The Very Best Complete Nonsense

Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, an experiment in automatic writing, is my favorite work of nonsense, although I've yet to get all the way through it.

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There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine. There can be breakages in Japanese. That is no programme. That is no color chosen. It was chosen yesterday, that showed spitting and perhaps washing and polishing. It certainly showed no obligation and perhaps if borrowing is not natural there is some use in giving.

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Finnegans Wake is a perrenial favorite in the category of giberish:

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The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronn tuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnu k!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy.

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Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll are, of course, giants in the field of nonsesnse:

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There was an Old Man of the Coast,
Who placidly sat on a post;
But when it was cold
He relinquished his hold,
And called for some hot buttered toast.

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'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!

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Is there any other high-quality nonsense that anybody would like to call attention to?

Waiting for Godot???
some passages in Herzog by Saul Bellow.

my dad did his own version of the Jabberwock poem once.. it's about his neighbour's cat catching a mouse.. it's hilarious. i'm sure you'd like it, but it's in German :( :( :(


what is automatic writing??? kinda free-associating?

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Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9

Finnegans Wake is a perrenial favorite in the category of giberish:

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A choice excerpt, but can that novel really be considered "giberish" or "nonsense"? I hope not, anyway, as I'm reading part of it this summer for a course... :(
It took, like, 17 years to write or something, though, did it not?

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'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!

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Absolutely preposterous. And I thought it was only I who didn't understand it. Thank goodness you don't too.

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Is there any other high-quality nonsense that anybody would like to call attention to?

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None more absurd than Carroll's.

This is a fun one:

"Text" by Samuel Beckett

Come come and cull me bonny bony doublebed cony swiftly my springal and my thin Kerry twingle-twangler comfort my days of roses days of beauty week of redness with mad shame to my lips of shame to my shamehill for the newest news the shemost of shenews is I'm lust-belepered and unwell oh I'd rather be a sparrow for my puckfisted coxcomb bird to bird and branch or a coalcave with goldy veins or my wicked doty's potystick trimly to besom gone the hartshorn and the cowslip wine gone and the lettuce nibbled up nibbled up and gone nor the last beauty day of the red time opened its rose and struck with its thorn oh I'm all of a gallimaufry or a salady salmafundi singly and single to bed she said I'll have no toadspit about this house and whose quab was I I'd like to know that from my cheerfully cornuted Dublin landloper and whose foal hackney mare toeing the line like a Viennese Taubchen take my tip and clap a padlock on your Greek galligaskins before I'm quick and living in hope and glad to go snacks with my twinle-twangler and grow grow into the earth mother of whom clapdish and foreshop.

--1932

Honestly, why does he even bother to put a period there?

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Originally Posted by Jamesian

This is a fun one:

"Text" by Samuel Beckett

Come come and cull me bonny bony doublebed cony swiftly my springal and my thin Kerry twingle-twangler comfort my days of roses days of beauty week of redness with mad shame to my lips of shame to my shamehill for the newest news the shemost of shenews is I'm lust-belepered and unwell oh I'd rather be a sparrow for my puckfisted coxcomb bird to bird and branch or a coalcave with goldy veins or my wicked doty's potystick trimly to besom gone the hartshorn and the cowslip wine gone and the lettuce nibbled up nibbled up and gone nor the last beauty day of the red time opened its rose and struck with its thorn oh I'm all of a gallimaufry or a salady salmafundi singly and single to bed she said I'll have no toadspit about this house and whose quab was I I'd like to know that from my cheerfully cornuted Dublin landloper and whose foal hackney mare toeing the line like a Viennese Taubchen take my tip and clap a padlock on your Greek galligaskins before I'm quick and living in hohpe and glad to go snacks with my twinle-twangler and grow grow into the earth mother of whom clapdish and foreshop.

--1932

Honestly, why does he even bother to put a period there?

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Shoot, no period. I almost died. :lol: Gallimaufry? What the hell...

But I love tongue twisters.

I thought "lust-belepered" was actually a very fine way of putting it. For the rest, God knows... It's like I think sometimes that I get parts of it, then it's just gone.

:lol: Yes, I liked it too. And I think "hohpe" was misspelled. Or was it part of the absurdity? And to add hilarity? :brow:

Nope - you're right. 100% erroneous on my part. I'm rather proud to have done all that with only one typo, though.

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Originally Posted by Sleepy

what is automatic writing??? kinda free-associating?

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Yeah, sort of. The idea is that one not be conciously aware of what one is writing. It's sometimes done in a trance, although I don't think Gertrude Stein was quite that flakey.

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Originally Posted by James

A choice excerpt, but can that novel really be considered "giberish" or "nonsense"?

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It's not that the text is without meaning (quite the opposite, in fact), but rather that the average person could read the words in any order and it would make as much sense. It did indeed take 17 years to write, mostly because almost the entire thing is based on puns in several dozen languages, usually involving the names of rivers. I've never read the whole thing, but I've been through a couple of passages.

What course are you taking that studies Finnegans Wake? I was under the impression that it was almost never studdied, even in post-Secondary.

It is obviously not up to the level of the above masterpieces, but The Gibberish Generator is one of several similar applications able to produce quite a mess at the push of a button.

/Claes

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Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9

Yeah, sort of. The idea is that one not be conciously aware of what one is writing. It's sometimes done in a trance, although I don't think Gertrude Stein was quite that flakey.

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So in that case is Kubla Khan by Coleridge one of those then?? Seeing as he was off his head when he wrote it?

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Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9

What course are you taking that studies Finnegans Wake? I was under the impression that it was almost never studdied, even in post-Secondary.

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Well, let us hope that is the case! The course is sort of a special 3-week seminar in the summer with my Irish Lit professor on Beckett and Joyce. I understand we're to be reading a good deal of Ulysses, if not all of it, and doing a sort of page-by-page reading of Finnegan's Wake. We might get through one chapter or so, at the most, but hardly anything exhaustive. I really hope we do all of Ulysses, though.

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Originally Posted by Jamesian

Nope - you're right. 100% erroneous on my part. I'm rather proud to have done all that with only one typo, though.

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And I thought you just copy/pasted. A thousand Kudos to his Highness. *bows*

revived

Douglas Adams is rather good at nonsense...

"Oh frettled gruntbuggly thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee
Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"

Ahh, the wonders of Vogon poetry ;)

That was hysterical!