Browsing in a bookstore this weekend, I realized that it’s absolutely critical that all of us, everywhere, band together and get Joyce Carol Oates to stop writing.

I’m not exactly sure how.  Cutting off her fingers would be a little violent, but shouldn’t be dismissed from consideration.  The bottom line is: Joyce needs to shut up.

Do you know how much space she fills up in your average bookstore?  It must be a good 30% or so.  And who reads any of it?  I mean sure, many of us have read Oates because she’s had stuff like “The Lady with the Pet Dog” anthologized in textbooks.  But she’s not satisfied with that; she keeps churning out novels and essays and collections of novels and essays.

Joyce, think about the last time you sent a manuscript to your editor, which was added to the stack of 30 Oates manuscripts already in his office.  His assistant informed you that he had jumped from the top of the building.  How many more must die before you get the message?

I can hear your whiny response right now: “But gee, Charles Dickens and William Thackeray wrote dozens of suffocatingly long novels in their time, and nobody complained.  I’m a modern-day genius just like them.”

No, you’re a modern-day obsessive compulsive who needs to get a life.  I mean, sure, Dickens and Thackeray wrote a lot.  But you know what?  That was 19th-century Britain. Everyone sat around saying “You know, it’s going to be a really long time until we get DSL.  I don’t think we’ll be able to watch the special features on the Spirited Away DVD any time soon.  We can’t even watch the Learning channel, since not only is there no television but, well, we’re Victorians, which means we’re wrong about everything so there’s nothing to learn. I guess we might as well read another book about cute yet impertinent rapscallions making their way in British society.”

Since none of those factors are currently extent in the year 2003, I hereby entreat you to shut up for five lousy seconds.  Sit on your hands if you have to.  Just whatever you do--please--don’t write a response this post.  The Internet won’t have the bandwidth for it.