Today I tried something different and sought to employ GPT-3 as a tool to write a “forgery” of another author’s work. I chose one of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace, and fed the AI a one-shot prompt. What follows is a combination of me imitating David Foster Wallace and GPT-3 imitating me imitating David Foster Wallace. —Ryan
Ex Ungue Leonum, by “David Foster Wallace”
The faculty parking lot known as B lot abutted the Maxwell and Diana Goldstein Earth Sciences building to the east and a diverse copse of trees--locust, shagbark hickory, redbud, and sugar maple among them--to the north, through which a path blundered toward the library, the brutalist tower of which propped up the Midwest sky. Due to a civil engineer's oversight or the neglect of whatever crew or individual or work-release felon had painted the lines w/r/t this parking lot, one space that could have reasonably been designated as quote-unquote "Handicapped" was in fact not marked as such, with the iconic glyph of half circle and profile view, the figure that was more musical note than representationally human, like the choking hazards you jam into the little plastic cars in the board game Milton Bradley ostentatiously named Life. It was for this parking space that Tenured Professor of Quantum Physics Dr. Allen Finnegan, he of diminiutive stature and fondness for porkpie hats in shades of taupe, pined.
As Dr. Finnegan navigated his Ford Taurus into the lot on a morning of middling humidity he saw, once again, that the parking space of his deepest desire was again occupied by a putrescent, kelly green Pinto hatchback crammed with strata of fast food bags, negligently splayed volumes of Elizabethan verse, a busted lacrosse stick, Goretex and aluminum camping gear, and a closet's worth of thrift store shirts. Upon the bumper of said Pinto were affixed stickers of bands who had somehow existed within the 1990s without contributing in any meaningful way artistically to the post-punk milieu for which the era was rightly celebrated: Creed, Hoobastank, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Spindoctors, Bush, and Nickleback. The owner of this vehicle of questionable taste was the poet and recipient of the Earl and Joyce Mavens Distinguished Fellowship in American Letters, Harve Mickleson Cordry.
Cordry was a man with thick, black hair and eyes some described out of earshot as disconcertingly feline in nature. He stood outside his car in the lot's central clearing--the sun glanced off its hood like an eye-watering glimmer from one of those disorientingly dense arrays that physicists call superconductor "quantum dots." Finnegan worked as director of theoretical research for this wingding called UHGHT: The University Heavy Hadron Collider (pronounced You High Tee). Cordry wore khakis and a button down shirt with sleeves too long even by the standards set forth in his cousin Reggie Cordry's book, Field Guide to Dress & Grooming in America by Men Who Have Considered It. His hands jittered about near his belt line, occasionally alighting upon it before returning once again to hover as if above an imaginary piano keyboard.
The spectacle presented by Harve Mickleson Cordry when Dr. Allen Finnegan arrived each morning had become so commonplace during their tenure together that certain adjuncts had begun taking bets amongst themselves regarding whether or not some new item would be deposited into said Pinto's trunk--items ranging from boxes of chocolates inscribed "To My One True Love!," three dozen liters of pomegranate juice sans straws, cases full of Odwalla Superfood Smoothies, and on one occasion even a fainting goat.
Finnegan was not without his own eccentricities, of course: he had long-since shed the porkpie hat for an off white canvas cap with Velcro strap whose only markings were an embroidered UHGHT logo and the mathematical symbol "∫"--a gift from one of his students at Oxford who claimed to have received it in turn from her grandfather during her time as a Fulbright scholar in Finland. A glance into Finnegan's trunk revealed various color coded notebooks filled with matrices and algorithms; particle accelerators constructed out of crayons; maps printed off Google Earth (which he jokingly referred to as Googolplex); books on string theory by David Foster Wallace which seemed always to be either checked out or missing entirely; two cans each red, green, yellow paint respectively labeled "C2F6," "CH4O3OH," & "'FFFFOO"; several rolls of duct tape labeled for their usage (Exothermic Applications: 1 roll; Porous Materials: 2 rolls), and so forth. One would also find within its depths multiple copies of Mavens Fellowship recipients' works distributed through small presses, along with numerous volumes devoted wholly or partially to attacking said work alongside equally vitriolic critiques composed by obscure bloggers now residing behind bars due largely to cyberstalking behaviors and petty theft.
"The son of a bitch took my space again," said Finnegan.
That Mickleson Cordry, heir to the Cordry brand shoelace fortune, would drive such a loathsome means of conveyance could only be explained as some subversive act of hyper-confrontational performance art. The fact that the Pinto had been featured on a CD cover for one of those insufferable bands whose stickers he'd plastered upon his car's bumper was just icing.
The poet emerged from his Pinto. He confronted the accusatory gaze of the quantum physicist who was just sort of standing there between doing something and doing nothing, which come to think of it was entirely appropriate given the nature of his research.
"Doctor Finnegan," said Cordry, "If you don't mind my saying so--I think we both know I deserve this space more than you."
Finnegan peered down at Cordry through thick glasses and fished from his back pocket a sheet of paper whereupon appeared some sort of mathematical equation written in pencil along with several diagrams involving an array identical to the design found upon UHGHT's logo. The two men faced off as if prepared to debate whether or not it would be possible for humanity ever again to produce meaningful art after having witnessed works by Damien Hirst, Banksy, James Franco & Seth Rogen, Yoko Ono, Bono et al, etc.; who made better films: Wes Anderson vs David Lynch; Uber vs. Lyft., ad infinitum, until their argument devolved into something resembling an operatic war between many worlds theory and hippie nature poetry. A war, in other words, that both sides would have been doomed to lose.
So instead of arguing, the two middle aged men fell into a sort of awkward silence which was broken only by the chirping of birds in the trees.
"I guess I could just park somewhere else," said Cordry, "but then again--that would be admitting defeat." The poet walked away from his car through this lot designated for staff, graduate students & visiting scholars, not once looking back over his shoulder. This didn't stop him from feeling that perhaps he'd made a mistake, that someday he'd return to his car, which was by all means a piece of shit and really should have been repossessed years ago, & find that Finnegan had left him some sort of threatening note.
For two days Cordry did not return to B lot; nor did Finnegan park there either. At last on day three when Harve returned he found parked in his spot Finnegan's Taurus. He approached this vehicle with caution before peering inside: in the driver's seat sat Allen Finnegan who appeared unconscious or possibly dead while upon the passenger seat sat a yellow legal pad upon which was written, in Sharpie, "I guess I am what I feel like." which struck Cordry as profoundly sad/ironic. Cordry looked around furtively but saw no sign whatever of any observer be they student, staff, faculty, colleague etc. and with his knuckles rapped a bar of eighth notes on the driver's side window.
Finnegan stirred. He rolled down the window and looked up at Cordry with bleary eyes that seemed to betray some kind of mild & infrequent hallucinogen use. "What do you want?" Finnegan asked. The poet leaned his head through the open window until their faces were inches apart; he could smell coffee breath & something like hashish or perhaps it was just cigarette smoke.
"The space is yours," said Cordry, who then walked away toward the entrance of B lot, his heart beating alone in an empty place where words wouldn't go/were never meant to go/would not stay put anyway.