Grammatics

Two chairs by two lecterns.  REFINE, a smart suit and cape, stands by one.  He shuffles and organises his notes muttering “ladies and gentlemen…” sipping from his glass of water.

Enter CREATE, a dirty jacket.  REFINE looks at his watch then at CREATE.  Taps the watch.  CREATE looks at his watch obviously broken.  Taps the watch. 

REFINE sighs.  Gestures to CREATE.  CREATE gestures mockingly.  CREATE slumps on a chair.  Takes out a small bottle and sips throughout.

REFINE sighs looks to his notes then ahead. 

REFINE: ladies and gentlemen we all know why we are here today.  Not doubt you have bought and read this gentleman’s book and have been left wondering whether it is of any value or merit worth mentioning.  You are understandably confused about his artistic talents.  It seems good and clever and well thought of but to define what exactly is good, what is clever and why precisely it is so well thought of is surprisingly and exceedingly difficult.  Even for those of you who enjoy analysis of every stripe are confounded as to what to make of this most puzzling of books.  Well, ladies and gentlemen, puzzle no longer for I am here to revel all and to debunk this hack ad-man journalist as the charlatan he should so clearly be viewed as.

Before beginning my argument I should say a bit about my self.  Yes, I am a critic and yes I am misunderstood.  Being of considerable expertise and experience I am on sure footing of my own judgment.  I spend my days reading novels and going through in my mind the strengths and weaknesses of every aspect of a story and deciding on how effective it is at giving me a satisfying reading experience.  I have read books from authors of every kind, class and age.  I have read classics, pulp westerns, cutting edge fiction and ancient texts.  Reading is my life and it is my love.  This is surely enough to convince you that I know what I am talking about.  There can be no doubt that I am a competent judge of words.

  What I am here to do today is to judge this man’s words but I suspect that you will already know of my verdict.

CREATE:  Before he starts tearing holes in my book allow me some words, badly judged if you like, about myself.  Yes I am a writer, and, yes, I am un-understood.  I spend my time thinking about sentences and then attempting to write them down.  I think of long sentences, short sentences and ones of middling length.  I think of their beginnings and endings and all the inbetweenings in-between.  I edit as well as re-edit and structure and sculpt my words as well crafted pieces of art.  I have not written books of every stripe.  The only books I have written have been of one stripe, my stripe, and a very zigzagging material of a dazzling nature but the feel is good and the cut is fine, it only needs to be worn properly.  So I’ve been accused of being a poor tailor well then let me teach you how to dress like the children your literature has treated you as.  Now let him praise your rags.     

REFINE:  says the naked emperor.  I do not like his work.  For me no part of it is enjoyable, illuminating or entertaining.  It is one of the best con tricks ever to trap the public, one of the bestselling pranks of this year.  Surprising it comes from a poor magician who misunderstands how to create an illusion.  My main point against this piece of fiction is that it is not a piece of fiction.  It’s not even fact, and whatever facts there are they are made up.  It’s a mischievous textbook. It’s bad non-fiction and a straight up failure of writing.  Of course telling a story is not an exam, there are no wrong answers just poorly written ones.  The story is non-existent, the characters are confused but the biggest sin written here is none of these things, not even the boredom of the book overshadows this transgression, for the main problem of his text is that it does not communicate in the most literal of ways.  Spelling errors, grammatical pitfalls and basic presentation makes whatever message non-intelligible.  I understand inventing languages; argots and phonetic spellings can be very useful in creating a narrative’s particular, idiosyncratic, environment.  If it was that sort of book I could acclimatize to the author’s system of thought, but a system of any thought requires order and I cannot believe that there is any in this.  I’ve looked at it in different lights, I’ve put on different hats, I even brought new glasses, but there is nothing in here to suggest that order took any part, other than the order that they were dumped down onto the page, if he uses paper, like you would with rubbish in a tip.  Calling it nonsense would make the word undignified.  Though a purer form of nonsense I have yet to come across.

  One of my main problems with his work I that his style of writing is incredibly long-winded and consistently gets sidetracked, probably because he think that a book written with three hundred pages is three hundred pages worth reading even if it is filled with unnecessary details, such as; descriptions of objects, footnotes full of anecdotes, catalogues of names and referencing numbers, which makes the thread of his story hard to follow and I cannot stress enough that writers should write with quickness, lightness, exactitude, visibility and multiplicity, with consistency and unity of thought, a unity we are desperately missing from modern fiction, traveling straight and precisely to the unvarnished clarity of what it is that is being said.

CREATE:  yes; if only we knew what is it that’s being said?  What about the sentence on page fifty, that wasn’t too long, was it?

REFINE:  that sentence was page fifty.

CREATE:  oh, it was?  Well how about…

REFINE:  compound your sentences!

CREATE:  at least they’re not death sentences.

REFINE:  I beg your pardon?

CREATE:  I said: At least they’re not DEAF SENTENCES.

REFINE:  no the sound is loud but it clatters like a bag of empty wine bottles.

CREATE:  my very inspiration!

REFINE:  it’s propaganda of punctuation.  I can’t tell whether it’s a novel or a dot-to-dot book.  I can’t help thinking if I joined the dots I’d get a better book.  If not then at least I’d get a picture book.  Although I’m sure that his pictures cannot be as bad as the way he draws words, nor can they be worse than the way he draws pictures with words.  It’s never a complete picture either.  Almost every phrase or description is unfinished.

CREATE:  Really?  I’ve never fully realised I write unfinished pictures.  Particularly ones drawn with words.

REFINE:  Must every sentence end with dots; tell me why do you not stop at the end? 

CREATE:  I can’t tell you.

REFINE:  why not?

CREATE:  my ellipses are sealed.

REFINE:  why can’t you have more periods!

CREATE:  because I prefer pregnant pauses.

A pause.  REFINE sighs.

REFINE:  regarding your political stance who do you support in the next election?

CREATE:  Oh I think I’ll be voting for the cup and saucer of the Tea Party

REFINE:  Ah, I thought so: you’re a pro-noun.  I could tell from your writing, it’s full of objects, every time I read I object.

CREATE:  is that a running joke?

REFINE:  no, that’s a run-on sentence.  Your grammar is terrible.

CREATE: you leave my grand ma out of this!

REFINE:  are you ill?

CREATE:  no, it’s just subjunctive-ites

REFINE:  have you thought about having an interjection?

CREATE:  no, I’ll just get tense.

REFINE:  well, think of it as a gift.

CREATE:  what, a present tense?

REFINE:  you make a claim and then you cross it out.  Make a claim, then cross it out.  What is it?

CREATE:  they’re ex-claimation marks.

REFINE:  why are there so many marks?

CREATE:  I couldn’t think of any other names.

REFINE:  and the diagrams jumping from the top of the page?

CREATE:  they’re para-graphs.

REFINE:  and this bit on page ninety-four, it’s a catastrophe!

CREATE:  no that’s just an apostrophe.

REFINE: one apostrophe, on an entire page?  

CREATE: it’s standing in for a word.

REFINE:  Where’s the word gone?  I understand it; if you wrote me I’d have better places to be in.  What sort of craft is it that allows a word get away with such laziness?  A poorly crafted craft that’s what. 

CREATE: it connects to the other side of the page. The page with the missing letters but there not missing but only carried over on the other side.  Can’t you see the intentness with which I deploy my technical skill?  All my themes come out through the structure of the novel.

REFINE: if it is a structure then it is like a bare labyrinth; nothing to look at and nowhere to escape.  If that is a house you would like to live in then let me decline an invitation for dinner. 

CREATE: So I keep people on their toes in their minds.  Why shouldn’t sharp thoughts be good entertainment?  Entertainment needs something more than old mysteries, but if that’s what you want then by all means return to your decaying castle.

REFINE: I prefer a well-furnished habitat to a squatter’s patch.  If an estate agent tried to convince me one was the other I would see through his deceptions.  I see no reason why it is not the same case for this writer.  This poor magician who uses gimmicks over illusions.  I will not be taken in and neither should you.

CREATE:  it’s bad because you’re judging a journey like a house.  It’s a walk I’m taking you on; even if you are on your armchair, but you think you’re experiencing an armchair when you are in an armchair.  How many chairs is that?

REFINE:  I think three chairs.

CREATE:  why not?  Hip hip!  Hooray!  What are we celebrating?

REFINE:  the jester’s coronation.  A clown’s crown.     

  My other major problem with this book is that it is popular and praised.  According to some it is ‘inventive’ and ‘dazzling’.  Because of these people the book has been picked up by the most general of persons and because they do not have the sufficient critical words to make sense of it they fall back on their first impression peddled out by those in influence.  To have a badly written book is nothing unusual but to have a badly written book as a bestseller is a serious cause of concern.  I am speaking out against all the good things that have been said in its favor and declaring that all those good things are groundless.  Utterly.  I’ll stop there for the while, but I would like to know what it will be that this writer has got to say for himself in his defense as I believe that there is nothing to protect him except words.      

CREATE takes off his jacket.

CREATE:  greetings you crowd of weary travelers, now sitting in your armchairs, let me rebut everything I have just heard.  To begin with; if you have an illness and then health kicks it out does it matter if the medicine was a placebo?  So I am a fictional failure.  That’s one consolation.  One thing I can’t rebut is my trap for the buying, occasionally the reading, public.  It’s a trap because you shouldn’t believe it; but you do.  It’s not a total belief but it is enough, just enough belief to make the whole excursion worthwhile.  If you believe it’s good then isn’t it?  Belief changes things.  He asks if I can be believed enough, but who wants your belief when I can have your skepticism.  To make you suspect and suspicious of me while still interested to read my words has to be a more impressive skill.  What fun is it to write a good book but to trick people into thinking a bad one is good gets a better laugh.  Children and animals this critic is angry because he wanted a moral but I wrote a joke.  Read if you like but don’t look for a message, the book isn’t about me, I’m not interested in me but I’m interested in writing.  I’m a comedian-you’ll get no sermon from me.   

Pause.

REFINE:  is that all?

CREATE:  isn’t it enough?

REFINE:  I’m astounded.  You have astounded me.  To write such a work and then to say that excuse…

CREAT:  more reason then excuse.

REFINE:  there’s no reason for that excuse.  If that is deliberate, if that is what you had set out to do, then that’s worse. 

CREATE:  nothing worse than verse, and I never found the time to rhyme.  Sometimes the worst actions make us better than kindness. 

REFINE:  it’s wrong.  What you’ve done.  It’s wrong. 

CREATE:  what’s wrong?  To make other people believe in a place that doesn’t exist, or to get them care about people who haven’t lived or to spend so much resources doing it?  Which bit of it is wrong?

REFINE:  to be a trickster pretending to be a magician.  A confidence artist in place of an entertainer.  You have stolen some good, which helps you not but makes these readers poor.  It is an abuse of trust that is the problem not the ways you go to achieve it. 

CREATE:  ha!  Ha.  It’s true; I am a confident artist.  Can I help it if they want to put their trust in me?  Doesn’t that prove I’m trustworthy?  If they wish to buy then why not give them something to help them achieve that wish?  If they want to praise then why not give them a form of worship? 

REFINE:  there are responsibilities.  Good writing is good living.

CREATE:  and a cause for anger is a cause to live.  I’ve found that good writing makes a poor living.  Of course.  Don’t be taken in, go willingly in my trust.  Interesting that it is my writing we are talking about and not the fine critic’s own.

REFINE:  you dare say anything…

CREATE:  because it is a fact that may prove the turning point in his arguments…

REFINE:  you dare…

CREATE:  How much can you really believe in his objectivity if I were to tell each and every one of you that…

REFINE:  don’t!

CREATE:  his own story has never been completed.  He can never write a novel, though I know as well as god he has tried.

REFINE tries to strangle CREATE but is unable to.  The bottle spills.  He paces.

REFINE:  it is the lowest blow…to be so cowardly…have you completely lost your bottle?

CREATE picks it up.  Drinks what’s left.

CREATE:  not entirely.  To critics another for what he cannot do himself seems, to me, the lowest blow, the harshest insult, which, funnily, becomes the toughest criticism for this critic to bear.  Now you think jealousy will make you a better penner of ink.

REFINE:  I didn’t publish it.  I didn’t because I felt sure that it was not worth for anybody else to read it.  My problem with you is that you knew it wasn’t worth reading and yet you still produced it. 

CREATE:  so it might not be worth reading but it seems that it’s worth buying.  I published because I knew it was going to be a punch line worth laughing for.    

REFINE:  you were no help.  You looked over my shoulder and scoffed, parodying me endlessly.  I make a statement.  You make one-liners.  There is discernment and there is judgment.  Though I know what makes a story I cannot a story make.  I have a house where no one wishes to live even if it does make for a pretty picture.    

CREATE:  who would want to live with you?  All these rota’s, these dos and as for the don’ts.  You take the home out of the house, the flame out of the fireplace.  You’re perfect but useless.

REFINE:  if you could just tidy up once in a while!  To have a shower- even if it’s just your hands!  Just help out once in a while is all I’m asking! 

CREATE:  what’s the point?  I’ve tried and you’ve never been happy.  I washed the kitchen sink but that turned out to be a drama.  I’ve tried to tidy the drawing room but that turned into a farce.  What else can I do but pull up the floorboards?

REFINE screams.

REFINE:  the dirt!  The dirt and filth of our house!  It’s so typical of you. 

CREATE:  it’s so terrible of you.  Something I’ve come to expect.

REFINE:  expect?

CREATE:  ruthlessness.

REFINE:  standards.

CREATE:  nit-picking.

REFINE:  improving.

CREATE points at REFINE.

CREATE:  miss the point.

REFINE points back.

REFINE:  have no point.

CREATE:  enjoy the game.

REFINE:  learn the rules.  If you could only learn…

CREATE:  if only you could accept…I want to make you happy, you that I do, but whatever I do never seems to, so, why shouldn’t I do whatever I want?  I’d do a bit of work and then show you with excitement but you’d just scoff at its childishness and you’d say I had no talent but…but…I enjoyed it, and you’d throw it away. 

REFINE:  I was trying to help…

CREATE:  you’d throw it away…

REFINE:  but I never fully realised…

CREATE:  YOU’D THROW IT AWAY.

CREATE turns away.  REFINE tries to speak.  Pause.

REFINE approaches CREATE.  Hesitates.

REFINE:  I’m sorry.  For the review, the letters in the paper, the comments online.  I’m sorry for this.  I didn’t think you…I thought it was a torment a tease…you the joker torturer…I’d forgotten you have been a child…I was always trying to help but…maybe it was just a description of help…

REFINE takes his glass and gives it to CREATE.  CREATE looks and slowly, wiping eyes, suspiciously, finally takes a sip of water.  REFINE puts a hand on CREATE.  Gives him his jacket.  Helps him out of the stage.

REFINE:  ladies and gentlemen:  the debate never ends.

Exit REFINE.

End.