It is commonly believed that everyone has the ability - so long as they are sufficiently committed and enthusiastic - to write a novel. Few people hold this belief dearer than the millions of self-published (and self 'published') writers unleashed and emboldened by the emergence of the internet. This belief is utter nonsense. Those that treasure it are
at best delusional and at worst are the shock troops in a brutal assault on the very idea of literature.
It is with a feeling of deep regret that I am forced to conclude that 20RP12 of this parish ultimately belongs in the second category.
Imprisoned was abandoned after just seven full paragraphs (a typical fate for internet literature), but in those few short paragraphs 20RP12 demonstrates not just a shocking lack of originality but also a distressing lack of talent. Worse still, this basic lack of skill or ability is encased in a thick layer of one of the worst and most pervasive features of contemporary cultural life: failed 'ironic' detachment. Consider for instance
Imprisoned's opening salvo:
"I bled copiously. So much so that I nearly drowned in my own blood. Literally. How disgustingly laughable is that?"The overall effect of this remarkably ill-judged string of words is similiar to sight of a pasty-faced teenager attempting to rock a black leather trenchcoat and is only slightly less embarrassing. The worst part is that it is hard to overcome the suspicion that 20RP12 is actually trying to be
shocking here; as if he really believes that mere reference to the 'disgusting' nature of bodily fluids and the macabre possibility of drowning in them still has the power to provoke in 2014, despite popular culture having been thoroughly saturated by such images for the past four decades.
After this less than promising start,
Imprisoned does not really improve. It is the story of a nameless young man - we can safely presume this from the highly masculine style of the first person narrative - who sees himself as an artistic outsider imprisoned by an educational system that insists on teaching what he charmingly regards as "bullsh!t concepts", by his requirement to do well in this system of 'bullsh!t' education, by the bourgeois expectations of his parents, and by depression brought on by all of the above. Our nameless hero only feels free when he is writing - in a cringe-inducing moment of questionable self-regard he claims that writing is the only thing he can do "without feeling an immense amount of shame or regret" - and when he is cutting himself. Eventually he attempts to kill himself and ends up imprisoned - for real this time - in a mental hospital, although a rather clunkily worded concluding sentence - "My biggest mistake was not killing myself sooner" - means that
Imprisoned could, perhaps, be interpreted instead as some sort of bizarre ghost story: Edgar Allen Poe meets J.D. Salinger.
None of the above events are actually depicted in Imprisoned as, alas and inevitably, this brief attempt at a novel is nothing more than a grandiloquent self-pitying monologue, full of cod philosophy and excruciatingly bad attempts at existentialist prose. This is frequently combined with failed attempts at irony, resulting in the following atrocity of a line:
"Depression is an endless tunnel. Or an abyss. Whatever floats your convenient, metaphorical boat."In a particularly striking passage he describes self-harm as making him feel like God and notes, for good measure, that it gives him "such a lovely feeling". This is disturbing stuff, but not, I suspect, in quite the manner that it was intended to be.
In the final paragraph of
Imprisoned an attempt is made to tie declamations on the human condition to social commentary. The effect is predictably ghastly:
"It's part of the system. You put money into the system, but you never get anything out of it. As a matter of fact, you are not only assimilated into the system, you are swallowed whole by it. They chew you up and spit out your bones. And that's all we are. Skeletons. The remains of former humans who sold out their humanity just to fit in."Please remember that the above passage is clearly intended to be
profound rather than ironic. Further analysis is perhaps not required.
Before concluding I should, however, mention one more thing; a certain moral queasiness, in fact. I know nothing of 20RP12's life and if
Imprisoned is a lightly fictionalised account of his actual experiences - if he has suffered from chronic depression and self-harm; if - and much more critically - he has in fact attempted suicide and been institutionalised as a result - then what I am about to write should be ignored.
But if this is
not the case, then
Imprisoned must be considered as exploitative and deeply unpleasant and its author ought to be subject to a considerable degree of moral censure.
