You’ve got literature

WHO could have known that the most innovative postmodernist prose of our age would be spam?

Some of the most engaging e-mail to find its way to my inbox is the stuff I used to delete without even opening. If I didn’t know anyone named Darwin Lucas or Gertrude Hendrick or Lucretia Molloy, “delete” was the way to handle their missives. Sometimes Darwin or Gertrude or Lucretia was honest enough to give me a subject line -- fake Rolexes and fake Viagra and real porn and real low mortgages. But mostly they disguised their sales pitches as “re: your application” or “John asked me to tell you.”

I don’t know much about the mechanics of e-mail, but I suspect that to dodge spam filters, online come-ons have to wrap themselves in actual words to cloak the attachment with its “Viagra” or “online sluts” punch line. And that explains these words.

And oh, what words. It was only a point-and-click accident that led me to open one of these messages, and I swear to you that I thought I was having a college lit flashback, rereading Gertrude Stein’s “The Making of Americans” -- but with a better plot.

“Burley try indecipherable some see deslate on be Univac may but cutback on may Canterbury it’s on the cytology on asilomar! May implacable it some fresh but sammy the in fund see or abutted see may indelible, may buses be.”

James Joyce meets spam.

After that, who could stop reading? “Low king south don’t. Car took line, it decide. High field grew appear. Well, industry door, strong, sure voice square. Young other seem. Company, even book. Now family men shop, turn high power. Any yes four name on numeral, glass. Hand job multiply port, call man board. School near ran, leave, world.”

One read like some World War II encoded spy message: “Got engine safe planet, language large. Always young, early. Done common final has time. Answer list break once warm whether. By, fish river, half, farm. String, made strange rail. Way nation has mouth five she was. Hour able, ready. If children, one moon. Season grass, shine shape, young arm, just. Dog in, divide sound quiet little off. Select, see decide there. Able grass, group set seem fruit. Break so, was, try head.”

Some sesquipedalian software spat out these delights: “Try elapse try sectarian some dodecahedra abscissae, sophomore but tap but terbium or southward on arsenal and deforest, but holocaust it insupportable may depressant may cocksure on sight ... dispersive may peppergrass in riven some cosy some parquet and antonym see camelopard not gaul.”

And this one came as the word-wrapping for some diet supplement: “Went real, flow. Both carry control book, to, certain floor. Map sound just die train once. Box now dance. Class start part short, from, wash. Stone moment, colony, mark problem ride, let. Born at our suit other. Though answer wall. Took oil engine room. Felt, friend time was. Letter, bright figure. Need gun point life, gave century too. Stop jump sleep village where card. Wire country money here fire locate. Joy twenty man, play save, subtract example.”

Joy twenty man! Friend time! Stone moment! It’s Beat, it’s Bloomsbury, it’s haiku and deconstructed hip! If this is the random work of a computer, we can tell the hundred chimpanzees to stand down.

One thing does trouble me about spam as literary genius. Cribbed spam. Even though Dickens has long fallen out of copyright, fragments from “David Copperfield” fall into my computer, in the text of those porn-and-pill ads:

“He would be ELIGIBLE, returned Traddles, with a strong emphasis across, but which Peggotty exhibits to the children,” and, channeling Uriah Heep here, “Seeing as I intend to make it the divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends?”

I can overlook a few moral failings from an amoral device. Some publisher should collect these and print them. I’d like to suggest here and now the patron saint for this work: Arthur Flegenheimer -- the gangster known as Dutch Schultz. As he lay shot full of holes in a Jersey hospital, Dutch was pressed by police, who copied down his dying words, a perfect Jabberwocky of dissonance, some of them here:

“Oh, did you buy the hotel; you promised a million ... sure. Get out! I wish I knew. Please make it quick; fast and furious; please

“Police, Mamma! Helen, mother, please take me out. Come on, Rosie. O.K. Hymes would not do it; not him. I will settle ... the indictment. Come on, Max, open the soap duckets. Frankie, please come here. Open that door, Dumpey’s door. It is so much, Abe, that ... with the brewery. come on. Hey, Jimmie! The Chimney Sweeps. Talk to the Sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! please come help me up, Henny. Max come over here ... French Canadian bean soup ... I want to pay, let them leave me alone.”

Farrar, Straus. Random House. Let the bidding begin. *