. Spinning .

Holy Shit!  What did I just read?

This book was the most amazingest I’ve ever, ever read.  I’ll have to read the last three pages again–I swept through them with a fever as I crossed into yet another of O’Brien’s worlds.  Gut reaction to the whole?  One of my favoritest now that I’ve made my way through it. 

And while I’ll do a better Finale post, I’ll state right now that it will be read again and maybe even againer.  Since I, even in my closest reading, somehow missed the title within the pages.

One of O’Brien’s techniques throughout the book–or at least, one assigned to at least one of his writers–has been to illustrate the show versus tell instruction.

On his smallest finger Orlick screwed the cap of his Waterman fountain-pen, the one with the fourteen-carat nib; when he unscrewed it again there waas a black circle about his finger.

Symbolism of the foregoing: annoyance.  (p. 282)

By inserting an "author’s" note below a statement, he is telling us what he is showing.  On our own, we would have picked up Orlick’s annoyance at being interrupted in his writing by his fiddling with the pen cap.  These "notes" appear as if the author jogged them down to himself.  Neatly done.

Getting towards the end of the book–which story though, I’m not quite sure–and the author Trellis is on trial and being judged by a panel and jury of his characters.  It seems their complaints are of what he has made them be and represent.  From Slug Willard:

In what manner were you compelled to address Mr. Furriskey?

In guttersnipe dialect, at all times repugnant to the instincts of a gentleman.

You have already said that the character or milieu of the conversation was distasteful to you?

Yes.  It occasioned considerable mental anguish.  (p. 285)

I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules of writing, brought up recently by his death.  Included was this, at No. 1:  "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted."

O’Brien is making this rule even more emphatic; clearly, don’t piss them off.

Mesmerizing, amid all the wounds inflicted by the Pooka on his maker; how can a writer write such agony to another?

Interesting too, that when the son of Trellis–an author in his own right–leaves the room, the other characters–Shanahan, Furriskey–insist upon sending the father Trellis back into a scene for more punishment.  Rewriting?  Editing? 

Or is it a reflection of the need in every man to write; the old "I have a book in me" mentality.  Clearly though–at least to me–the  metaphor.  Will Trellis, half-bled out by one fall from a window, bled the rest by yet another, survive his broken body while his mind is still intact?  Like Wiley Coyote, he keeps coming back for more.

How shall I take this in my own decisions?

Has everybody who’s read this book gotten this far still wondering what the damn title means?

O’Brien now captures the full extent of fictional character rights to have Trellis’ own "son" write a story to punish Trellis the author.  Ahah–O’Brien has tapped into the fear of every author whose characters make their own way across narrative without any rein of control!

This is surely the book most meant for a writer to read, outdoing any of the how-to’s I’ve ever read. 

He takes it even further, as Furrisky and Shanahan egg Orlick Trellis on in more and more devious ways to destroy their creator:

I’m after thinking of something good, something very good unless I’m very much mistaken, said Furriskey in an eager way, black in the labour of his fine thought.  When you take our hero from the concrete-mixer, you put him on his back on the road and order full steam ahead with the steam-roller.

And a very good idea, Shanahan agreed.

And a very good idea as you say, Mr. Shanahan.  But when the roller passes over his dead corpse, be damned but there’s one thing there that it can’t crush, one thing that lifts it high offa the road–a ten ton roller, mind!…

Indeed, said Orlick, eye-brow for question.

One thing, said Furriskey, sole finger for true counting.  They drive away the roller and here is his black heart sitting there as large as life in the middle of the pulp of his banjaxed corpse.  They couldn’t crush his heart!  (p.240)

Now if that’s not a metaphor for the editorial job done on an author’s precious manuscript, I don’t know my metaphors.