A Perfect Vacuum/ Stanislaw Lem. (Fic Lem)
Stanislaw Lem’s satire/parody of literary criticism -- in the form of critiques of books no one ever wrote -- will have you either laughing or groaning with recognition of the academic prose many of us have grown to know and loathe. Writers, literary people, or anyone who took an English course in college will most appreciate this series of reviews of novels that do not exist (hence the title: a book about nothing). Now and then while reading this book I started nodding off (as I do when reading something incredibly boring) but then jumped in my chair a bit as the realization that it was all a put on returned to me. Then I laughed out loud for a while. My favorite is the novel written entirely in negative sentences (e.g.: "The train did not arrive," "The woman did not go home.")
