Imagine you are teaching a college creative writing class open to any and all students. One day, a girl who’s not even in your class, not even a lit major, enters yoir office with about 150 typed pages and hands them off to you.

She’s sure she’s the next Kundera.

You begin reading the pages that evening and you see Kundera’s influence: strange flights into seeming magical realism that are not quite magical realism; thoughts about love, life, the nature of the universe, the nature of anything and everything; a narrative that moves freely about in time and tenses. It’s evident this girl has taken at least an introduction to philosophy class. It’s clear from all her talk about God that she’s at least sat in a cafe drinking overpriced coffee with somebody in the religion department. But that’s about it. What’s more, she can’t write well, and like many sophomores, she thinks it’s edgy to include references to “cunts” and “cocks.” So proud is she of her image of the universe “ejaculating” (her word, not mine) her father‘s spirit into her upon his death that she uses it multiple times.

This is that manuscript, and it’s every bit pedantic, empty, and pathetic as it sounds.