from [Untitled]

from Chapter THREE
shelves full of books that he only understood peripherally – Cornel West, Greg Tate, Jackson Mac Lowe – and he kept them more as a tactile reminder to work hard than for reference. A Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary sat on the corner of the floor nearest his computer, but he never cracked the pages. And he had wanted an OED for over a decade,

from Chapter ONE
as Kundera vacillates between his narrative, his literary criticism, and his own experiences. Ultimately, the goal of work like this is to become an event, an unforeseeable something that even Derrida himself could not have predicted. Don DeLillo or Jürgen Moltmann might posit this event as the eschaton, DeLillo with his nuclear fears and Moltmann with his coming hope, but experimental authors envision this event quite differently, as something that happens over coffee, or beer. To influence the dialog of history, that is the end of all human struggle, and the sole goal of experimental art.

from APPENDIX A
STEPHENS
It doesn't occur to you that maybe this letter bears some sort of ill news?

MORIARITY [sitting]
What up?

STEPHENS
My mother is coming to visit.

MORIARITY
Hey, that's great. I love meeting my friendsises parents.

STEPHENS
. . . tomorrow.

MORIARITY
And?

STEPHENS
And obviously that means we'll have to cancel our party tonight.

MORIARITY
Say wha-?

STEPHENS
Moriarity, we can't throw a party the night before my mother arrives! We always wreck the place. We'll stink it up with nasty cigarettes. And, you know, holdovers, hangovers, hair of the dog.

MORIARITY
Look, Stephens, if this is about the upchuck in your closet from last weekend, I said I was going to clean that up.

STEPHENS
The what?

MORIARITY
Forget about it.

STEPHENS
It's just, you know, my mom is used to a slightly different scene.

MORIARITY
I sort of thought our scene covered the spectrum. Who's coming tonight? Jason'll be here, Cliff and Claire, Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler. Strum, Regina -- that covers everything from bad folk musicians to nudists to obstetricians.

STEPHENS
We're lacking a crucial element.

MORIARITY [laughs]
What, Jesus freaks?

STEPHENS
You said it.

MORIARITY
Your mom?

STEPHENS
In as many words, yes.

MORIARITY
But, Stephens, you're so . . . worldly.

STEPHENS
My mom is otherworldly, to an extreme.

MORIARITY
You mean like . . .

STEPHENS
She thinks motorcycles are evil.

MORIARITY
Wow. I have so many questions.