Posted for your amusement, to try and lighten the mood a little bit, and also because I'm a huge attention whore:
While cleaning out my documents folder recently, I came across the following paper that I wrote for an upper-level lit class several years ago. The topic of the class was William Faulkner's writing, and the assignment for this particular paper was to write a short story in the style of one of his novels. What follows, then, is the tale of the Three Little Pigs, as it might have been reimagined by Mr. Faulkner. Fair warning: if you're not familiar with Faulkner's writing in general or with As I Lay Dying (which is the novel this story is actually a parody of - I just swiped the title from another Faulkner novel because it worked better with the Three Little Pigs theme), you might not get some of the humor. Enjoy...
Addie Swinedren
In the afternoon when the old farmer would let my little piglets out to wallow in the mud with their big fat snuffling snouts, instead of going back to the barn I would go down to the feed trough where I could eat quietly and hate them. It would be quiet there then, except for the
Smack. Smack. Smack.
of my lips chowing down on fetid slop, and I would think about Farmer Armstid slitting their throats and making pork chops out of their tender hides.
I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to get slaughtered and ate. And when I would have to look at them day after day, wallowing in filth, each with his secret and selfish thoughts, and mud strange to each other’s mud and strange to mine, I would hate my father for having ever allowed the farmer to artificially inseminate my mother with his semen. I would look forward to the day when they assumed their rightful places in the food chain, and when the knife fell I could feel it upon my flesh, and it would be my blood that ran, and I could think with each blow of the knife: Now you are the other white meat!
And so I sent them away to seek their fortunes. And then I lay with Anse, and gave him three piglets to negative Darl, Cash, and Jewel, who I sent off into the world. And now he has three piglets that are his and not mine. And Farmer Armstid has four pigs. Actually five, if you count me. Except that technically I gave the three other piglets to Anse, and not to him. Okay, so the farmer has two pigs, Anse has three, and then Darl, Cash and Jewel make six. No, wait a minute. I gave them away… Ah, hell, I better write this down.
Darl Swinedren
Jewel come up from the field, carrying a couple bundles of straw. Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from a distance can see Jewel’s floppy ears a full snout above my own.
"You, Jewel," I say. "I done brought you some sticks for you to use while you’re building your house. Cash done left you some bricks too, from what he had left over. Don’t know why anyone would want to go and build a house out of bricks, though. Or straw, for that matter."
"Goddamn you," Jewel says. "I wouldn’t be beholden. Thank you kindly, you goddamn son of a bitch."
"You really ought to taken this here wood," I say. "Any durn fool knows you shouldn’t build a house out of straw."
"Damn you to hell," he says. "I aint never been beholden to any man, leastwise my own brother. I rather pay you for it."
"Okay, suit yourself," I say. "Let’s see, that’ll be fifty cents for each stick, plus ten man-hour units of work…"
"Goddamn you to hell," he says. "Goddamn your fat pink ass to hell."
Jewel Swinedren
It’s because he stands right over there, while I’m trying to build this goddamn straw house that keeps falling over ever damn time the wind blows, asking me if my mom’s a horse. Where I can hear every oink and grunt he makes saying See, I told you not to build your house out of straw. I told him to go somewhere else and find some mud and feces to wallow in. Because I said if you would leave me the hell alone and quit trying to sell me those damn sticks while I’m trying to put this house together where it will hold long enough for the glue to set and his jowls flopping away talking about how many man-hour units of labor it takes to gather a bundle of wood. If it had just been me when Vardaman got sucked into the thresher the other day, it would not be happening with every bastard in the county coming in to stare at this pile of straw that won’t stay up because if there is a God why don’t he make a glue that will hold straw together better than this. It would just be me and her in a pit full of mud and me dining on banana peels and old apple rinds and not that goddamn straw hut falling over ever five damn minutes and we could be quiet.
Cash Swinedren
I made it out of bricks.
- Bricks are more stable.
- Brick houses are better looking.
- The big bad wolf won’t be able to blow down a brick house.
- Except.
- He might try to come down the chimney.
- Animal magnetism.
- The animal magnetism of a straw house makes the big bad wolf come on over and blow it down.
- You can see by the pile of straw lying where Jewel’s house used to be that building a house out of straw aint a good idea.
- So I made it with bricks.
- It makes a sturdier house.
Darl Swinedren
My mother is a pig.
Vernon Tull
So Jewel finally got his straw shack to stay up by itself, and he got up on his horse to leave, which of course was traumatic for the horse, having a heavy pig on its back and all. But he never did leave; Jewel just kept looking back at that shack, like he thought maybe, once it was outen his sight, the whole thing would kind of blow over and he would find himself back yonder trying to put it back up again.
"You ought to use you some of them bricks what Cash brought you, instead of building your house with straw," I says.
"Ah, shut your goddamn mouth," Jewel says. "It’s that damn glue you sold me the other day." He says it harshly, like I was the one that kept knocking it over. That boy is tetched, for a fact. But he got nothing on that brother of his, Darl. I be durn if the whole lot of them aint nuttier than squirrel turds.
Anse Swinedren
It’s a hard life on a pig, for a fact. Addie sent them piglets off, and I be durn if Jewel aint already up and got hisself eaten by a wolf. Then old farmer Armstid decided to take the knife to Addie for Christmas dinner, leaving me alone with three piglets to raise. I am the chosen of the Lord, for who he loveth, so doeth He chastiseth. And the Lord loveth the hell out of me. It’s a fact.
Ah, well. Time to go find me a new wife and pick up a set of false teeth. That will be a comfort. It will.
Cash Swinedren
It wasn’t built out of bricks. I told him that if he built it out of straw, that durn old wolf would come and
Vernon Tull
They came and got Darl, and put him in one of those white jackets that laces up in the back, laughing the whole time. "Yes yes yes yes yes," he says while they’re lacing him up good and tight.
"Is it because the big bad wolf come and blowed your house down, Darl?" I says. "Is that why you’re laughing?"
"No no no no no," he says, laughing. "I blowed the son of a bitch down myself, with some gasoline and a match. By the way, did I mention that my mother is a pig?"
"Yes yes yes yes yes," I says. Nuttier than squirrel turds, that boy is. For a fact.
Cash Swinedren
So after I got settled in good that wolf come calling one night, wanting to eat me up for dinner. "You, little pig," he says. "Let me in, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in."
"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin," I says. "And not by the barrel of my thirty-ought-six, either."
Well, that didn’t get the point across, so that old wolf started a huffing and a puffing, but I be durn if he blew down that brick house. So he come up around back, and climbed up onto the roof, like he was going to sneak in through the chimney. So I got me some wood and built up a good fire in the fireplace, and put a big old pot of water on top of it. And durn if that old wolf didn’t come right down the chimney just the same, and fell right into that there pot. He jumped out quick as you please, looking like he was going to come and try to eat me, then he saw the gun and just stood there, kind of hangdog and proud, with his teeth bared, even if he wouldn’t look at me. So I shot him, and cut off his penis.
Jill Faulkner
I hate it when Daddy tells me bedtime stories. They always give me nightmares.