The Tapeworm Foundry and/or the Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination

Gregory Pike is a sessional English instructor at the Memorial
University of Newfoundland.

The Tapeworm Foundry consists of a long list of stimulating and
sometimes dazzling ideas and commands. Some of the commands are a spin
on well-known artistic projects, while others are brilliantly original
and bizarre (“… andor make a western about the group of seven
starring yul brynner as emily carr …”). Here’s a longer sample:
“… andor write what you do not know andor write a threevolume novel
in french about a man who falls in love with a cookie andor take
everything that is sculpture out of your art because sculpture is simply
what you bump into when you back up to look at a painting andor shoot a
man in reno just to watch him die andor assume precisely what it is that
you should be questioning andor …”

The Tapeworm Foundry is like an aesthetic joke book: it pokes fun at a
lot of people and projects and amid the funny lines has a few forgivable
duds. Some readers may find the flood of ideas a little tiresome; others
will delight in the onslaught.