They wrote it with acid, they wrote it with beer They wrote it with shrooms and with Schwag They worked on it nightly for nearly a year They emptied out many a bag. Come would-be novelists, young poets too Come here and sit by my side And listen: I’ll tell you a story or two About four young writers who tried What the hell? An electronic pastoral novel? Such a thing: it can never be done! Such a thing would indeed be much too hard to read (Such a thing, though, could also be fun) An experiment, tres avant-garde (to be sure) Would require some patience to read And wrought by four stylists unclean and impure It might get quite raunchy indeed A poet named Dirk, a writer named Frank Novelists William and Scott They all enjoyed working and each of them drank And geniuses they were all not They wrote it with acid, they wrote it with beer They wrote it with shrooms and with Schwag They worked on it nightly for nearly a year They emptied out many a bag. Good Scott from Chicago first saw the potential Of writing an infinite text With convolutions yet self-referential So immature, yet so complex Named after Gaddis, thin William wrote lines Ten scenes and a chapter or two Though still there was not any semblance of plot He still seemed to know what to do And Dirk from Ohio then took up the thought And wrote about writing about He got so recursive, that his more discursive Dear friends had to drag him back out Meanwhile in Frisco a colleague of theirs Provided some quite solid text And then altogether through all kinds of weather They wrote then they wrote and wrote next They wrote it with acid, they wrote it with beer They wrote it with shrooms and with Schwag They worked on it nightly for nearly a year They emptied out many a bag. It started one evening like many a curse It seemed to make sense at the time And so the whole process was wrought in reverse So weird it was almost a crime They began at the end and then worked toward the start At the onset, first one of them died Then came the movie, then Frank’s broken heart and then they got famous and snide Then penniless, each took a turn at the wheel and they toured the wide U S of A They passed through Nebraska, did time in Alaska And drank a foul liqueur in Chesapeake Bay Now working backwards the fun part was done They were thinner and had much more hair In order to finish they now had begun To publish the book. Would they dare? They wrote it with acid, they wrote it with beer They wrote it with shrooms and with Schwag They worked on it nightly for nearly a year They emptied out many a bag.