent of "Colonyless", possibly hinting at attitudes towards the loss of the American colonies in 1776 England, while at the same time avoiding tired cliches like "I don't want to see Uranus" which all too often plague the material that is sold to us vieux pétomanes as innovative prose by the enfants terribles of the young literary scene.

I would like to end this review with a quote from the work itself which, like a fractal microcosm of the literary mind beneath it, characterizes the text itself better than I ever could. I tend not to act like a rational writer, but the hivemind that controls me likes jelly farts and funt claps, which is unfortunate. Metaphorically speaking. Duh.

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