I.

The writer of long paragraphs pauses in his work. It is clear to him that his sentences are nothing special. But his paragraphs are so mighty that none of his readers has yet noticed what is lacking in his prose at sentence level. That is lucky for him. He knows that sooner or later one of his critics—and he is gaining critics as he gains readers—will catch on and his career will begin its decline. He is still in the rising action of his writing career, he is sure. After just one novel and a few short stories in little journals, he has followers, acolytes, disciples. He has fans. They all marvel at his lengthy paragraphs, which go on for pages—dense, unyielding, unindented pages. These long paragraphs stand out from the five-liners penned by his contemporaries. Readers note a new voice, a new stylist who is unconventional, smart, deep. In his earliest published stories, his paragraphs scroll long and wide on web browsers. An editor at a popular web journal has the bright idea to break up the paragraphs into several linked pages, so that readers will be required to click to the next page to continue reading. This process of clicking to several linked pages to read one long paragraph somehow increases the rating of the web journal among the top search engines, which use complex algorithms to track the behavior of web surfers, taking into account the number of pages visited at a given site and the amount of time devoted to each page. But the editor’s arbitrary breaking of the long paragraph into several units of lines on linked pages does not sit well with the writer of long paragraphs. He sends a terse email to the editor instructing him to remove the story from the web journal immediately or repost it as a single web page. A web page can be of an infinite length, so why dissemble a long paragraph into several pages to satisfy some equation used to measure and monetize click-through rates on a web site. The editor is easily persuaded to present the long paragraph on a single web page with no unnatural breaks. The editor also publishes on his web site a brief note of apology to the writer of long paragraphs. This is a sign among his peers that the writer of long paragraphs is ascending in reputation and gaining real juice in their small circle of small literary journals. He is breaking away from their pack and becoming a leader of their generation of emerging writers. They all understand that what they haave been looking for in their group is a leader and now they have one. Somehow, the writer of long paragraphs inspires his writer friends to be a little bit braver in their dealings with editors. And some of them have even become braver in writing their stories. They write more daring stories and take greater chances with the language and conventions of storytelling that they have inherited from the generations of writers who have come before them. They congratulate the writer of long paragraphs on their successes, which he thinks is a ridiculous obeisance, but which helps him gain a reputation, finally, beyond the writers of his generation. And it isn’t long before he had an agent and his novel found a home at a venerable, independent press.

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II.

The writer of long paragraphs’ first novel sells surprisingly well, thanks to a clever marketing campaign developed by a queer publicist named Don Cowell. Don Cowell always referrs to himself as a queer publicist. A man in his mid-fifties, Don Cowell is an exceedingly trim man. In fact, Don Cowell is built like a teenage gymnast. To be clear: a teenage girl gymnast. The writer of long paragraphs, since moving to New York City, has noticed that gay men and women have a number of colorful names for themselves, like fag, queen, dyke, etc. Straight people are lagging behind gay people when it comes to coming up with colorful names to refer to themselves. Don Cowell’s marketing plan centers around his own experience reading the writer of long paragraph’s first novel. Don Cowell read the novel in galleys while home sick for three days with the flu. Don Cowell finds the book particularly vivid because of his fever. Don Cowell cries at some parts of the book and laughs out loud at other parts. Don Cowell says that he laments the lack of queer characters in the novel, but he forgives the novel that shortcoming. Don Cowell quickly realizes that a number of the books on his shelves that he loves the most have been read during an illness. He wonders if readers experience books differently when they are ill. Does reading a book while ill trigger a stronger reaction in the reader? Don Cowell asks a few of his colleagues if they’ve ha similar experiences. Once he is able to corroborate at an anecdotal level that other readers have connected on a deeper level with books they had read when they were sick, Don Cowell develops a marketing plan for the novel that positions the book as an ideal “sick read.” Don Cowell convinces two book reviewers to not read the book until they feel a little under the weather. The reviewers are skeptical, but they both decide that they will humor Don Cowell, the queer publicist, and keep the book closed until such time as they catch a cold (or something worse). Don Cowell also has free copies of the writer of long paragraph’s first novel delivered to hospitals and long-term health care facilities, in the hope that booklovers struggling through serious illness might pick up the book, read it, love it, and spread the word. Don Cowell’s marketing plan works. Sick readers buy the writer of long paragraph’s novel and healthy people buy the book and present it to their ill loved ones in place of chicken soup. Don Cowell stops short of declaring that the writer of long paragraph’s novel has healing powers, but he is pleased to see that one of his hand-picked reviewers declares that the book will make you feel better, even if it doesn’t make you well.

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III.

Long paragraphs allow for digression. The writer of long paragraphs prizes digression. If it were possible, he would live his life in endless digression. This he explains in the process of an interview conducted via webcam. The interviewer asks the writer of long paragraphs if he composes his fictions when he is ill. The writer of long paragraphs laughs off the question and provides a response that bears the semblance of thought, but in truth he is not thinking about the words he is saying to his interviewer. His brain barely knows what his mouth is saying, for the question has sent him reeling. Could it be that he writes only when he is sick? It is true that his writing habits are not regular. He has no daily routine. He simply writes when he feels moved to do so. He has often wondered if his writing cycles follow a lunar schedule or some internal tidal imperative. But perhaps his writing inspiration derives from an illness (even a mental pathology) undiagnosed. The writer of long paragraphs had tacitly approved Don Cowell’s marketing gimmick, but he sees no editorial connection between the promotional copy and his own words in the novel. His long, free-ranging paragraphs are the antithesis to Don Cowell’s snappy ad prose, which never contains a paragraph of even three sentences. Now, with the webcam interview over, the writer of long paragraphs stares at the cover of his novel, turns it over to read the back matter and to study his grinning author’s portrait. He fans through the pages of the book. His head aches at the sight of the densely printed pages. He closes his eyes when a pinch of nausea grips his stomach. He remains as still as possible until the nausea passes. Then he places the book on the shelf. He is tired but he feels he wants to write. The writer of long paragraphs places a thermometer under his tongue. His temperature is 101.3˚. He switches his laptop on. He is only a little sick, he knows. Hopefully, he is just sick enough to get some writing done.