University of Virginia Library

Tintinnabulation

The strangest piece of fiction
here is Patrick Frank's essay,
"Intimations of the Second
Coming." If it is an essay, it is the
most innocent essay ever written.
Its innocence is miraculous; but it is
in fact a nineteenth-century
oratorical hallucination about Jerry
Rubin, that thermonuclear
anarchist, coming to liberate all the
happy darkies of Charlottesville, to
put acid in the Rivanna and blow
the minds of Mr. Jefferson's
gentlemen. To portray this event,
nay, say rather phenomenon of
nature, Mr. Frank has taken his pen
against a sea of troubles with
mighty gush of the richest,
funkiest, most extravagant, most
tintinnabulation, most adjectival
prose I have seen in years, prose full
of archaisms, rhetorical
embellishments of every sort, even
allusions to the bard and other
masters of yore. It is really
wonderful.