Create a book and author

Here is a fun assignment based on a book that I love, The Abortion by Richard Brautigan. In the book, there is a library where people bring their unpublished books. The books and the authors are very funny. Let's us try to create some comical, yet in some way symbolic, books and authors.

Examples:

1. IT'S THE QUEEN OF DARKNESS, PAL by Rod Keen. The author was wearing overalls and had on a pair of rubber boots.

"I work in the city sewers," he said, handing the book to me. "It's science-fiction."

2. LOVE ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL, by Charles Green. The author was about fifty years old and said he had been trying to find a publisher for his book since he was seventeen years old when he wrote the book.

"This book has set the world's record for rejections," he said. It has been rejected 459 times and now I am an old man."

3. LEATHER CLOTHES AND THE HISTORY OF MAN by S. M. Justice. The author was quite motorcyclish and wearing an awful lot of leather clothes. His book was made entirely of leather. Somehow the book was printed. I had nevr seen a 290-page book printed on leather before.

When the author turned the book over the library, he said, "I like a man who likes leather."

4. BACON DEATH by Marsha Peterson. The author was a totally nondescript young woman except for a look of anguish on her face. She handed me this fantastically greasy book and fled the library in terror. The book actually looked like a pound of bacon, I was going to open it and see what it was about, but I changed my mind. I didn't know whether to fry the book or put it on the shelf.

THIS I KNOW by Jim Matthews. The author burst through the door, frantic, and asked me if he was in the right place. Sweaty, he seemed to have been looking for the room quite a long time.

When he handed me the massive tome, handsomely bound in expensive leather, I opened it and flipped through a thousand blank pages.

Oh Bravo Jim! Very good!

This reminds me, a bit, of the short story I started last night. The premise is based on games my brother and I played as a child. A bad guy named Rex and his henchmen drive eighteen-wheelers. A man with the last name Bouf (because in my childhood, people had names like boof) who's a pirate marries a girl named Rose Pink.

So basically, I came up with the premise that Rex (and his son, who will marry Rose Pink) came from a long line of pirates. And I had to make up the pirates, and explain them as if you, the audience, have heard of all of them.

So, you know:

"You've heard, of course, of One-Eyed Ambrosius Bouf, who amassed a collection of Spanish spice ships rivalled only by Spain herself."

"Old Floppy Bouf loved killing so much, he often forgot to plunder the ships."

"The name Bouf appears so often in conjunction with pirates that historians argue it might be a meaning of high rank, like captain - because Boufs are not run-of-the-mill pirates; they are brilliant and ruthless."

(These aren't direct quotes because I write my stories longhand. But I thought they were amusing.)

His wife up and left her once desired Private Bouf to sit at the bar.

#4 - you are making me think of the wonderful footnotes in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Bouf Fellow, whose beard was so flourishing that it extended all the way down his shoulder blades.

His brother-in-law had written FACT AND ITS RAMIFICATIONS, a book of such density and erudition that it collected a coating of dust as luxuriant as Bouf Fellow's beard.

She was tall and slender. She came into the workshop in a sleeveless blouse. She had a tattoo encircling her upper arm. From something she'd read to me earlier, I knew she had a dying child. She listened to my prompt and wrote for twenty minutes. She read. It was a delicate ending to the book she would someday write. I could see the book in my mind's eye. When she finished reading, I closed the book gently and put it on a shelf. I wanted to cry because the book had ended.

Metallic Camper by Oskar Block. He brought in the book that was made entirely of objects he had found with his metal detector. The book was very heavy, so he had to set it on the counter with a small crane. The cover was made entirely of pennies he had dug from campsites up and down the California coast. "I once rolled ninety-eight dollars worth of pennies," he said, touching his book with his wrinkled hand. He coughed sadly. "I began hallucinating, seeing pennies everywhere: in my sleep, in my food." He swept his arm in a grand motion. "Everywhere," he said. He told me he was glad to be rid of this book. "I'm through with metal," he said. "Metal can take a hike as far as I'm concerned."

Mercurial Increase and Lust's Hand-basket - by L.S. Esteem. A book examining the unfortunate human trend to find self-confidence sexy, despite the fact that self-confidence is the shibboleth of those with obliterated souls, and despite that the preference leads to an increase of dunderheads, the uprising of jungle politics, and the decline of human civilization. After handing me the book, the author, absently peeling a label from a soda bottle, asked if I thought any women might read it, or perhaps take an interest in him after reading it. Then a gorgeous woman happened in and immediately kissed Esteem on the mouth, asking, while he gasped for breath in the aftermath, "You are Dan Brown aren't you?".

TWO MONTHS ON THE OHIO by Theresa Williams. She was 51 and taught at a midwestern school. Her book was made of water mixed with the husks of mayflies and raw sewage. The book ran down the sides of the counter and turned into a river. I made a boat by folding the New York Times and we floated away together, toward Cairo and Freedom.