A Man With No Class

This will be a short week at work since we're traveling to the conference on Thursday. I submitted my work on the GPS to Mr. Phillips last Friday. He said he would study it over the weekend. I had no idea what he would think of it, or how exactly he planned to integrate it (assuming he approved of what I had come up with) with his own work on the project. I'm telling you, the man is nuts. At any rate, I'm way beyond caring about his classification system. As far as the conference goes, it'll just be nice to have a change of scenery for a few days, and I have to admit I'm incredibly curious to see both Ivan Large and the classification contest.

Speaking of our favorite avant-garde author, I found another book of his this past weekend. It's called 26 Persons. It features a cast of characters numbering... you guessed it... 26. And, in true Ivan Large style, the characters are known as (in order of appearance) Person A, Person B, Person C, and so on, all the way through Person Z. I only skimmed through the book at a bookstore (I'm still busy burrowing my way through Harmless Banter, so I'm not quite ready to launch into another Large novel at this point), so I can't say much more about it, but the entire novel appears to consist of dialogue among these 26 persons. Because it's apparently all talk, it seems at first glance that it could just as well have been written as a play. In a play, however, one would not get the author's highly informative commentary, such as this typical non-description:

"Where are my trousers?" said Person D, a man of uncertain height, indeterminate weight, unascertainable occupation, unknown creed, indistinct race, and vague motives.

You just wouldn't get that if you were watching an actor, who would at least be of a certain height and weight and racial makeup. Though any of these features could be modified to make him appear otherwise, the point is he would still have an appearance. You could never translate Ivan Large to the stage or the screen because he delights in making his characters and settings seem as nondescript--no, as non-specific--as possible, and that's part of his point. It's as though he refuses to... you know, I don't know why I never thought of it this way before... he refuses to classify things.

Wow. It's all become clear now. Suddenly I know why I must meet Ivan Large.