Dennis and Dave are assailed by a group of really pretentious and lousy creative writers. Find out just how bad and useless they are. A chapter from I Got Stinky Feet

Morning brought a sight that delayed breakfast. Off a hundred yards or so near some trees at the edge of a field were some people. We couldn’t tell how many, but Dave thought we should inspect. I wanted to stay.

“No. An adventurer never stays. You don’t know what’s out there. You have to find out. Sitting here by yourself being scared to do anything ain’t gonna do it for you. They might have food, which would save us the work of slicing up salami. And you don’t know, they might be evil. We might have a chance to save a life or do some good. You know, help the world. They might be singing religious songs or Christmas carols. We could shut them up. They might be religious types trying to convert people or asking for donations. We might be able to save some poor soul from conversion and a life of obedience to mindless rules meant to control people. Or who knows, they might be pizza delivery people who got lost because of bad directions. Could be anybody. But we’re gonna find out. Let’s ride.”

There were four people, about our age, two men and two women, three of whom were standing and shouting at the fourth, a skinny guy with short hair, round, wire-rimmed glasses and soft-looking skin, who was standing on a lower branch of a tree, his head and neck level with a hangman’s noose that dangled from a higher branch.

We got off the bikes in motions meant for effect—by planting one foot on a foot peg, shifting our body weight to it, and swinging the other leg in a wide, easy arc high over the seat, like cowboys getting off horses.

We swaggered toward the three with extra-long strides, stopped, glared around through the trees like we were looking for something and knew exactly what, squinted our eyes and asked, both at once and like we were annoyed, “What goes on here?”

It was Dave’s idea. He planned it on the slow ride over from our campsite.

“Effect,” he said, “you always got to work it to your advantage because you never know what you’re walking into and you need to act like you’re in control. Act like you’re in command and everyone else will be intimidated. Cops us it. Salesmen do. Business executives do. Most people submit to authority. It works all the time.”

We were ignored. The three were shouting at the guy in the tree things like, “You’re brilliant! You’re great! Stunning! A hit! A breakthrough! Remarkable! Superb! Masterful. Rare! Marvelous! Sensational! Wonderful!” and “Extremely viable!”

We asked again what was going on, this time forgetting about effect, and letting them know we did not like being ignored.

The guy in the tree was named Tom. He spoke:

“I shall hang myself until numb, stiff and even lifeless. Tragic? Yes, will be the loss to befall humanity upon completion of said selfless act. Mourn not, but grieve so, yea, and cry for the senseless loss. Such waste, however wasteful, is necessitated by the grievous injustice perpetrated on thine humble soul.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dave asked.

“Oh Gawd. Spare me. You muuust be a carpenter or such. Or maybe an electrician? Pffff. Spare me. Hmmh.”

“No. You spare us. Why are you going to hang yourself? And speak English.”

“Because I am twenty-four years old and I am not a great writer yet. Excuse me. Misstated. I am not regarded nor treated yet as the great writer that Gawd created me as.”

“Oh, you are! You are!” shouted one of the women. “You are. Is it your fault that society is so ignorant and blind to genius?”

“You know,” said the other guy, “how society caters to the lowest, the absolute lowest denominator. You have steadfastly refused to do so. You’ve maintained, no, expanded your self-respect and dignity, while all else have sold theirs. No, you’re the victor, not they.”

“Who are you people?” Dave wanted to know.

“Weee,” said the second woman, drawing out the word and acting like we were idiots for not knowing, “hmmh, are members of a writers group. Misstated. We are writers, and are a writers group. We gather weekly and do our own readings.”

“What do you read?” I asked.

“Gawd,” said the second woman, a brunette a little over five-feet tall. “I am. Excuse me. I can barely speak. I am so exasperated by your uninformed question. Surely, enlighten us, must you be a plumber? Or maybe a machinist? We read, and I’ll say this slowly so you will comprehend, our works. Mine are poetry. I am a poet. I have studied writing and poetry while on a fellowship at Stanford University. I marinate in the periphery.”

“I marinate on the grill while cooking, but let’s get back to the guy in the tree,” Dave said. “Are you supposed to be a great writer or something? What’s the story?”

“Where do they raise Neanderthals like you, in pig pens?” shouted Tom down from the tree. “You must jest. You must. I have studied creative writing at the University of Chicago as well as other major universities in the world. I have steeped myself in the classics, and father paid excellent money for tuition. I have taken creative writing classes at major universities and have interacted with these gifted writers for several months now, and I have obtained advanced degrees in creative writing. Surely that answers your inquiry as to whether I am supposed, as you say, to be a great writer.”

“To be misunderstood, Thomas, that’s the life of an author,” the short woman said.

“Well, wait a minute. Have you got any natural talent for writing? Are you a good writer?” Dave asked.

“Talent? Hmmh. Talent. Did you hear before when I spoke? I said I have degrees, why would I need talent? Let me phrase this differently. I have studied creative writing in college. Each of my professors has read thousands of books. I have a degree in fiction. My father paid money. My fellow writers consider my works excellent. I needn’t say more. I have toiled away for four years writing. Four years. And the mindless, mediocre publishing establishment has yet to recognize me. I have studied. I have degrees. I have written and thus I deserve. You tell me why I am not great. Misstated, why I am not considered great?”

“Nothing’s automatic. There’s no such thing as a college course in being great. Talent without work is meaningless. It’s worth as much as a smelly sock.”

“Listen mister blue-collar, I attended college to be a great writer, a swayer of opinion and a remarkable mind. I hold several degrees that say I am, so how come I’m not? And let me inform you mister, talent is no substitute for a degree.”

“No one owes you a damn thing, pal. Where do you people get these ideas that a degree, that a piece of paper entitles you to things? It takes hard work and dedication and skill and luck and talent. You also have to have something to say. Getting a piece of paper, or several of them, that says you’re something doesn’t make you that something. Have you ever written anything?”

“Yes, two short stories.”

“Are they any good?”

“Gawd, I will not stand on this branch and be goaded into mindless boasting about how brilliant my works are. You read them and reach that conclusion on your own.” Tom leaned down and handed Dave copies of the stories. The first was called: Why So Profound? Dave read it out loud:

“Sat she that rarefied morning in her study reading Shakespeare’s complete works for the third time that month, when she thought of her husband, a professor at the university. She thought of him and smiled. Then she smiled and thought of him. Then she smiled and smiled and thought of herself and smiled some more. She loved, and lived to think thoughts, and now she was thinking ferociously, savagely—mightily.

“A one word description of her would be, ‘Alive.’ She, alive, was. That is why she was thinking, thinking savagely and ferociously by this time. A two word description of him would be, ‘Not dead.’ Surely he was not dead. He was alive and she was glad of that.

“He thought, too, but smiled not when doing so, because, to him, thinking was serious business. Laughter, he thought, was for farm hands and factory workers, not for tenured university professors like himself. Although he permitted others to laugh at his witticisms.

“So deep, so profound were her thoughts, that she understood them not. She never understood anything she thought because her thoughts were so profound. Profound indeed were her thoughts, she thought. At noon she was thinking with a savage intensity that was monstrous and could only be described as such.

“When his classes were completed only one brain wave inhabited his cerebrum. That was, Why so profound? Why so profound? Why so profound? Why so profound? Why so profound? Why so profound? he kept asking himself.

“Trisepalous, socmanry. Platyelmia!” he said to a bird outside of his classroom window.

“They owned a salamander named Pete.

“Seven hundred miles away in a city another, a truck slammed into an octogenarian woman. She could be described in three words as, dead, not alive. Juxtapose that scene with that of the alive woman and her not dead husband and you see a scene of real life as a background to the thinking couple that they were not involved in. Somewhere in the world it was snowing that day, and raining and hailing, too. Homo sapiens were being born and populus deltoids grew.

“Our two were oblivious to these incidents of every day life, so profoundly were they thinking. When an avalanche two thousand miles away took the lives of forty-two people, she flinched not. She was not an uncaring person, nor an insensitive one who was incapable of sorrow. She was too busy thinking to notice.

“By mid-afternoon he was studying Kant and thinking more fiercely than she. Why so profound, he thought, he thought, he thought?

“Corn was something they did not like to eat.

“The someday to be dead, but presently alive professor, left his office still asking, but unable to answer the question of, Why so profound? His ashes to ashes and dust to dust wife was still alive and thus, still experiencing brain activity. Manifest though, she knew not what thereof she thought, so profound were her thoughts.

“She uplifted her skin and bones from the four-legged, wooden object and exited the space enclosed by four walls, a ceiling and lined with books and went to a room another. The thinking adult male homo sapien began to walk up the curious shaped planks of wood called steps. His brain worked faster to answer the question. She redoubled her fiercely, savage thinking. He put his hand on the door knob. She did the same and turned it. He opened the door. She smiled. He didn’t. They greeted each other as always: Clutching each other’s foreheads with their hands. Instantly they were overwhelmed with joy. Fiercely gazed they into each other’s eyes and proclaimed as one: ‘Why so profound?’ She smiled again. And then, finally, he who would someday decay, did too.

“The End.”

“Tell me, please, what do you think it?” Tom asked.

“It’s strikingly similar to my style,” said the second guy, whose name was Tony and who put a heavy emphasis on the word, ‘my.’

“It needs some polishing, what doesn’t?” the short woman said. “But overall, I—” and she drew out that word until she was out of breath, “I like it. I approve. I once did something so similar, one of my early works. I liked it but thought it a tad immature. I’ve been thinking that I should rework it. I think it’s time now. I’ve gained a new insight into life. I’ve polished so many of my own stories. I—”

“It’s not exactly the way I would write it,” said the second woman, “but then, ha! no one writes as I do. I was re-reading Cervantes yesterday and all I could think of was how much differently and better he could have done things, you know, to have gotten his message out. So many of his works were structurally flawed.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” Tony said. “Was thumbing through some Twain the other day and I found myself getting angry, angry over the fact that he hadn’t done a better job. I felt cheated. If only he had viewed things differently, or if he had refined his style. I found myself damning him. He had so much to work with, and yet, well, I would have approached the subject matter in a radically different fashion.”

“And Shakespeare,” said the short woman, “excellent for his time, no doubt, but weak for me. And just not what I do.”

“That’s enough. We know they weren’t as good as we are,” said Tom. “But enough of that. I want to know what these two think of my work.”

I was stunned and couldn’t speak, so I let Dave talk.

“It’s garbage,” he said. “Garbage, garbage and garb—”

“Excuse me? Excuuuuse me? I am sorry. You have it wrong. I can understand how you would. Have you worked in the coal mines? Obviously you are not as advanced as I. But the story is so clear. So obvious. Too obvious, perhaps, because life is not such. You better let me explain it before you attempt an opinion.”

“The first sentence tells you something. It’s immediate. No wasted time. She’s reading Shakespeare for the third time that month. That’s significant. And in the first paragraph she’s thinking ferociously. Put those two together and you’ve got a lot. And in the second paragraph, the one word description of her: alive. That’s a technique I learned while obtaining my first degree. You describe a character in one word. I think ‘alive’ says it. It tells you something. From that I can visualize her, not totally, though, because it leaves enough for the readers to form their own image. And that’s the genius of it. I give an outline, a frame, and let the reader complete the picture.

“Notice how I expand and build on that technique one sentence later when I describe him in two words. And in the same paragraph I’ve doubled up on the adjectives to describe her thinking. It took a while to learn that technique, but I mastered it. And in the fifth paragraph, notice the cleverness there. ‘One brain wave inhabited his cerebrum.’ Creative—and—interesting. It’s a different way of saying, ‘There was one thought on his mind.’ That’s variety. A common technique that makes writing more lively and interesting. Variety. Never say things simply when you can complicate them. Never speak directly. That is boring and clichéd. The professors taught me that. Humans are always saying the same things and in the same way. Laziness.

“And do you notice the way I keep repeating, ‘Why so profound?’ That’s another technique, repetition. It pounds the idea into the reader. I learned that during my first four years. Notice the next sentence, the one about the salamander. That’s a transitional device. It moves us from one scene to a completely different one in a smooth fashion. I excel at transitions. And of course the next paragraph presents a completely different scene. That shows that there is a world besides that of our main characters. Not very interesting or stimulating, of course, but a necessary device to add body to the story. That gives to the dear reader the message that we’re not shallow elitists who care only about ourselves and nothing else. We concede that there are lives and worlds out there besides our own.

“And the next, ‘an octogenarian woman.’ I am especially proud of that. Others might have referred to her as an eighty-year-old woman. That’s the first technique I learned at the university—never call something what it really is.

“Notice next how I combine the one and two-word descriptions. A complicated technique of fusing two techniques into a super technique—blasting the reader with information that would normally cause an overload, were it not done so delicately. That I mastered while obtaining my second degree. Now see where I say ‘Homo sapiens being born?’ That’s another way of saying ‘human.’ Clever. And how about Populus Deltoides? Those are Eastern Cottonwood trees. Now there’s innovation. I authored my master’s thesis on that subject, on just those two words and on the two ways of saying, ‘Eastern Cottonwood.’ That technique, that very specific description, is mine. I created it. I’ve copyrighted it. I spent years developing it. The sentence about the corn? You probably didn’t notice, but that was another transitional device. They’re so smooth that no one notices the change of scenery. Now notice how all the techniques are woven together into the beautiful final section of the work. Like a beautiful carpet or sweater. That I mastered while working on my doctorate. And during that time I studied page numbering as well. Although I’m still working on a degree on that.

“Next, ‘She uplifted her skin and bones?’ A less talented writer would have said, ‘She got out of the chair.’ Blue-collar stuff. And then the last sentence, what a clever way of saying the character is going to die. And as far as what the story is about, it’s an obvious fact that needs no explanation.

“I learned these techniques at one the world’s greatest universities, not a second-rate state university or, gawd, a junior college. So it’s definitely worth a lot and yet, no one has offered to print these two stories. I am angry.”

“Have you sent them to any publishers or magazines?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Well how are you supposed to sell them or get them published?”

“Spare me, wretched mind. Great writers do not go begging for people to publish their works. “If someone wants to publish my stories they’ll have to come to me. Now that I’ve explained it, do you like it?”

“It’s strikingly similar to my own style!” Tony shouted again.

“What about my works?” the short woman interrupted. “Let’s read mine. Myyyy works. I’ll read my works.” And she started:

“The horse, his hoof, it worked so hard, to find the table that day, hidden in the clouds that sunny day, and the mixed up minds of a few who wondered aloud, then silently said the days were short indeed, and he woke in a dream, his sweaty arms tired, in the ghost of the house that the slipper drank and said no more to fine—”

“Excellent!” shouted Tony. “Impressive. I really like it. I think it’s great. Great. I admire your talent. You’re almost at my level. Say, would you like to date me tonight so you and I can talk about my problems while we’re having sex?”

“You self-centered jerk. You’re so involved with yourself. We’ll talk about my problems. Mine. And we’ll talk about my writing. My writing. Mine, mine, mine and mine. But first let’s find out what these two brilliant minds think of my work. It’s poetry, you know. Prose poetry. I learned how to do that at Stanford, while a fellow. I am a fellow. And this really is poetry. It is poetry, and I am a poet. Gentlemen, why the silence?”

“It stinks,” Dave said. “If you think that’s poetry you’re an idiot.”

“Fools! Heathens! It is poetry! I—”

“Shut up and let’s talk about my stuff! For once. Yes, For once, dammit. Let’s discuss my works. My writing. I like my fiction. And when are we going to start talking about mine?” the second woman huffed. “Let’s talk about my stuff. For once. And no, I am not hysterical! Let’s read my stuff.” And she did:

“Lo, the nightingale sings. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.”

“More garbage,” Dave said. “What the hell is that?”

“Only fools make judgments. You’re making judgments before you’ve heard the rest. That’s like seasoning soup before tasting it. Einstein didn’t do that. He was smarter than that. Listen to the rest. “Twenty-one. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I....I! Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.”

“What is it?”

“I know you’re foolish, but are you stupid, too? That’s the beginning of a biographical novel. Maybe straight autobiography. I haven’t decided yet where I’ll take it. I’m struggling with this one. But I’ll get there. I’ll resolve it. I’m still struggling to find my voice. Can’t you see what it is? It’s so obvious.”

“It stinks.”

“Enough already! I was the first to ask,” Tom said, as he put the noose around his neck. “Tell me now what you think of my two stories.”

“They stink. They’re garb—”

“Oh, so you hate me. Hate me, don’t you? Never did like me, did you two? Well I hate you too. I am so far ahead of everyone else. I’ll never be happy. I’m too advanced. I’ll show the world.” With that, Tom tightened the noose, jumped off the tree and hanged himself.

We were waiting for the body to stop twitching so we could go through the pockets for money. Before it did and we could, the three others began waving papers in our faces and demanding that we read their stories and poems:

“It’s pretty good, no great, don’t you think? Come on, tell me it’s great. That’s all I want to hear.”

“Tell me I’m better than she is. Tell me I’m the greatest writer ever. Say it fast. I’m impatient.”

“The hell with them both. Read mine. It’s a lot better than that dead guy’s stuff...”

We pushed them aside, got on the bikes and drove away fast.