Comments from the blogosphere
Read what others are saying about “Marienbad My
Love”
Vomit … the world's largest
Complete Waste of Time … lit fic wannabe with a tin ear … a lame attempt to
attract attention … world's most unreadable novel … a stupid gimmick dressed up
to look like a book … my eyes hurt with the awfulness that is this thing's plot
… obtuse, pretentious, and unpopular… overly-long, self-indulgent ... I have no
idea who's going to read this … Finnegans Wake has finally been
dethroned ...The incoherent ramblings of an insane mind … I am not sure there
is even a classification for this one … long stretches of surrealism, where we
are in this character's head and not grounded in any recognizable
reality...What was that?! Was this person using drugs or what? … I am so
completely confused. I have no idea what's going on, what's real and what the
narrator is imagining … It's terrible.
=========================
Author’s note: Before reading the novel
excerpt below, be sure to check out the fascinatingly insightful comments
regarding Sheldon’s Syndrome at http://www.journalfen.net/community/otf_wank/611766.html#comments
A blogger named “issendai” writes: “My
personal favorite is the section of his web site where he [Mark Leach]
presents a
mental disorder based on himself for inclusion in the DSMV-III.” Another 17 bloggers added their own supporting
messages agreeing with issendai’s post and generally reveling in the idea of
yours truly as a certifiable nut job. Their comments might have been even more
fascinating and insightful had any of them understood the difference between
fiction and real life. Sheldon’s Syndrome is named after Mark Sheldon,
the protagonist of a novel
titled “Marienbad My Love” and written by Mark Leach.
In other words, Mark Leach is a real person who invented Mark Sheldon, a
fictional person who lives in a crazy fictional universe populated by
terminally irrrational people who are a lot like some of the posters at
journalfen.net. Enjoy the excerpt.
Update: A year later, and the insightful
comments continue. This one was posted on Nov. 28, 2009: "I also like that his entry on Sheldon's Syndrome links back to
otf-wank. Remember, we're the irrational ones." And so it
goes. In the upside down world of the blogosphere, it is apparently rational to
believe that the author and the protagonist of a novel are the same person. Who
am I to fight it? In honor of this new merger of fiction and reality, I am
renaming the protagonist "Mark Leach." Now I will live on a fictional island;
he will work in a real office building in Fort Worth, Texas. I'll be posting an
updated ebook sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
... I am a genuine neurotic. I diagnosed myself after a trip to the
Strangers Rest Public Library, where I discovered my troubled self in a
decrepit copy of the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” (Apparently I am not the only person
in Strangers Rest who is engaging in do-it-yourself
psychoanalysis.)
Features of Dream Anxiety Disorder (aka Nightmare Disorder)
include:
• Frequent association with artistic ability.
• Personality
patterns of distrustfulness, alienation, estrangement and
over-sensitivity.
• Schizoid or borderline personality traits.
Does that
not sound like me? By no means is Dream Anxiety Disorder my only mental
condition, either. Turns out I have various features from eight to 10 other
recognized psychiatric conditions. I don’t have enough features in any one
disorder to meet the criteria for a full diagnosis. But if you put them all
together they add up to a whole new condition, which I call Post-Modern Prophet
Disorder (aka “Sheldon’s Syndrome”). I will be sending the American Psychiatric
Association a letter requesting that this newly identified illness be added to
the next edition of the DSM.
#
DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR POST MODERN
PROPHET DISORDER
A. Characteristic symptoms: Four (or more) of the
following, each present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month
period (or less if successfully treated or the world comes to an end):
•
Detachment from subject’s own mental processes or body, as if an outside
observer.
• Feeling like an automaton or as if in a dream.
•
Restlessness, vigilance and scanning.
• Feeling keyed up, on edge.
•
Exaggerated startle response.
• Difficulty concentrating or “mind going
blank” because of anxiety.
• Irritability.
• Psychomotor agitation
expressed in pacing or as an inability to sit still.
• Recurrent thoughts of
death, often accompanied by the belief that subject or others would be better
off dead.
• Themes of personal inadequacy, guilt, deserved punishment and
death.
• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt,
which may be delusional.
• Diminished ability to think or
indecisiveness.
B. Obsessional dysfunction: For a significant portion of the
time since the onset of the disturbance, experiences obsessions which are
recurrent and include persistent ideas, thoughts, impulses or images that are
intrusive and senseless (ex: having recurring blasphemous thoughts) and subject
attempts to ignore or suppress with another thought or action. These obsessions
are a product of subject’s own mind and are not related to guilty thoughts in
the presence of a major depression.
C. Depressive Episode: Accompanied by
low energy and fatigue, low self-esteem, poor concentration and feelings of
hopelessness.
D. Dream-based alien dysfunction: Dreams of being a robot or
an extraterrestrial or dead. (Example, a dream by Mark Sheldon from the night
of June 5/6, 2005: I am renting a house, which I share with a roommate. On my
way to work, crossing the Hulen Street bridge. Heavy fog. I just make out cars
sliding, colliding ahead. I put on the brakes, but I can’t see anything. I
begin honking the horn so other cars will know I am here. Then all goes white,
lost in total fog. Next I find myself inexplicably standing outside the garage
of my rented house. I punch in the access code, and the automatic garage door
rises. My roommate’s car is here, but not mine. Inside the house, a party is
under way. Some of my relatives are here. So are some friends. Someone – maybe
my roommate – explains what has occurred: I am actually a carbon copy of the
original Mark Sheldon, who was killed on the bridge in the fog. I don’t feel
like a copy; however, that is because I have all of the memories of the
original. I am an exact copy. Then my roommate and I look outside. We realize
somehow that all of the cars are gone now. A world without cars. Could this be
a world of carbon copies, a world without original people? So we walk outside,
look at the next door neighbor’s home. They have a swimming pool, but it’s in
the front yard. And on the front walk next to the pool is a three-wheeled,
robotic pool cleaner. This is a troubling sight, for I see the robot as part of
a vast conspiracy to eliminate the original people of the world and replace
them with carbon copies. I persuade my roommate to help me flip this robot onto
its head. We run away, and I am laughing. Even when I see that the homeowners
are watching me through the picture window, I am still laughing. But my
roommate doesn’t find it so funny. He tells me this is bad. We’ll have to pay
for the damages.)
E. Anxiety: Accompanied by irritability, brooding or
obsessive rumination.
F. Persecutory delusions: Accompanied by sense of a
moral transgression or some personal inadequacy.
G. Flight of ideas:
Accompanied by subjective experience that thoughts are racing.
H.
Distractibility: Attention is too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant
external stimuli.
I. Lability: Rapid shifts to anger or depression.
...
Read what others are saying about “Marienbad My
Love”
Vomit … the world's largest
Complete Waste of Time … lit fic wannabe with a tin ear … a lame attempt to
attract attention … world's most unreadable novel … a stupid gimmick dressed up
to look like a book … my eyes hurt with the awfulness that is this thing's plot
… obtuse, pretentious, and unpopular… overly-long, self-indulgent ... I have no
idea who's going to read this … Finnegans Wake has finally been
dethroned ...The incoherent ramblings of an insane mind … I am not sure there
is even a classification for this one … long stretches of surrealism, where we
are in this character's head and not grounded in any recognizable
reality...What was that?! Was this person using drugs or what? … I am so
completely confused. I have no idea what's going on, what's real and what the
narrator is imagining … It's terrible.
=========================
Author’s note: Before reading the novel
excerpt below, be sure to check out the fascinatingly insightful comments
regarding Sheldon’s Syndrome at http://www.journalfen.net/community/otf_wank/611766.html#comments
A blogger named “issendai” writes: “My
personal favorite is the section of his web site where he [Mark Leach]
presents a
mental disorder based on himself for inclusion in the DSMV-III.” Another 17 bloggers added their own supporting
messages agreeing with issendai’s post and generally reveling in the idea of
yours truly as a certifiable nut job. Their comments might have been even more
fascinating and insightful had any of them understood the difference between
fiction and real life. Sheldon’s Syndrome is named after Mark Sheldon,
the protagonist of a novel
titled “Marienbad My Love” and written by Mark Leach.
In other words, Mark Leach is a real person who invented Mark Sheldon, a
fictional person who lives in a crazy fictional universe populated by
terminally irrrational people who are a lot like some of the posters at
journalfen.net. Enjoy the excerpt.
Update: A year later, and the insightful
comments continue. This one was posted on Nov. 28, 2009: "I also like that his entry on Sheldon's Syndrome links back to
otf-wank. Remember, we're the irrational ones." And so it
goes. In the upside down world of the blogosphere, it is apparently rational to
believe that the author and the protagonist of a novel are the same person. Who
am I to fight it? In honor of this new merger of fiction and reality, I am
renaming the protagonist "Mark Leach." Now I will live on a fictional island;
he will work in a real office building in Fort Worth, Texas. I'll be posting an
updated ebook sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
... I am a genuine neurotic. I diagnosed myself after a trip to the
Strangers Rest Public Library, where I discovered my troubled self in a
decrepit copy of the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” (Apparently I am not the only person
in Strangers Rest who is engaging in do-it-yourself
psychoanalysis.)
Features of Dream Anxiety Disorder (aka Nightmare Disorder)
include:
• Frequent association with artistic ability.
• Personality
patterns of distrustfulness, alienation, estrangement and
over-sensitivity.
• Schizoid or borderline personality traits.
Does that
not sound like me? By no means is Dream Anxiety Disorder my only mental
condition, either. Turns out I have various features from eight to 10 other
recognized psychiatric conditions. I don’t have enough features in any one
disorder to meet the criteria for a full diagnosis. But if you put them all
together they add up to a whole new condition, which I call Post-Modern Prophet
Disorder (aka “Sheldon’s Syndrome”). I will be sending the American Psychiatric
Association a letter requesting that this newly identified illness be added to
the next edition of the DSM.
#
DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR POST MODERN
PROPHET DISORDER
A. Characteristic symptoms: Four (or more) of the
following, each present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month
period (or less if successfully treated or the world comes to an end):
•
Detachment from subject’s own mental processes or body, as if an outside
observer.
• Feeling like an automaton or as if in a dream.
•
Restlessness, vigilance and scanning.
• Feeling keyed up, on edge.
•
Exaggerated startle response.
• Difficulty concentrating or “mind going
blank” because of anxiety.
• Irritability.
• Psychomotor agitation
expressed in pacing or as an inability to sit still.
• Recurrent thoughts of
death, often accompanied by the belief that subject or others would be better
off dead.
• Themes of personal inadequacy, guilt, deserved punishment and
death.
• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt,
which may be delusional.
• Diminished ability to think or
indecisiveness.
B. Obsessional dysfunction: For a significant portion of the
time since the onset of the disturbance, experiences obsessions which are
recurrent and include persistent ideas, thoughts, impulses or images that are
intrusive and senseless (ex: having recurring blasphemous thoughts) and subject
attempts to ignore or suppress with another thought or action. These obsessions
are a product of subject’s own mind and are not related to guilty thoughts in
the presence of a major depression.
C. Depressive Episode: Accompanied by
low energy and fatigue, low self-esteem, poor concentration and feelings of
hopelessness.
D. Dream-based alien dysfunction: Dreams of being a robot or
an extraterrestrial or dead. (Example, a dream by Mark Sheldon from the night
of June 5/6, 2005: I am renting a house, which I share with a roommate. On my
way to work, crossing the Hulen Street bridge. Heavy fog. I just make out cars
sliding, colliding ahead. I put on the brakes, but I can’t see anything. I
begin honking the horn so other cars will know I am here. Then all goes white,
lost in total fog. Next I find myself inexplicably standing outside the garage
of my rented house. I punch in the access code, and the automatic garage door
rises. My roommate’s car is here, but not mine. Inside the house, a party is
under way. Some of my relatives are here. So are some friends. Someone – maybe
my roommate – explains what has occurred: I am actually a carbon copy of the
original Mark Sheldon, who was killed on the bridge in the fog. I don’t feel
like a copy; however, that is because I have all of the memories of the
original. I am an exact copy. Then my roommate and I look outside. We realize
somehow that all of the cars are gone now. A world without cars. Could this be
a world of carbon copies, a world without original people? So we walk outside,
look at the next door neighbor’s home. They have a swimming pool, but it’s in
the front yard. And on the front walk next to the pool is a three-wheeled,
robotic pool cleaner. This is a troubling sight, for I see the robot as part of
a vast conspiracy to eliminate the original people of the world and replace
them with carbon copies. I persuade my roommate to help me flip this robot onto
its head. We run away, and I am laughing. Even when I see that the homeowners
are watching me through the picture window, I am still laughing. But my
roommate doesn’t find it so funny. He tells me this is bad. We’ll have to pay
for the damages.)
E. Anxiety: Accompanied by irritability, brooding or
obsessive rumination.
F. Persecutory delusions: Accompanied by sense of a
moral transgression or some personal inadequacy.
G. Flight of ideas:
Accompanied by subjective experience that thoughts are racing.
H.
Distractibility: Attention is too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant
external stimuli.
I. Lability: Rapid shifts to anger or depression.
...
