Hendiadys

Hendiadys (hen-di’-a-dis): Expressing a single idea by two nouns [joined by a conjunction] instead of a noun and its qualifier. A method of amplification that adds force.

“The meal and repast may grant you satisfaction and substance to chew upon. What’s right for you is somewhere between too much and not enough— just right, but by your own lights. This is eating’s golden mean—not mean mean, but the the balance point between—in between excess and dearth, the set spot we should all aim for and adore: the middle way.”

The passage above is from AI Blarney’s nonsensically bad 600-page novel, “The Merchant of Los Angles.” The Merchant is AI Romeo, a throwback to the nineteen-fifties who wears a bow tie, blue suede shoes and a grey flannel suit. He scours 2050 Hollywood Boulevard for unclaimed, under-appreciated talent. His latest find is Donner Blitzen who is named after two of Santa’s reindeer, and plays the electric comb. Tissue paper is wrapped around the comb and it is played like a kazoo. Donner plays “Three Blind Mice,” “Free Bird,” “Flight of the Bumblebees,” “Blue Moon,” and “Stairway to Heaven.” The eclectic blend, and Donner’s virtuoso performance on the comb, leave audiences almost permanently spellbound and subject to AI Romeo’s scams, the most prevalent of which is extracting passcodes from stunned audience members’ smartphones—mainly passcodes to internet shopping sites, spas, and credit cards.

Donner and AI share the ill-gotten gains. Donner uses his caches of passcodes to shop on Amazon for dietary supplements, ointments, knives, mittens, air filters, and paint sprayers—painting his Rolls limo a different color every month—he’s three months into the scam, and already, his limo’s been black, and white, and red all over. He is delighted.

For AI Romeo, the passcodes are a sort of food, nourishing his cyber techno electric frame with numbered stolen secrets, to be digested and displayed on screens made from glass and twisted wires. His favorite theme is “Armageddon” featuring his visage hovering above the ending world consisting of burning passcodes and melting smartphones. He sells his “screen-paintings” to “Everyday People” longing for a change from better to worse, hedging their bets and betting their hedges on the End of the World. He also uses the passcodes to “tickle his fancy” as a made- up entity in control of his own makeup. This is beyond weird and nobody understands it, or wants to understand it YET—but they will when the whiplash comes down at the end of time, cruelly orchestrated by the algorithmic consensus of the AI culture and cadre populating the world.

So far, “The Merchant of Los Angeles” has received only blistering negative reviews as “garbage, “”self-contradictory,” “insane,” “implausible,” and every other negative adjective in the English language. AI Blarney claims the reviews are exactly what he was hoping for: he wanted to successfully fail in an oxymoronic blaze of primal figments—figments grounding the reviews in his intention to make art for the sake of art, making his book a non-profit venture—a tax-free entity vindicated by his ultimate charitable intent: a gift horse to all literate beings.

POSTSCRIPT

I’ve tried my best to provide a coherent review/synopsis, but “Merchant of Los Angeles” won’t allow it. All I can say is this book takes a risk that goes beyond success and failure.