It is possible Joyce Carol Oates is not my cup of tea.

I was twitching. I was looking around and I was thinking and I was reading, seeing, wondering, and every verb was ending with ing, and I felt soaked with gerunds like a musty rank red tampon reeking of an animal woman scent and no! Should I say this? Should I say what I felt, reading? Perhaps it was unwise, I ventured, speaking ill of a writer held in such lofty, luminous regard, for who am I? Who am I? Saying and thinking such thoughts, to declare this prose wild and unwieldy, ponderous and pretentious and -- dare I say it? Sloppy! Like a reeking mucky river of muck, clutching and grabbing and clawing at my ankles, my eyes bleeding upon the page, red running rivulets. But no! I thought, I cannot, shall not say it. To criticize a figurehead? For life, if nothing else, is our accommodation of others' expectations.