The rough equivalent in density, intensity and humor to a literary Frownland, John Holliday's 'The Assembly' rushes along its own wonderfully, and wonderful, manic trajectory. To attempt to comprehend, or to likewise identify the roots of the lack of comprehension, or to in any other manner, find out where or how or why a thread of thought is lost and found once again, is near impossible while reading, and yet simultaneously, the story is perfectly comprehensible--which, if one was to think about the incomprehensible being comprehensible, one might find oneself quite confounded and then perhaps later overjoyed, as one easily is at the end of this very exhilarating, exhausting short story.

Following is an excerpt:

There came a point when I had firmly instituted myself in The Assembly, had inserted myself in The Society, had rightly secured my position in The Outfit whose subject matter and topical goings-on are totally irrelevant and extraneous to the material being processed here, and could very well be irrelevant and extraneous on the whole, not simply to this particular body of information, but rather to all and everyone, although this too is irrelevant and extraneous and getting things off track regarding this specific concern, namely my seat in The Assembly, located directly across from another well-situated member of The Outfit whom I came to dislike strongly and on the whole and could be considered something of an antagonist or nemesis or personal criminal. Our roller-equipped chairs with doubly padded seats and adjustable armrests were all situated around a single oblong table headed by The Society's, Assembly's, Outfit's, Guild's, Association's, League's, Organization's, Circle's, Formal Get-together's, ad infinitum's director, who often enjoyed remarking on the chair's extreme comfort respective to what we were sitting in just last year, prior to the fine grant-writing of Sprem. These chairs also swiveled, allowing Verder's face to swivel itself into a position directly facing mine, forcing me to note Verder's face was both soft at the chin and edgy at the cheeks, which somehow manifested everything dislikable about Verder and Verder's position on the fundamental issue of The Guild, or at least what Verder and I took to be the Fundamental Issue, the issue that couldn't be overlooked if The Association intended to make any progress on most if not all concerns whatsoever. Verder took one position on the Fundamental Issue and I another, and my dislike for Verder can be summed up by the very position Verder took, the Verder Position, whose benefits he championed and displayed by waving his hands in a frantic and unnecessary way while repeating something or other with more and more force and anxious but Formally respectable volume accompanied by rhetorical placeholders and occasional table noises made by his hands, all rigid-like, not much different than those of my great-uncle Herschel.

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