A is for alienation and art;
B is for Baumgarten, Beattie, and Barthes.
C is for Carroll (Noël not Lewis),
D is for disbelief (God, get me through this!)
E is for Empson, engrossment, enchantment,
Estrangement effects and also entrancement.
F is for fantasy, feeling and Feynman,
G is for Gottsched (nicht ein Kleiner Mann).*
H is for hoaxing, hoodwinking, Hume;
I is for Indexing, please be done soon.
J is for Johnson (Claudia and Sam),
K is for Kant, whom I can’t understand.
L is for Leibniz;
M is for memes;
N is for nothing is all that it seems.
O is for odd;
P is for plot;
Q is for something but what, I’ve forgot.
R is for reading, Ricoeur and Richetti,
S is for Socrates, Sterne and Spaghetti.
(Actually, I lie, there are really no noodles;
But narrative strands? Of those, there are oodles.)
T is for Taste and my darling Tom Jones;
U is for U guys, don’t leave me alone!
V is for vulgar, virtual and viral;
W is wonder, the heart of this spiral.
It’s complex, you see, it’s both marvel and doubt;
But X, X is just what you think it’s about.
Y is for why oh why oh why;
Z is for Žižek: my hero! No lie.
* In his autobiography, Goethe describes Gottsched as “that tall, broad, gigantic man.” (See The Auto-biography of Goethe: Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life Vol. 1 trans. John Oxenford (Cambridge; first published 1848, reprinted 2013), p.226.)