The Meaningless World of Arthur Flackmacker

A large segment of the scholarly world considers Arthur Flackmacker to be the greatest deconstructionist the writing world has ever known. He lived a life steeped in controversy, like when he claimed in a 1957 writer’s conference that he’d invented the adverb. He wrote one novel entirely in Portuguese despite never learning the language. He was abusive to his fans and violent towards his critics. Norman Mailer was so terrified of Arthur that he would not stay in the same state. He was a man’s man, a woman’s woman and a dog’s breakfast…

Arthur Flackmacker was born in 1928, in a run-down Boston apartment, voiding the lease and ruining the shag carpet in the bedroom. His father, Lance Flackmacker, was an integral part of Boston’s literary community in that he was the one who cleaned up after their meetings. Arthur’s mother, Jane Gnee (nee) Flackmacker (nee nee) took in other people’s laundry and returned it to them later, often after being washed… Five years later, the family moved to Pennsylvania where Lance had found seasonal work as a bale of straw in a Nativity scene.

Growing up, Arthur felt that life was a meaningless, harsh and dreary ordeal; so, pretty much the same as any other kid growing up in Pennsylvania. He went to Pennsylvania public school for nine years learning coal mining, shaft maintenance and canary husbandry. Arthur’s parents had saved enough money to send their son to an exclusive private school, so exclusive that most of the teachers weren’t allowed inside to teach; and, so private, the Flackmackers couldn’t find it for sixteen months.

A few months after entering the William Pitt Finishing School for Almost Likable Aristocrats, Arthur was elected president of the school’s literary journal. It was his job to edit the quarterly, add content and take the blame if there were any fatalities. His work was crude at first… clumsy… earthy… Like a glue-huffer reading Tennyson to his friends. But, as time passed, Arthur FlackMacker improved. After a year, he started using verbs. His work was a lot more interesting after that.

Upon his graduation, Arthur had his pick of any college in the nation… provided he was accepted, could afford it and didn’t have anything better to do. But, he didn’t want to go to college. He had his sights set on life experience, ran a soft-serve ice cream concession at a mortuary in Nice. Spent three years trying to breed a species of kosher pork. He entered the Spanish Civil War as a French combatant. Between wacky jobs, he’d pick up tutoring gigs, often interacting with political elites and royalty.

One of Arthur’s former students, Prince Bleki of Macedonia, published a short book of Arthur’s poetry. Literary experts said, upon reading the work, “Don’t that just beat all?” and “Land sakes!”. Of course, the book was published in Macedonian so there diphthong problems from day one. It was universally praised by the Macedonian public; but, to be fair, they don’t really have a lot of poetry there to compare it to.

His first published English work was Colossus: The Multi-generational Saga of Three Mystical Kingdoms. It was three pages long. Most felt that it “didn’t deliver”. The book, however, did introduce the character of Dagwood Bumstead to the world. Mr. Dithers would not be introduced for three decades. Lackluster reviews only made Arthur more determined…

He published a longer work, entirely in sarcasm, called, Nice Tie. It is meant to be read in a high pitched sarcastic voice and it fully illustrates the nuances of twisting language. Plus, the book had a horse with a jet pack and who can say “no” to that? Critics loved the book at first; but, soon realized that Flackmacker wasn’t the least bit serious. “What suckers we were!”, lamented literary critic Louis “Compound Fracture” Domino…

It is during this period that Arthur Flackmacker wrote the first four books of his trilogy. The first volume postulated that language was insufficient for historical analysis but it still made a fine shampoo and a passable dessert topping. The second covered inadequacies of language in philosophical analysis… although most of the book is a venomous diatribe against Armenian immigrants and the final chapter is just a recipe for chocolate cake. The third discusses structuralism and neo-structuralism and lays out a scenario where the two wrestle. The fourth, Problems with Deconstruction in Postmodernism, an Empirical Analysis, was released as a children’s book by mistake. That generation of children would grow up know more about the indeterminacy of legal doctrine than their parents ever would. This generational divide would eventually spread across the ocean and bring about the creation of South Sudan.

After publication of the fourth book, Arthur took a teaching position at a college in Waco, Texas. Fortunately, he didn’t have a degree so he wouldn’t be disqualified from teaching in Texas. There was some controversy. The textbooks for his classes were all authored by Arthur Flackmacker and many of the freshmen complained about paying eight hundred dollars for a paperback book. He did win the Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry for breaking up a fight between two metallurgists…

Arthur died in 1990 and was given a “full-Texas funeral” which translates to “body not left out for the coyotes”…