paralepsis

I must have recorded this some years ago. Found it on microcassette and transcribed. One day a flying lizard was going in a fierce place called Fierce Desert , and it heard something very very fierce. What are you doing with that? I’m just — OK, done. And then it woke up a sleeping lizard. The sleeping lizard was grunting. And — can you record that again? I’m recording, I’m recording now. Keep going. And then, the fierce lizard just ate it like it eats a snake. Snake chomped up by the hungry lizard. And then it tried to eat it. And then he killed it! Is that the end of the story? No it isn’t! OK . Cause there’s a crocodile! Right . And it kept eating until its mouth was full. Of snake. [eating sounds] Then what? Then, the crocodile came. And it tried to — bited itself — and it bited with the slimy lizard — and then it killed it. [killing sounds] It kept eating until t...

On NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, Scott Simon delivers a commentary about the recent exposure of gang-banger "memoir" Love and Consequences by Margaret Jones (actually Margaret Seltzer). Simon observes that "the book is a fraud, but Ms. Seltzer came within hours of of being on NPR." Wrong . In fact, Jones/Seltzer did make it onto NPR's syndicated show "On Point," and the show followed with an hour-long, hand-wringing examination of how they got punked in the first place. But that minor error is nothing compared to what happens next. Simon quotes Seltzer making up some bullshit about her life and observes (my transcript of the online audio): Now if some Brooklyn or London novelist had written a story set among drug gangs and uttered those words, people might have dismissed them as pretentious nonsense. Put those sentences into a so-called memoir, people call it "gritty and real," or "raw, tender, and tough-minded,...