The Blossoming of Gerald Bloom

There is a book whose title is untitled, whose author is unknown, and whose language is not language.

J.D. Salinger is said to have caught a glimpse of this book's untitled title page before fading from public view; Hemingway kept a few pages tucked away in memory before it all overflowed; and Homer made it through an entire chapter before going blind.

And as for Gerald Bloom, well, he intended to read the whole damn book. A daunting task to be sure, but Bloom had one thing going for him: He wasn't a writer. Like the ageless book itself, Bloom was a maker and breaker of storytellers, the nation's foremost literary critic, and upon reading this book of all books, he planned to offer up his review.

Easier said than done as no advance copy would ever be sent Bloom's way. There was just THE copy, lost then periodically found. Over the years, he'd sleuthed and pried, from Harper Lee in Alabama to Le Guin in California. The writers who talked, or the ones he believed anyway, had all mentioned purple and spice, a synesthetic blend of color and taste. That was how the book communicated.

Then, finally, Bloom got his big break. It came in an eye-watering purple envelope. Inside was a Chicago transit card. It made a certain sort of sense to Bloom because, as far as he knew, the book had last been spotted around 1970 by Shel Silverstein in that same city.

Straight from the O'Hare airport, Bloom hopped on the blue line then switched to the purple line at Clark/Lake. Riding north, he swayed along with the L train as he looked for a sign. He saw it at Sedgwick, a single book bobbing in a sea of smartphones—not the book of all books, but one that he knew all too well.

This book was titled Makeda's Chrome, and Bloom had deemed it "retro-futuristic gutter glamour beyond the discerning reader's purview," but the book had risen above his review to become a bestseller while thumbing its nose at Bloom with a back cover quote that read "Beyond Gerald Bloom's purview."

Yes, it had to be a sign. Whoever had their nose buried in that book was aiming the back cover in his direction. Bloom released his grip on the standing bar and groped for overhead handle after handle, dodging padded bodies and fur-trimmed flesh, a mad game of monkey bars, all to position himself closer to the offending book.

The man reading the book was wearing some sort of leather onesie, his chest hair on full display despite it being the dead of winter.

Bloom hovered over the reader, on the edge of speaking, when the man lurched to his feet and neatly headbutted Bloom in the bargain. The man said something as he exited the L and Bloom reeled over the vacated seat.

"Beyond Gerald Bloom's purview" came into focus. The man had left his copy of Makeda's Chrome. Bloom picked up the book and took the seat. He scowled at the tasteless text before noticing something caught between its pages. A ragged bookmark?

Bloom opened the book to a page he could not recall critiquing. It contained a single word.

Remember.

Yes, that's what the man had also said as he'd headbutted Bloom in his hurry to not miss his stop.

"Remember."

Remember what?

Then, he sensed it in his hand, the thing he'd assumed was a bookmark. It stretched across his palm like some feathered tongue. It was mauve lightning, violet repercussions, amethyst dreams, a fuchsia fugue state weighed down by byzantium.

He was holding it, but he felt it burning in his throat, all the shades of purple as well as the ones that hadn't been invented yet.

Bloom tore his eyes free from his hand, searching for succor, but the once-crowded train was now empty, the world beyond the windows a void. He couldn't see his reflection in the windows. There was no Bloom.

That which remained sought refuge in Makeda's Chrome. He was misleading death scenes and exposition. Oh, the exposition! It scattered him among split infinitives and tortured adjectives. He tried to cling to subtext then to nanotext until there was nothing left but the book that wasn't a book.

Finally, he was the shade of poison, the hue of royalty, the tint of saxophones wailing deep into the night.

He was a purple flower that was not a flower.

Everything is a metaphor.

Until it isn't.

There is a book whose title is untitled, whose author is unknown, whose language is not language.

It's also an endless field of interconnected flowers that exist in an eternally strange simultaneity of symbiosis and phytochemical warfare. The roots are tangled ancestral memories, the stems are shared truths held together by believable lies, and the feathered petals can only end in imagination.

Consciousness flickers in and out of existence across this field, but the flowers don't spare it a thought. They simply reside in their nameless splendor. To be conscious here is to invite peril.

A lucky few make it back from this place that can't be found, only remembered. They return with the hint of a dream, the lingering taste of some otherworldly spice, the convulsions of countless tongues trying to distill the purplest of prose.

As for the others who don't make it back to the worlds of words, they, too, can at least be remembered as they add to a book without end. When enough remain behind, another flower blossoms.

Witness it now and watch for eons as another purple flower unfurls its feathered petals. It stretches itself to the limits of its imagination, grasping for parts of a story that may never be told.

And in this field of book, there is no sky to set limits. In fact, there is no need for a sun because...

Well, the portion of the flower that we now see blossoming, the part that was once Gerald Bloom, says it best as it offers up its review.

"It shines. Oh God, it shines!"