<p>For some reason, people feel ok about coming to me with things. This is flattering and usually very fun as I love editing papers, helping out with homework, whatever is needed. I am small and friendly-looking, and don’t seem the type to judge.</p>
<p>Now. The thing is. I do. Goodness gracious, this is horrible and nothing I would ever share with the fellow students that look at my harmless little stature and merrily hand over their work, but I definitely do. If it’s good, I feel impressed; but if it’s bad – I laugh, I laugh some more, and I share the best parts with my best friend. I never think any less of the student and still try and salvage it as much as I can, but… Yeah baby. I laugh.</p>
<p>A week or so ago the funniest guy I’ve ever met hands me a printed and binded book. He is funny because,</p>
<p>a) He is no more than 19 tops and dresses extremely formal - at a community college</p>
<p>b) He hands people his “business card” with the bolded, centrally placed word “SENATOR” - senator, sure, at a community college</p>
<p>c) During the class I had with him, he would only speak out when standing in front of class (he loves standing in front of class!, haha), going through a meticulously styled power point, and offering expertise comments - if you define “expertise comments” as “random snippets of words he picked up on in the NYT headline for the day”.</p>
<p>He has now written a book, he explains, and paid to have it printed out. I am to read it and provide input so he can finally get it published. He beams with pride, confidently putting it in my hands, giving me a hopeful yet professional gaze that seems to say “I trust this fine work with you, you and only a select other few… this is work for experts”.</p>
<p>I read the first three chapters of his book.</p>
<p>I re-read them.</p>
<p>I had the entire coffeeshop turn around to stare at me as I just. Could. Not. Stop. Laughing.</p>
<p>It was so awkward and unintentionally hilarious, I don’t even know where to begin with giving any sort of input on it, it’s just so far beyond even ATTEMPTING to come up to the level where one could look at it and say, oh, this might need improvement. It’s in a class all of its own.</p>
<p>He is born in the States from a Chinese family, but seems to not have been sharing the same English with anyone else on this entire continent. The grammar is puzzling; but the story is far beyooooond comprehension. The first two chapters involve a bunch of random names (calling them “characters” would be perpetrating a severe crime of this term) hanging around at a ball, having what could resemble a coherent dialogue if one were to feel generous, constantly referring to “my versace car” or “She was wearing gucci no. 5 and speaking with a Harvard accent – the finest of the finest” (I’ve no idea what a “Harvard accent” is, but I guess it goes along with the Gucci No. 5). They’ve all been to Harvard, they are all experts on wine… sadly, the author, henceforth referred to as THE SENATOR, is definitely not.</p>
<p>It gets worse. It turns out, the entire plot centers around one man. A man that has not a single line, yet according to all the men is A Highly Desirable Employee; and, if I am to trust the witness accounts of the women, it is nothing short of a miracle such a 100% Perfect, Sexually Appealing Stud of a Man would even grace us with his presence by walking the Earth as if he were a mere mortal.</p>
<p>Chapter 2 and onwards is, literally, one lady after another either hooking up with “Orientall Man” (no comment…) or talking to each other about the mind-boggling perfection of this hooking up. The Oriental Man’s love-making skills know no limit, and time and again produce intense “cranial pleasures” in his partners upon “the fatal insertion”. If I didn’t know any better, I would say the narrator has a loose grasp of what, exactly, even the act of kissing would entail beyond some vague notion of the mouth-to-mouth routine with the modification of having the female party nearly die from erotic shock from it. </p>
<p>And so on and so on.</p>
<p>Do I give him some tangible critique on things that aren’t purely grammatical (there is just no way I’ll re-read and correct every insanely constructed sentence in his biography grande), such as overusing the two somewhat interesting words he HAS snapped up (“animatedly, mirth”)? Do I tell him it’s overall great, great then leave it to time for him to realize it will never get published - if I give feedback he might just waste time improving something unsalvageable (he has no redeeming literary qualities as a writer whatsoever, and seems to have speed-written it only in a fit to get published), and this way, he can at least pretend he was only a millipercent away from being picked over someone just as brilliant.</p>
<p>Or do I do the most difficult thing and simply tell him to drop it and put his time into pursuing something as safely far away from literature as possible? Good God, if literature as a phenomenon could be slain, this Opus Magnum of cranial pleasures would certainly be the fatal insertion.</p>