When I first met Jared Wilson, I knew instantly that I was in the presence of a small rodent who can’t refrain from burrowing into a skull he can never hope to penetrate. One encounters such muskrats, of course, on an everyday basis. But never ones quite like Mr. Wilson, who, not coincidentally I think, shares the unfortunate name of the most boring character (indeed, the one who deserves all vengeance wreaked by the young Dennis) ever created for the Sunday comics page.

Far from a mere bag of bones, Mr. Wilson is a walking accident who has clutched to the sad illusion that he is some kind of seminal artist. Unfortunately, when one writes Wilson’s novels — the kind of books that have the appeal of unwiped semen stains in a taxi cab seat — one wonders if Wilson subconsciously had a different sort of seminal in mind.

An epicurean with a solid literary instinct might sustain an ardent hope that parvenus of Jared Wilson would expire gracefully from the world of letters. But so long as the four steady notes of Wilson’s out-of-tune Fender guitar find favor with the charnel houses of the publishing industry, even the basest of literary arts is doomed.