Read if You Can Tolerate Ostensibly (Ouch): Alison Mansfield

Though few and far between, true disciples of Homestead’s most ornately clad philanthropist are a breed all their own. They know what they like, and what they like is Alison Mansfield. But what happens when all the Alison is dried up, when they’re forced to turn to the fringes of culture to supplement their rampant voracity? I’ll tell you what; you get one emotionally detached boy/man writing a god-forsaken field guide on books for these servile wannabes to read while they vicariously live out fantasies of unrequited public service and more posh and verve than Andrew Eigner can shake a stick at (especially if the aforementioned stick is ornamented with 90 lbs. of disc weights on each end). Let’s get started.

1984 by George Orwell: If you’re more than a fair-weather fan of ol’ Alison “Malison” Mansfield, then you more than likely have some backward affinity for that eerie feeling of being distantly watched that can keep any sane person awake at night. This, of course, is because whenever Alison is not adamantly lucubrating over her sundry service projects and other panaceas for human sickness, death, famine, etc., she is standing tall above the crowd—no specific crowd, for she has the same dwarfing effect on whichever crowd she happens to be in at the time and, to be honest, there are seldom crowds that she cannot monitor from the turret eyes on her reared head. And surely enough, if you’re into this creepily voyeuristic ruse of hers, you’ll have  a field day with the watchful eye of Big Brother in 1984, which keenly examines every successive actions of every individual in this miserable dystopian society.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: Though it rings true that Mans’ (which I will refer to Ms. Mansfield as for the rest of this resplendent article) does get intimately close when she accosts you to start a conversation, this is not the reason for this addition to the docket. You see, if you would read beyond the title, you would find that Extremely Loud is about an adolescent boy inflicted by Asperger’s Syndrome who becomes obsessed with a key after his father’s death in the 9/11 (or 11/9, if you fancy that) terrorist attacks. The kid is kind of a whirling dervish, but occasionally the author throws him a bone by placing some pretty introspective dialogue in his know-it-all little mouth. If you know Alison, you know she was pretty much reading Nietzsche and saying really profound stuff before you and your snotty friends even began to ponder your mortality (so . . .  like 6 years old, right?), so this one should be a no-brainer!

The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein: Well folks, it’s probably about time we stop kidding ourselves and admit that this article has long-since breached any dimension of normalcy into the vast abyss of the abnormally creepy, which is exactly why I can say unashamedly that we ineffectual Alison-chasers relate to the incomplete circle in Silverstein’s modern classic than perhaps to any other literary archetype. It seems as if every time we think we have found our missing piece, we are cruelly disappointed by unexpected adversity and Alison’s elusive nature. Maybe in another life, my compadres. 
--Anonymous