Tripe, Part Five

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In In chapter five, the central conceit of the book emerges:

For the sole purpose of linking up some topics that have breezed by so as to create the illusion of unity in this manuscript, the lack of appropriate standards of judgment for this book (due to the fact that the genre I've posited doesn't supply any) makes it a lot like a person, no? ...And just like most people that are hard to understand or "weird"-seeming, this book is likely to be ridiculed -- by people who have use only for "comedies" or "philosophy" or "books with actual content," but they will miss the experience of really getting to know an autonomous entity, peering into its inner chambers, getting to know its idiosyncratic rules of self-determination, pouring over its most secret secrets, and then ridiculing it... much like most mentally healthy folks treat themselves.

Of course a book itself can't be "organic," but if mostly unplanned, it can be a work of spontaneity that will to some degree reflect the author's organism, or so the theory goes. Whether this can result in more than a somewhat sloppy diary or an embellished psychotherapy session remains to be seen. The immediate discussion of death and sex as little death immediately after the quote above indicates something like the latter.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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