Literary Forum - Fiction, poetry, non-fiction by projectedletters.com

In a way this short story made me think of one of Bill Clinton's speeches, only a bit more NASTY. I kept thinking "what a great line" until I hit the end of the piece, and I looked back at it. I almost felt tricked by the almost saccharine nature of Casselle's writing: he sure is a talented airbrush-artist. I guess i mean this:

"This very table, which was edged with a channel groove, a groove sloping down to a hole at the low end, a hole over a splattered bucket, the bucket dangling over the blood-red floor; the floor painted red so the blood wouldn't show up on it."

Zine's great btw - think the leper guy in the Keller post may be on crack.

The url for this piece is

http://www.projectedletters.com/fiction/the-most-natural-thing-in-the-world.html (http://www.projectedletters.com/fiction/the-most-natural-thing-in-the-world.html)

i am not a leper, you fucking diabetic!

Any thoughts on the Casselle piece, Leper?

read the first page. not sure if i have the patience to finish it. at first i was afraid, i was petrified, of errors like "sinister stealth." anyone else with me on a constitutional ban on alliteration? or at least, obvious ones like that?

but, to my dismay, some good lines followed. it's fine. i wouldn't bother reading a book by the fellow, but i wouldn't bother arguing with a cassellenik, either.

i don't think the sentence old marshy cites is all that bad. good old marshy. dear, sweet marshy.

far worse is this one: "A dented black cylinder of oxygen stood between the bed and an open window, and a breeze blew in like a rat, skittering, brushing her sun-cooked face with the thin gauze of the stained curtain, and, over the bed, under a portrait of a bored-looking Christ, ruffling and flapping a time-yellowed thumb-tacked note bearing the message that someone was due back any minute."

You are a model of Weberian social theory, the lerpa. You define yourself in opposition to things. Only the first page? I'll remove pagination for good.

on the other hand, lines like "It looked like an elephant's eye, squinting" speak for themselves.

i wish you would remove the pagination. some of these stories tire me out too much to click the 'next' button.

I've removed pagination from "The Most Natural Thing in the World." Now you can read the first page again, and let us know what you think.

so tired... so world-weary...

So you object to the overt "poeticism" of the piece?

i actually like that elephant eye line; i wasn't being sarcastic there. you should add a flat, emotionless expression to your selection of smilies, so i can put it after my non-sarcastic sentences. 

to answer your question, though, there's a certain species of metaphor/simile that i just can't stomach in contemporary fiction. it's hard to define adequately, but let's just say that i don't want to hear some author's precious comparison of a breeze to a rat, or splotches of sunlight to butter. i just don't give a shit what you think of the wind, you know?

there's too much (bad) metaphor these days. i blame nabokov.

I don't see what diabetic has to do with anything.

And if someone did describe sunlight as butter - they would be playing with the senses. It depends what context the metaphor is used in. I believe that is what you were talking about in your posts on the Keller piece, which I do not believe as much vitriol as it was given. Perhaps the forum moderator might think of censoring some of these posts? I am sure thr author would be upset if she read what was written about her work. I wonder if the leper has ever written anything at all worth reading. Doubtful. Now I'm sure he's on crack.

Did you say censor?

I'm listening to Linger by the Cranberries. I hate the Cranberries. I needed something like the Cranberries or Enya to calm me down. Yes Enya. Good god. Censor? You mean take out posts that are critical of other people? I suggested turning the heat down on the debate.

I would imagine the leper is on crack, but that's his choice. You can report him to the feds if you like.

Censor. Really? Hmm.

I just meant that some of these posts wouldn't be acceptable on other forums. I didn't mean to act like the secret police.

Ok let's focus on the Casselle piece.

maybe the forum moderator could censor posts containing painfully obvious points, since they might upset persons of intelligence. comparing the sun to butter is playing with the senses? really, marshy? please now explain what i meant before by alliteration, you pedantic nit.

seriously, though, you should be ashamed of yourself, recommending censoring. it'd be one thing if i just flamed these authors without giving any reason for it. as far as i can see, though, my posts, while more vitriolic than yours, are also better argued, supported, and written. and whether i've written anything worth reading or not is beside the point, as you well know. by that standard, anthony lane's movie reviews aren't worth reading; after all, he's never directed a feature film. in any case, if we sorted posts by writing ability, i feel confident you would fall well below me on the list (please note that this hypothetical list is arranged in descending order of ability).

(by the way, the sunlight::butter and breeze::rat language are both from the casselle piece.)

FROM THE AUTHOR:

Ha ha! Do I care to step into an unruly session of Creative Writing for Working Adults and get pelted by spitballs? Not really...the opinions expressed aren't meaningful enough to respond to...I honestly can't make out what the 'critic' was trying to express other than his animosity. What strikes me most about so much low-level blog-type lit opinion-making is the righteous lack of insight or sophistication...they all boil down to 'there's only one way to write and I'm the one who knows which way that is, buddy'. (Raymond Carver is always a safe style haven when dealing with the yobs). It's just a consumerist pose about taste disguised as literary criticism. As to that 'air-brush' thing...huh? And I really like it when some nobody sets himself up as the Metaphor Mullah...announcing his list of No-Nos without a shred of reasoned support.
 
That knock on 'sinister stealth' gives away the technique at work...the guy once read some sophomore style manual claiming that alliteration is bad and, seeing an incidental example of it, pounced. Completely missing the meaning of the phrase! Well, don't tell him about the 'B.B.C.' or the 'S.S.'

[The author gave us permission to reprint his email]

look again, dear author, i was criticizing carver, not praising him.

your accusation that i borrowed my dislike of alliteration from a style manual is too presumptuous to dignify with a response. suffice it to say, if you think "sinister stealth" is an acceptable alliteration (heh), you've got a tin ear (not that i needed your defense of it to deduce as much; your story is littered with equally facile/stilted turns of phrase). my shreds of evidence to support the crappiness of the phrase are as follows: it loudly calls attention to its obvious alliteration, and its onomatopeia (intended or not) of the sound of a letter being slipped under a door is lame. whether the alliteration was incidental, as you say it was, is irrelevant; you still should have thrown it away.

here's a bit of presumption: i doubt the alliteration was incidental, except possibly at the moment it occurred to you. more likely, you sat back and admired your bit of discovered poetry.

i defy you to point out where i said there's only one way to write. since you've obviously been reading my posts on other threads, why not consult the one in which i say, "any style could conceivably work in the hands of someone who knows what he's doing." does that square with someone who thinks there's only one way to write?

finally, some of your jargon escapes me. consumerist? what exactly do you mean? b.b.c.? s.s.?

Schutzstaffel (SS) British Broadcasting Company (BBC) - both alliterative. Also, when you post a message, you get: "Add BBC tags"

ah, i didn't think you were supposed to use periods in bbc, so i assumed it was something else.

Mr. Marsh:
 
 
'The Most Natural Thing in the World' may be too lyrical in style for your taste...far be it from me to police your taste. I'm not a politician looking for votes, but I will say that a hard-bitten style dealing with that setting and subject matter would be less than a revelation...it would be a cliche, in fact, don't you think? In any case, one thing the story is not is an 'air-brush' job or something in any way resembling a speech by Bill Clinton...I assume that you mean, by making that comparison, you found it artificially uplfiting?
 
The story is about a child molester. Perhaps you've misinterpreted the understated ending. The final scene is the aftermath of a rape. Henry, the intended victim, missed it by sheer luck. Bill, ironically, therefore won the race to lose his virginity.
 
The sentence you quoted and take exception to has its place, and is a piece with the rest of the writing, and, again, may not be your cup of tea, but violates nothing within the tone or meaning of the overall atory. If you read the story out loud with care you'll find it reads in stretches like an epic poem or incantation or sermon, and the words are chosen carefully for the sense they are meant to convey as well as the sound they achieve. Could things be trimmed a bit here or there? Surely! But the same can be said of any piece of writing, ancient or new. Journalistic efficiency is not the point in work of this type, is it? The point is wedding an idea (or two) to the sensual pleasure of reading...not the blunt transmission of plot. And not everything that you don't like personally is faulty. It may take some time or effort to appreciate, or it may be best for you to pass on it completely. But I am not a sloppy writer and whether this particular story is my favorite or not, I distilled it to the essence of itself before sending it away. Obviously, it's not for people who are pressed for time, but I'm certain that a careful reading of it repays the effort.
 
And I'm not about to dignify that 'lerpa' nitwit's faux-critiques by engaging him, but I'll show you a point I made in a friendly exchange with the editor:
 
"And no one expects him (the lerpa) to have written a masterpiece in order to earn the right to nitpick...but it's reasonable to ask to see a selection of his published (non-forum or non-blog) critiques. Before dignifying his cat piss with a sniff, i mean."
 
Thanks!
 
S.C.
 

what a silly little man you are, casselle. first of all, the millions who've been following this thread know that is i who shall not dignify you with a response! second, why is it you need to vet the published critiques only of those who dislike your work, but require no such references from those who generally like it (marsh), albeit in a backhanded way? weird!

(i confess, i have no published critiques, nor have i sought to publish any.)

Let's keep it constructive.

I think S.C. answered for himself very well.

What's all this then? Not quite sure how I wound up here or whether it's worth posting to this thread but I'm always amazed at how quickly the call for censorship sounds the minute someone posts in a tone that isn't to everyone's liking or is designed, by it's belligerence, to rankle. I don't know any of the people on this site (yet) but are you all such fragile, wide-eyed little does? I think some of the leper's points are quite valid - again, the tone is designed to take the piss, have a little fun etc and middlebrow minds might have a hard time seeing beyond this - and it smacks of childish indignation for the author to refuse to address him until he produces a CV to the author's liking. It is also cowardly. You're defensive condescension ("Ha ha! Do I care to step into an unruly session of Creative Writing for Working Adults" and "What strikes me most about so much low-level blog-type lit opinion-making") betrays your mediocrity. If you tried engaging your critics substantively instead of snottily your parents might, in time, grow to love you and you might, in time, win the heart of a member of the fairer sex. But only one of the ugly ones.

I think only one person suggested censoring. He has a small point: the tone sometimes isn't constructive. But we don't censor here.  However, I think the author fought manly enough; I'm not sure if my own reaction would have been so controlled if I'd had my work derided in a public forum; perhaps he overreacted a little, but not much. Not much at all. I didn't find the story mediocre at all. I wouldn't have published if I had. And some of the points may have been fair; I think Casselle objected to the lerpa only reading the first page of his story. David Marsh has disappeared. (COME BACK - WE NEED YOU!).

Actually, Gregor...

...what I  ‘object’ to is the never-ending stream of unfiltered, uneducated, uninteresting opinion I see pouring out of online forums, literary or otherwise, and which tend to be 90% ad hominem attack per 10% unsupported decree. I’m quite sure that most of the people with interesting, well-reasoned opinions opt out of these 'debates' for fear of the indignity of rolling around in the mud with these posters…of whom I must say the most vituperative are almost always the last to bring actual ideas to the table. Are we really discussing the fine points of reading and writing here? Consider the post prior to your last…not exactly Edmund Wilson, is he? Not even Dale Peck.

Not even Daffy Duck, actually.

More like a pseudonymous (twice removed) aggrieved prior poster exercising his bit of  d’esprit d’escalier a day after it dawned on him just how foolish he came off in the original exchange.

 I think matters of "style" tend to generate a moral element in discussion because style is an engagement with a kind of ideal literary other self. This is why I called it a "mask" in an other thread. That is, even the naughty language and belligerence are, as the Lerpa pointed out, a "passion play" (i.e. a morality drama).

This doesn't mean that value judgments are right on (or wrong for that matter) but rather that the moral element is perhaps something inherent in discussion and experience of style qua literary production.

Just my two cents,
AJH

Well, I'd say that Amanda's point was an interesting point on its own but doesn't reflect, in reality, the tone of this discussion, which started off as merely derisive and quickly shaded into cartoon bitchery. Where are the IDEAS? Is stating a preference the expression of an idea? Is simply quoting a sentence considered a reasoned argument against the justice of the sentence? Read the story and explain the first poster's 'critique'. Is this considered a coherent critique?

Is the point of a forum like this to give anyone who has access to it an opportunity to vent a little spleen? I'm all for a proper wrestle over theory and practise, but I'd say that the poster's credential is the tone and the substance of his/her remarks, and the 'democratic' nature of posting shouldn't mean that anyone who put time into a bit of careful work is obligated to 'defend' said work against half-baked snipery. Is this AM radio or a Lit Forum?

Show me the ideas. Not the personal preferences: the IDEAS. Oh, and then...let them be of interest. Well thought-out.

Stuff like that.

I think it's just for comments on pieces - but you're right, constructive criticism/praise goes a long way.



You shouldn't HAVE to defend yourself. You don't HAVE to. But I'm glad you did. I guess one can have both rants and extensive dialogue - isn't that the essence of democracy. Jefferson sniping at Hamilton through proxies, while writing extended treatises on democracy; Hamilton sniping at Jefferson through hardly opaque pseudonyms, while creating the American system.

Yes.

S.C. you could be right re the tone of this thread, but I am  trying to make a broader point, vis, that the nastiness (however stylized or whatever) still reflects a certain moral outcry. Now, that outcry may or may not reflect a serious interest in the story, I really don't know--the main players should speak for themselves there--but it reflects a need to engage morally in critique somehow, albeit possibly displaced. But let us assume that the players are ingenuous: one could argue that the "Bill Clinton" sound perceived by Mr. Marsh was in fact a stylistic gloss intended by the conscious author to create a kind of dissonance between content and tone, and the point was missed. But in that case, Mr. Marsh is definitely reacting to the story from a position of visceral moral excitability, which is my point.

What I am trying to get to, moreover, is that what I have termed the "moral element" has in fact the potential to engender 1) a "dumbed down" stylistics; and 2) when dissected, a closer reading of texts by means of the original visceral response.

BUT, let us recognize that reality principle after all: not all texts, nor critiques, are worth it.

AJH

I agree (with mitigators...laugh) with both of your posts, G and A. And I wouldn't campaign to filter the comments...it's really not my concern...I'm just laying out my personal criteria for responding;  explaining, that is, why I chose to 'engage' one poster and not another.

A point I'd now like to make which sums up most of my feelings about all this: I spent a hefty chunk of time building a layered, consequent, tightly-jointed story in 'The Most Natural...' in a real effort to provide an aesthetic experience worth a certain kind of reader's invesment of time. I'd appreciate the comments to be in the same good faith, pro or con. I don't expect all the comments to be well thought out...but if they aren't, why should they carry any weight, and why should I bother responding? Do the writers the reciprocal courtesy of the tiniest amount of effort, is what I'm saying.

To get specific: comparing a short story to a speech by Bill Clinton without elaborating (glib? uplifting? calculating? faux-inclusive? statistic-heavy?) is an essentially meaningless comment. Not to step on any toes. And using the word 'saccharine' about a story or style that produces the line 'the dead often smell faintly of shit' betrays either ignorance about the use of the word 'saccharine' or about the story.

It's not a short piece and skimming won't do it justice;  I'd much prefer to respond to a critique that came about as a careful reading. Anyone who can't be bothered to put the time and energy into unerstanding a text can't expect the author of the text to take any resultant grenades seriously. They're just toys, such grenades, aren't they?

S.C. will you stop whining if I promise to read your story? Intuition tells me no. My initial post (that was indeed my first - I am not an aggrieved prior poster. You remain the only aggrieved person here, poor little thing) was a reaction to your defensive snottiness.
First off, I am indeed Edmund Wilson and, other than the fact that I am dead, I defy you to prove otherwise! I won't cite to them here but both Lerpa and Marsh made substantive comments about your little story which you reject wholesale because you disagree with them.  You're wounded by Lerpa's faux vitriol and by his and Marsh's criticism but are unable to address their points. For instance, to Marsh's Clinton/Saccharine comment all you say is you're wrong without actually asking for a clearer explanation. At any rate, it's very hard to take seriously one who writes sentences like, "If you read the story out loud with care you'll find it reads in stretches like an epic poem or incantation or sermon," without any sense of shame or, god forbid, irony. 

P.S. I just wrapped up my post when I landed on the line "I spent a hefty chunk of time building a layered, consequent, tightly-jointed story in 'The Most Natural...' in a real effort to provide an aesthetic experience worth a certain kind of reader's invesment of time."  What kind of reader are you referring to? You'll call him educated, sophisticated with a subtle and incisive mind capable of grasping your tight joints and many layers but all you're really saying is someone who agrees with you...likes your stuff. Have you no shame?

I've long thought that academic writing has become historiography  (without meaning to insult the discipline--which is valuable). By that I mean it gets caught up in the study of studies--criticism of criticism...and the original work of study, whether it be a poem, or a story is lost. This is scholasticism. How about Niall read the story and see if the lerpa and the disappearing Marsh really are correct. Perhaps Nial may see some meaning outside of the snippets. Perhaps not. How bout it? Everyone's started arguing about the meaning of the previous post, and not about the story.

For those of you too lost or lazy to scroll up, here is the url for this story:

http://www.projectedletters.com/fiction/the-most-natural-thing-in-the-world.html (http://www.projectedletters.com/fiction/the-most-natural-thing-in-the-world.html)

First: to the 'Niall' post: aren’t you clever enough to realize that simple gainsaying does NOT an argument make? And do you honestly think I give a mummified donkey’s snapped-off dick if you read the story? Do you think I think you’re James Wood? You’re just some nobody posting pseudonymously on a lit forum, putting your energy into ‘discussing’ someone else’ work. Do you think I think it’s possible EVER to sway knobs of your ilk with well-reasoned argument? You’re nothing but an online nuisance; your so called 'opinions' are just extensions of your pathological online aggression. You’re not making making points, you’re trying to be clever and managing to be typical instead.

Second: for anyone interested not merely in trying to revisit the good old days of a playground skirmish…for anyone interested in my discussion of the thought I put into the structure and pacing of the sentences of the text in question:

Any accusations of a gratuitously ‘purple’ or over-wrought prose style are lacking in merit and betray a very poor job of reading this story. Here’s a representative passage…an example of the rhythm and contrast the style works from. Is this ‘purple’ prose? Hardly:

“Henry's High School, an all-boy school, was integrated. Henry had overheard a huge black member of the football team, standing in line for second helpings on pizza day in the cafeteria, complain to another huge black friend…that the white boys on the team would jack each other off in the shower and make fun of the blacks for not doing it. They called it a circle jerk.”

“Henry was worried: why does my mind always wander like this when I masturbate?”

“Two hours later, he was taking the stair steps two at a time down to the front doors of the chapel, and standing breathless at the foot of the stairs he had a straight line of sight through the chapel door, and the propped-open double doors of the porch; and down, outside, the length of the walk between manicured lawns to the curb, marked off by yellow parking cones. It was at that moment, in the electric haze of the twilight, that the first long limousine pulled up, as cold and dark as an eclipse, and his Uncle Gil climbed out, looking suave in sunglasses, followed by the family of the deceased. They gathered into a fat black matriarchy on the sidewalk before mounting the steps towards Henry in the chapel doorway. A thousand pounds of big black tits, he thought.”

First paragraph is very prosaic and in no way unique to the story. Long sentences and short are balanced…the alternation guards against monotony The sentence-paragraph in the middle is a dramatic stop, of sorts, or summing up before the next paragraph flies into a little set piece…a bit of choreography that packs in its vivid descriptions, handling action while deepening the detail of the scene. Last sentence in the paragraph is a bathetic effect of course…putting on the brakes before the poetry overwhelms.

Were the long sentences too long for your taste? If so, don’t bother reading (Austrian writer) Thomas Bernhard, who has been known to write a sentence 131 pages long. Too much, you say? That’s merely your opinion, I’d counter, if so. Be assured that some people get it. Let’s not forget the artistic justice of judging a work by its own (rather than external) metrics.

‘The Most Natural Thing in the World’  is a story not only about the sexual day-in-the-life of an adolescent…it’s about class and race (and color, within race) and era. There are passages that grow denser (in a D.H. Lawrence…or William Blake-ish…sort of way) as the story progresses but I would argue that they are beautiful, not difficult to read, and serve their purpose. One such passage:

“As he walked he saw how the lives of the people there poured so unselfconsciously into their streets. You could see right into their living rooms. Sixteen-year-old sirens in tight sweaters and laminated hair gossiped in trios on crumbling front porch stoops, and fat old mammies wedged themselves in screenless windows, presiding over the crude pageant. Henry felt drawn to the rich fudge of those implacable black faces, even as they were fascinated by and resentful of him. Simply walking there was a violation of the map of his caste. He knew there were blacks on that street that hated him more than they hated whites. His face had that uncertainty of features, and the creamed-coffee skin, which marked him as some kind of enemy. But the air was a syrup of drunk-making odors and he couldn't resist being there. The frank crudity of life he smelled stirred a wildness in him as he ventured into the deepening folds of the dark, smelling fried chicken and lilacs and beer.”

“A shiny little black girl was sashaying down the sidewalk ahead of him. As he overtook her he caught an eyeful of her bra-less breasts, flattened in broad circles against a tight white cotton tee shirt. She wore pink satin hot pants, and a candy-colored comb jutted from a back pocket. She had violently big eyes and a stub nose and raw-steak lips that puckered into a smirk as he turned to her at the moment he passed her. The fragile crinkles of her hair were pulled into a tight, stiff ponytail.”

It is without a doubt a heated passage for a sexual set piece but commits no hilarious clinkers in the sexual metaphor department…the metaphors are quite down to earth, in fact…comparing her lips to raw steak and so on. While there is no doubt a plain-style version of this passage possible, there is also a plain-style (or Cliff Notes) version available of The Bible, too. To what advantage? Time saving? Manliness?

The text in question is either one’s cup of tea or not. To reiterate an early point: I’m not a politician, campaigning for votes. A story now exists where there was none before…I myself summoned it out of thin air…and I’m pleased with it. Being one of only about fifty I have stacked in a manuscript, I can’t call it my favorite or my best but I’m sure that anyone who calls it any kind of ‘mediocre’ or even ‘bad’ is just jealous. I’ve lived on the planet long enough to recognize the signs.

Anyone who automatically equates a denser style than is currently popular (or commercial) with sub-Nabokovia is betraying the narrow scope of his/her reading. There are plenty of writers who go the painterly or lyrical route and my own feeling is that both cut-and-dry brevity and the occasional florid arabesque are tools in a writer’s bag of tricks. Readers who make fundamentalist pronouncements about the personal preference of one or the other are merely behaving like fans (reminding me how wounded I felt, as a kid, when I found out that Alice Cooper and Bing Crosby played golf together) who have never seriously considered the mechanics of a sentence; a paragraph; a functioning story. Try to knock one together that’s even worth criticizing on a serious level and then get back to me.  

In short: don’t read writers you don’t like and do read writers you do; don’t make it a particular writer’s problem because you couldn’t keep that maxim straight.

And it isn’t always the writer’s fault if you don’t get something.

Who's James Wood?

And on that unimprovable exit line I must now retire to beddy-bye (different hemisphere, boys) and the REAL world. Feel free to prattle on and on in my absence, though.

No, really. I mean, you're not talking about this guy (http://www.jameswood.com (http://www.jameswood.com)), right? You keep mentioning all these people and I'm trying to keep track. Your thing doesn't make any sense if you mean this guy (http://www.jameswood.com (http://www.jameswood.com)).

Dear lepermonsters,

It would help if you read work in its entirety before you comment.

damn, sc, you're a much better debater than fiction writer. when i read your posts (skipping of course the boring parts in quotes), i'm almost compelled to agree with you!

"...the alternation guards against monotony"

"...for anyone interested in my discussion of the thought I put into the structure and pacing of the sentences of the text in question."

"Too much, you say? That’s merely your opinion, I’d counter, if so. Be assured that some people get it."

"Anyone who automatically equates a denser style than is currently popular (or commercial) with sub-Nabokovia is betraying the narrow scope of his/her reading."

"And it isn’t always the writer’s fault if you don’t get something. "

For the record S. C. I am putting no energy into 'discussing' your work.

After two complaints, I have reopened this thread.

Thanks for reopening the post because I forgot this whopper:

"A story now exists where there was none before…I myself summoned it out of thin air…and I’m pleased with it. Being one of only about fifty I have stacked in a manuscript, I can’t call it my favorite or my best but I’m sure that anyone who calls it any kind of ‘mediocre’ or even ‘bad’ is just jealous."

Has anyone checked out Mr. Casselle's bio at the end of his story? Just wondering.

Thank you for re-opening the topic thread post, moderator. I think it is important to everyone to let all sides of an argument be heard in their entirety! Especially people should be given a chance to defend themselves. It's important to dialogue!

Is not all this "dialogue for dialogue's sake" stuff just warming up the atmosphere for nothing?
I think Casselle's story is good, although I do not like it particularly. I do not know who Casselle is, by the way, and I do not care - I mean C's work is enough of C for me. The settling of personal accounts has been plaguing literary critique since the beginning of Time. I expect some critic said that old Homer had no proper insight of characters. Do I detect that other plague of the trade, Academism, or Professoralism, or Law-Enforcement?
Now why did I puff more hot air into this balloon? ::)