Graecismus (gree-kis’-mus): Using Greek words, examples, or grammatical structures. Sometimes considered an affectation of erudition.
“The pathos was oozing dieresis, as the invisible confabulating man utilized the λαμπερός red spray paint to make himself visible. He said: ‘If you read my book, you have read red—a verbal juxtaposition that can only be readily understood in the medium of print where only the color red can be read at the time of reading and be hermeneutically colored in black ink transported to the destination of the bifurcated logos.’ This is the ultimate sign—weaving medium and message together in a McLuhanesque whole of intertextuality, freed by the ethos of trustworthiness, competence and eunoia, it may stimulate the warm flow of lacrimal fluid.”
This passage comes from “Incense and Nonsense: slow Return to Woodstock,” It is a 3,227 page wasteland of pixels and paper, feigned erudition, and puerile prose prized only for its weight and length as the heaviest and longest known novel in human history, in the English language. It was written over the course of its author Bill Bailey’s life. He began writing it at the age of 11 and completed it at the age of 85, two weeks before he was frozen to death in a “Jack Frost” freezer at the famous string bean processing plant in South Jersey, where he and his beloved Beatrice resided. Beatrice supervised the plant, named “Cool Beans” after the plant’s dependence on refrigeration and its clever motto “Frozen Vegetables: Stiff and Cold, They Never Get Old.”
Bill was taking his daily 3 O’clock cool down when the freezer’s time clock latch malfunctioned, along with its failsafe mechanism. The freezer couldn’t be turned off or exited. Bill spent six hours in the freezer before the door could be opened. He was found standing up clutching a spray of string beans with a painful look on his face, accented by closed eyes, indicating that he was near death when he struck his pose.
Beatrice dragged him to a waiting ambulance to be whisked away to the morgue. The autopsy revealed he froze to death (no surprise), but Beatrice discovered the freezer had been tampered with, indicating that Bill Bailey was probably murdered. This finding opened up an opportunity for Beatrice to write a murder mystery with no solution. The first of its kind. The novel was so bad that Beatrice could not find a publisher, so she self-published and sold nine copies over the course of as many years. While the novel failed while “Cool Beans” flourished.
Eventually, the book was made into the movie “Who Froze Bill?” Beatrice payed for it with profits from “Cool Beans” and by traveling around the world lecturing on “The Fruits of Failure.” The movie flopped and Beatrice died in luxury at the overripe age of 103 in the “Weehawken Home for the Aged.”
Nobody came to her funeral and this meager entry you’re reading is the only thing ever written about her, aside from her death certificate, which consisted of a filled-in form, which, aside from her name, and age, and cause of death, consisted of check boxes.
The Daily Trope 