Bang the Olympian

"In Nufer's latest book, Negativeland, the constraint is much simpler: Every sentence contains a negative--the narrator, Chick, "can't say yes." An Olympic swimmer turned spa promoter, Chick lives in a Baudrillardian state of giddy nihilism, making idiotic statements like "He was simply because he was, we weren't because he was, and we weren't because we weren't." Convinced that "illusion . . . embraces all," Chick has a pathologically overblown sense of his own fame. When he visits old friends, he hands out souvenirs--fake medals, earplugs, bathing caps. For publicity stints, he sits in a swimsuit, on a plank, atop a tank of dirty water, while folks step up and "Bang the Olympian.""