A novel once called Disgrace

Thursday, 29 December, Year 8 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

The full title read "A novel once called Disgrace and badly written by an untalented politruk whose name history has not recorded, now substantially reviewed, fixed and improved by yours truly and actually worth reading for the first time in its existence", but it ran long.

It's not just that I've not sought the permission of the hack in question to modify his work. It's that I am firmly convinced the original is exactly that -- work -- and that I see no reason either the original or its author should be remembered.

I'm engaging in literary genocide, if you will, a sort of black-on-white holocaust. You should try it sometime, it's fun.

I intend to publish the result feuilleton-style over the course of however long it takes me, but for the reader's convenience I will eventually collect all the chapters in a list here below :

  1. Disgrace - For a man of his age
  2. Disgrace - Yet neither he nor she
  3. Disgrace - What he throws together
  4. Disgrace - He pauses. Blank incomprehension.
  5. Disgrace - Does she know what
  6. Disgrace - Never mind. Note that we
  7. Disgrace - It is raining.
  8. Disgrace - You say you have not
  9. Disgrace - At first they do not
  10. Disgrace - Don't the dogs get
  11. Disgrace - Well, you're welcome
  12. Disgrace - The house is just as
  13. Disgrace - The sign outside the clinic
  14. Disgrace - Are they all going to die
  15. Disgrace - Three men are coming
  16. Disgrace - Lucy returns
  17. Disgrace - Before they set off
  18. Disgrace - Katy is coaxed
  19. Disgrace - In spite of all that
  20. Disgrace - Petrus has invited us
  21. Disgrace - He glances across at Lucy
  22. Disgrace - The whole day Lucy
  23. Disgrace - He buys a small television
  24. Disgrace - The dogs are brought
  25. Disgrace - Petrus shakes his head
  26. Disgrace - But he is not satisfied
  27. Disgrace - His spell with Lucy
  28. Disgrace - Years ago, when he lived

For the stat collectors, it went from 4`560 lines / 67`049 words / 355`343 characters to 66`991 words / 374`397 characters ; and from nothingness to wholedom.

Three days, with time to spare.

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte
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11 Responses

  1. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    1
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 1 October 2020

    Since I've noticed that this shining jewel of a literary accomplishment (not in the sense of shining particularly in my own bag, oversupplied as that is ; but in the sense of overwhelming the sum total of anything everyone else's managed to produce in the interval) is about to exceed six digits' readership, but scattered rather than continuous, a chapter here, a chapter there, I've taken the time and went to the trouble of editing all the chapters, to add a little navigational aid at the bottom, permitting perhaps more continuous a perusal.

    It was an unpleasant half hour, I admit, but the unpleasantness stands greatly mitigated by the circumstance that not in a thousand years will the "Nobel prize laureate" imbecile who first attempted a novel by this name reach even a fraction of that audience. In other words men have been hanged for less.

  2. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    2
    Mircea Popescu 
    Friday, 2 October 2020

    A, yeah : also added the occasional footnote, once or twice even rouded out the story in commentary (for not wanting to alter its historically recounted course, but also not wanting to leave the obvious directness, the limpid call of truth unvoiced) ; and besides turned the "baisc" back to basic, snipped a flow-breaking "the" or the hanging "a" here and there, removed spurious line ends in a few places and such touch-ups as four years accumulated.

    Not altogether very much, to be honest.

  1. [...] delicious. I just could not think away. A while back I had read this guy's novel online, Disgrace it was called. In it this black guy in South Africa simply has his way with the author's daughter. [...]

  2. [...] war of the hacks, practically speaking. [↩]Petrus, you see, is the product of his environment in the sense that primitive, orcish societies do waste [...]

  3. [...] of female society, complete with wunderkinds and magic healers. The whole thing is basically Disgrace done ass-backwards by idiot [...]

  4. [...] a reason for disgrace, you understand. Ineptitude is that reason. I trust you follow the logic. [...]

  5. [...] Over three days between 2016 and 2017 I rewrote the miserable literary failure of some nobody. You can read it from here. [...]

  6. [...] ludicrous "parasitism" theory we pointed and laughed at when discussing third-hand re-chewers a la Coetzee. But then, a peniless exile, he moved on to London, to be with his peers. Only when Vitaii fucked [...]

  7. [...] ludicrous "parasitism" theory we pointed and laughed at when discussing third-hand re-chewers a la Coetzee. But then, a peniless exile, he moved on to London, to be with his peers ; only when Vitaiii fucked [...]

  8. [...] end. Something like that. Not bad for a book I refused to get an ISBN for, anyhow. [↩]2016's Disgrace, 2017's Zuleika Dobson, 2018s Double Indemnity, 2020s Diary of a baby doll and this year's [...]

  9. [...] a republic and when it proved impotent, had the strength to burn it down, the author of more and better books, short stories, prose and poetry than any other who took up the pen. He touched essence and [...]

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