the world's longest novel

Obama assassination novel wins national writing award

Sequel to Mark Leach’s “Marienbad My Love” resurrects protagonist of world’s longest novel

Coppell, TX – Texas writer Mark Leach has earned the National Novel Writing Month award for a 2.5 million-word sci-fi epic about an intergalactic conspiracy to assassinate Barack Obama.

“The President Who Exploded” is the story of a covert government assassin who pursues the President through the space-time continuum to the 41^st century, where humans have evolved into super-intelligent insects who live on Uranus and worship Obama as their Messiah. Leach describes it as a sequel to his 17-million-word “Marienbad My Love,” the world’s longest novel.

“I resurrected the protagonist of ‘Marienbad My Love’ to serve as a sort of psychic body guard for the President,” Leach said. “When I entered the National Novel Writing Month contest on Nov. 1, the story concept had no body guard. I pictured the new President – either McCain or Obama, we didn’t know yet who – on a mission to establish diplomatic relations with the Land of the Dead.  But soon after the election I read that ‘Obama’s Assassination’ had become the most searched phrase on Google. How could I pass up a huge current event hook like that?”

National Novel Writing Month is an annual creative writing contest in which participants try to write an entire novel (at least 50,000 words) in the month of November. Leach finished “The President Who Exploded” on Nov. 28, two days before the end of the month-long contest.

“I can confidently say that out of the thousands of winning contestants in 2008, no one exceeded my official word count,” Leach said. “The contest’s online counter topped out at 999,999 words – less than half my 2.5 million-word total.”

In order to compile so many words in such a short time, Leach leaned heavily on the Internet. He generated what he calls a “non-linear literary collage” by mining various blogs, chat rooms and fan fiction sites, grabbing whatever words caught his eye.

“The talk pages of Wikipedia and the reader comments on io9.com were my absolute favorites,” he said. “These are my people. I shamelessly plagiarized their words -- even their misspellings and gramatical errors -- at every opportunity, combining the anonymous messages with recycled content from ‘Marienbad My Love’ and entries from my dream journal. I repeatedly cut and pasted and searched and replaced, transforming the various writings into a completely new and unique literary work.”  

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About "The President Who Exploded"

"The President Who Exploded" by Mark Leach is the story of an intergalactic conspiracy to assassinate Barack Obama. It is a sequel to “Marienbad My Love,” the world’s longest novel. A free ebook download of "The President Who Exploded" is available at http://marienbadmylove.com/thepresidentwhoexploded.aspx

posted on Nov. 28, 2008

The following is the transcript of Mark Leach’s acceptance speech at the 2008 National Novel Writing Month Award Ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden.

LEACH: Thank you so much.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you, everybody. To -- to my great friend Chris Baty, and to all my fellow winners of this great competition, with profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for Winningest Winner of the 2008 NaNoWriMo.

(APPLAUSE)

Let me -- let me express -- let me express my thanks to the historic slate of 20,000-plus winners who accompanied me on this year’s amazing journey. As I prepare to move into the NaNoWriMo Winningest Winner’s Mansion, I find that I am humbled by the awesome honor and responsibility that comes with a record-setting 2.5 million-word finish.

I am humbled by the reality of this amazing event. Reality is important. I believe in looking reality straight in the eye – and denying it. I appropriated that from Garrison Keillor. As a pretentious postmodern narcissist, I make a habit of appropriating the words of others. I appropriate them, and then they belong to me.

I cannot begin to thank all of you who have bestowed such deserved adoration upon me for my creation of unprecedented artistic appropriation. It’s been a long road, let me tell you. Early on, it appeared that I had made a few enemies. Harsh criticisms were (seemingly) leveled against your humble narrator. For example, in one online message string about my achievement a blogger wrote “message was troll-food. Sorry.” I suspected s/he meant me, but I wasn’t sure. After all, s/he could have been addressing one of the 19 other commentators who had previously contributed troll-like comments to that string. So I responded: “are you saying my message was troll-food?” S/he didn’t answer, leaving me in the dark. But then I found the answer I was looking for on another site where another blogger described my question as “a side of paranoia.”  What a relief. I thought they were talking about ME, but now I understand I was just being paranoid, which is a minor occupational hazard of the pretentious postmodern narcissist.

Some of you have wondered if my original announcement of literary awesomeness was meant as a joke. Am I trying to be funny? Am I making some sort of statement on the nature of modern celebrity?  Am I a literary iconoclast, gleefully destroying the sanctity of the novel? What in the world am I doing! Here is a tip: The way to know if someone on the Internet is being funny is to look for the smiley face emoticons. Do you see any J in this transcript of my acceptance speech? No, you don’t. Pretentious postmodern narcissists never joke.

So as I prepare to move into the NaNoWriMo Winningest Winner’s Mansion and hang out with my great friend Chris, I should mention that if I am unable to execute my duties as Winningest Winner we have at least two other ’08 winners who exceeded the million-word count. While I have not read their somewhat-less-lengthy works, I suspect these people are actually “creative writers,” which is of course a very different breed from yours truly.

I received an e-mail from one of the contest’s lesser winners, suggesting that I appropriate from others because I don’t “HAVE an idea…” Well, here is an idea:  let’s talk about copyright protection. I appropriated this from the Briefing on Media Law section of The Associated Press Stylebook: “…ideas and facts are never protected by a copyright. Rather, the copyright pertains only to the literary, musical, graphic or artistic form in which an author expresses intellectual concepts.” Even that protection is not unlimited as the doctrine of “fair use” can permit the use of copyrighted material in certain situations. For example, Kenneth Goldsmith has written and published a novel that contains nothing but the unrevised written content of a single issue of The New York Times. Consider what Goldsmith has to say about the subject of artistic appropriation in his essay, “Uncreativity as a Creative Practice.” For your convenience I have appropriated the following remarks: “Almost 100 years ago, the visual arts came to terms with this [appropriation] issue in Duchamp's ‘Urinal.’ Later, Warhol, then Koons extended this practice. In music we have vast examples from John Oswald's Plunderphonics to the ubiquitous practice of sampling. Where has literature been in this dialogue? One hundred years after Duchamp, why hasn't straight appropriation become a valid, sustained or even tested literary practice?”

Now before one of my critics charges ahead screaming “look at the pretentious postmodern narcissist! He thinks he’s as good as Goldsmith!” let me point out that I did not make any such quality claims. I don’t have to. Allow me to appropriate this text from the NaNoWriMo web site: “…the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks. …” Nor have I claimed to be as good as William Burroughs. (Although I did appropriate some of his writings, so perhaps I am.) To those who argue otherwise, I would note that I only claim to have appropriated the cut-up technique that Burroughs popularized. I have not claimed that my use of the cut-up method, literary appropriation or any other technique has resulted in a work of artistic merit. Rather, I simply claim to have created "a completely new and unique literary work." It is not my place as a novelist to evaluate the quality of that work. That is rightly the role of the reader.

Regarding criticisms of my advanced age – listen my young friends, you’ll be middle-aged some day, too. And imagine how happy you’ll be when you remember that back in the day Mark Leach told you 47 was the new 29! Back in my day, when children rode to school in stone buses pulled by dinosaurs, most college students took a course called Art Appreciation. You learned about artists like Duchamp so you would share a common language and reference points for discussions with other educated people, thereby allowing you to disagree with someone without resorting to calling them a douche rocket. But in today’s post-dinosaur, post-Art Appreciation world, if you (and by “you” I really mean “I”) make reference to Duchamp, you will be taken to task. Consider what I wrote in the NaNoWriMo Forum: “If I entered an upside down toilet in an art exhibition and labeled it ‘Fountain,’ would it be art?” Here is one of the replies: “No. No, it would not be. It would be an upside down toilet. A rose is a rose is a rose, marienbad. Comments from websites and the Bible written backwards, no matter how artfully arranged, do not art make. Sorry.” Sigh. It would be easy to respond with one of the many masturbation- or feminine hygiene-themed epithets that have been directed at me. But I’ll leave that to those of you who do it so well and so often.

And speaking of my many online fans --  keep those comments coming! Say you love me, say you hate me – it’s all the same to me as both types of statements do an equally effective job of driving my SEO efforts (traffic at my web site. www.marienbadmylove.com,  is at an all-time high!) and fueling the misplaced sense of grandiosity that I understand is common among pretentious postmodern narcissists.

Why can’t we all just get along? If we just got to know each other, I suspect we’d find that we are not so different after all. Are we not all human? Do we not all make mistakes? Consider my great friends, the bloggers. They compensate for their shortcomings by hiding behind their online monikers and 40-word vocabularies that reveal a middle school obsession with masturbation- and feminine hygiene-themed epithets. As a pretentious postmodern narcissist, I compensate with sex and awesomeness. I appropriated that one from the TV show “30 Rock.” If I had a chance to meet my online critics in person, I would extend to them an olive branch. But wait – it is not an olive branch at all, but a tendril of poison ivy. Ha ha ha! That’ll teach you to trust a pretentious postmodern narcissist.

I know I’ll be paying a high price for Winningest Winner fame in my personal life. No more leisurely, anonymous strolls along Rodeo Drive or weekends in The Hamptons. Those damned paparazzi! At any moment Alain Resnais might kick my a--. Ditto for the William Burroughs Fan Club. And of course several of you apparently want to have sex with me. And leave my severed head in a bucket of cement. Ah, the life of the misunderstood, awesomely fabulous writer. I came to NaNoWriMo in peace, seeing gold and slaves. I appropriated that from Jack Handey.

In conclusion let me state what should be obvious at this point. I am having a wonderful time. And I have no intention of turning my back on you now. We cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this competition, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that NaNoWriMo 50,000-word promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless National Novel Writing Month.

posted on Dec. 8, 2008

I was looking at the article in search for more information about Jesus and carpentry. Although it's a somewhat esoteric subject, considering He's one of the biggest historical figures ever, I figured there would have been a bit more substantial info on the topic including a line explaining that the idea that he invented the table is an urban legend.--72.1.222.205 (talk) 21:40, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Woah, let's not go bashing the Christians now. I think you'd be hard pressed to find out too much about his carpentry work. What sources do we have for that sort of information? It would be interesting to know though. --St.Giga (talk) 19:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, we must use verifiable and reliable sources and not give undue weight to trivia. But I think Jesus did work as a carpenter until He was 30, so I wonder if there were any ads for His carpentry services - who knows? It sounds like a good idea for a novel - the Holy Grail is a miraculous table made by Him? Brisvegas 21:10, 15 July 2008 (UTC)  

In Popular Culture

This article should have a In Popular Culture section. I mean it. The perception of Jesus has changed a lot in modern times, and this is shown a lot in TV shows, like Family Guy or South Park, etc. Even The Da Vinci code can be mentioned. Just a thought. Take it or leave it; I'm too afraid to touch the article myself.--Seanpatnaude (talk) 19:32, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• Family Guy and South Park type shows joke about many things. Aren't the Da Vinci theories already mentioned? -BaronGrackle (talk) 19:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

It's significant because these shows change the perception of Jesus to a lot of people, especially kids. Jesus isn't treated with much respect nowadays, and how he's viewed in popular culture reflects this, and influences this. I don't mean just a trivia list, but just some mention about the trend of how he is treated by the popular media, and people make jokes about him smoking weed (bong hits 4 jesus) and generally not being the figure that people used to view him as. Also the movies The Last Temptation of Christ, Dogma, and so on.--Seanpatnaude (talk) 19:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

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New Dead Sea Discovery- Gabriel's Revelation,

Apparently a Jewish Tablet from the Dead Sea (dubbed Gabriel's Revelation) has been found which predates the birth of Jesus and predicts that the Messiah must suffer and die and then be resurrected after three days before he is able to bring reconciliation between man and God. This would have two implications for our understanding of Jesus.

1. It adds further legitimacy to the Christian claim that Jesus fulfilled Jewish Messianic Prophecy.
2. It reduces the legitimacy of the Christian claim that the three-day resurrection was unique to Christianity- perhaps the disciples latched onto "Gabriel's Revelation" in order to give the teachings of their master more credibility.

It should be noted that not everyone accepts the validity of this tablet- as the following sources will show. None the less it may be something to keep an eye on for inclusion into the article once more information is made available.

Sources,

1. The Scotsman Newspaper
2. The Daily Star (Lebanon Newspaper
3. TIME Magazine
4. MSNBC

Gavin Scott (talk) 21:23, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this specific discovery (which occured many years ago) warrents much attention in this article. It is precisely evidence such as this which, as you say, is drawn on both by Christians and by proponents of the "Jesus Myth" denial of Christianity. But my agreeing with Gavin's assessment is neither here nor there. NOR: we editors do not rely on our own views. The issue here is V and NPOV: Which notable points of view make use of this evidence? Have notable Christian authorities used it to support their claims? If so, I think this would belong in the Christology article, not here. Have advocates of the Jesus Myth used it to support their claims? If so, this would belong in the Jesus Myth article. Has it changed the way any historian views the historical Jesus? if so that should go in one of the articles on the historical Jesus. But the newspapers and magazines cited just prove that this was in the news. They aren't the right kinds of sources to support any of the notable views that we are endeavoring to include in the article. Slrubenstein | Talk 20:36, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

 

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Fair points, but as your long list demonstrates, the outcome(s) of this re-discovery are impossible to predict accurately, and it might result in something that would be relevant to this article. Because we don't know what the affect is, I say we just wait and see what it could be and then determine if it warrants a word or two in this article. Tourskin (talk) 20:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)