Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Hello! I'm Baxter Burchill, a sophomore majoring in English. I'm so awful at describing my own writing, but if it says anything, I basically pray to David Foster Wallace and Samuel Beckett and all those crazy Latin American authors (Borges, Marquez, Bolano, etc).
So here is an example of my writing that I did last year


The boss’s nose is massive. A real honker. He can’t help but wonder, as the boss leans forward, hands splayed on the desk, how that nose must have ruined his life. A little kid alone on the playground, tortured by everybody older and younger, pretending to steal his nose but unable to lift it since it’s just so big. Finally landing a date in high school and ruining it all when the nose blocks his mouth from hers on prom night, an awkward silence following until she gets up and leaves, forgetting the flowers he bought for her. Going into interview after interview, always denied because everyone loses track of what they’re saying when in presence of such a gigantic, unavoidable nose like his. And it just keeps growing and growing with the rest of him.

White, unpainted walls surround them, a fat computer whirring out Windows 95 on the stained desk. Papers shuffled around to look busy and a carpet so unimaginably tan that it physically pains him to look at. Behind the nose’s master (though perhaps, he thinks, it is the nose that is the boss’s master) is a poster rushed in from a time machine. Speech bubble: ‘Only a manager can handle this much coolness’ as told by an orange with sunglasses and twinkling teeth. He (the boss) is droning with his butt pushed out as he raises and wags a finger. The tie he has on, it’s got these weird abstract shapes: squiggly lines running around at random, making circles and squares and polygons and everything else with sides to it. So why do they all look like noses?

Words cough out of the boss’s mustached mouth like some horrible black smog, floating up around his out-of-touch managerial hair. His suit has a little blob of mustard next to the third button from the top, widening out as it goes down—a perfect image of it. Jesus appears in toast; the nose appears in mustard stains; the meaning of life begins to piece itself together. There’s a hair, a single thick brown pubic-like hair, waving and warbling along with his moving mouth, coming out from the caves of the titan nose. It’s hypnotic; its dance is beautiful, moving, touching his heart. Suddenly he finds himself filled with an intense sadness for the boss and his nose. The words become crystalline.

“…So that’s just about the gist of it in a nutshell.”

“I’m so sorry for you.”

The boss blinks and his nose twitches, as if speaking for him. “What?”

“What?” The spell breaks. The nose controls the boss now. “I mean, you know. I’m so sorry for you because…” The nose! It swallows the boss’s face whole! “Well, its see, how it works is that…” There is nothing else but the nose. There will never be anything like the nose. This is how religions begin! “Could I get that address written down?”

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I really like this part- "Jesus appears in toast; the nose appears in mustard stains; the meaning of life begins to piece itself together. There’s a hair, a single thick brown pubic-like hair, waving and warbling along with his moving mouth, coming out from the caves of the titan nose. It’s hypnotic; its dance is beautiful, moving, touching his heart." It is almost poetic, like something Bukowski would write.

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  3. Ha. This is really interesting writing. I agree with Zane that's definitely in more of a realm of poetry (I assume because it's just an abstraction). I really want to see one of your complete works if you have one available. The writing is enticing.

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  4. I liked the same description Zane selected. It's probably the most disgustingly beautiful description of a nose I've ever come across. I'm not much of a writer, but I did get that poetic feeling, and I liked that as well.

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  5. lol I find this very amusing. The way it's written is very good at helping me visualize what this guy is seeing.

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