Coover

Two typical monologues from the over-written and unpleasant Pinocchio in Venice- each contains a single remarkable idea fatally smothered in hubristic verbiage:
In our family, if one can call a bastardly plague of debauched egg-suckers a family, it has not forgotten how you honored our great-grandsire Melampo with eloquent silence when the poor beast, too dead to speak for self, stood accused—and by a ruling class of lickerish unprinci-graspers born and spit—of the theft of his own meager sustenence. To wit, the odd chicken or two he'd been hired to guard. Some said that great-granddad was bent, others that he was an old prole ahead of his time, and a martyr to causes as yet unformulated, but your mute testimony shut all their pustulous faces and left the ole sonofabitch to lie in peace at the bottom of whatever stinking well they dumped him in. You earned thereby our eternal gratitude, though you'll probably get somewhat less than that, memory being the garbagey stewpot of doodoo that it is, and certainly your pres-ence, which, if I may say so in passing, seems a mite fragrant, honors my poor hovel. So come along now, good sir—and easy, Alidodo, you blundering beffardo! You must transport the gentleman with the same cunning tenderness with which God's chosen ass is said to have borne the gravid Virgin so as not to tear her gossamery maidenhead, the frangibility of which was likened by Thomas the Rhymer unto that of crisp silk, and whose rupture would have detheologized the Western World, catastrophically orphaning us all. Come, come! I'll put a fire on!" And thus it was that the exhausted pilgrim found shelter at last, swathed in the woolen blanket, the first thing he has stolen since those fateful grapes that landed him in the late Melampo's terrible brass-studded collar all those decades ago, and nested in sawdust and woodchips, his natural element—being, that is, the son of a carpenter.
and
 "Don't even listen to those bandits, Pinocchio!" warns a voice at his back. He twists around to seek out the source, but there is no one back there, just empty space, blue, vast, and inscrutable. "If you lend those scoundrels a hand, they'll steal it!" "Cross words," grumbles La Volpe sardonically, resolving the puzzle. "Words!" repeats Il Gatto, sniggering hysterically into his empty cuff. "Avoid evil companions, my boy, or you'll be sorry!" "How could I be sorrier than I already am?" he groans, his wounds stretching as, losing strength, he slumps lower. "You could be," replies the cross with a tremulous sigh, "like me." "Ah well. As to that, there was a time when—" "I know, I know, they send us dossiers, resumes, we get the publicity handouts. You're a famous case, a model for us all, you've—if you'll pardon the expression—crossed over. This is a big honor for me, I know that, I've got the star of the dance, top billing, I shouldn't complain. But do you remember what it was like before? Do you remember how it felt to be a piece of talking wood?" So long ago. A time of darkness. He was innocent then. And innocence, as his long life has taught him, is a form of naughtiness. Yet .. . "I had . .. no pain . . . no fear . . . I was free . ." "Free to get used for a chair leg or a clapboard! Free to soak, rot, and burn! Free to get chopped, hacked, whittled, split, and pulped! Hey, look at me! A tree made out of a tree! A joke! They gave me arms, I can't use them. Am I mad? Hell, I'm cross as two sticks, that's what the children say, but I don't know what 'mad' is, I don't know `cross.' Pain,' you say, `fear': it all sounds like magic to me—or it would, if I knew what magic was. I even envy that old Fox over there with her itches and scratches—I say, 'her,' but what do I know, right? I don't know `knowing'! While you, you've had a life! You've had everything!" "You don't know. Men's lives are short and stupid." "Stupid? You tell me stupid? What's two and two, you ask. I don't know. I don't know what's two! But you know, you're smart, you've got brains, whatever they are. You've got—I don't know, I can only imagine—which is difficult, I don't even have an imagination—but what? You've got charm, right? Dignity. Serenity. You've got—correct me if I'm wrong—hauteur, glamour, class, talent—how'm I doing?—dash and daring. And tenderness. Smoothness. Authority. Have I got the picture?" "Well, I guess so—but how did you—?" "I read it on a movie poster." "You did?" "You caught me. I'm lying. I can't read. I'm dumb as a stump, I'm thick as a plank, I'll never make my mark, or any other. Oh, I wasn't born yesterday, but that's just it. I wasn't born at all. Not like you, Mr. Star of the Dance! And I can't take steps to do anything about it, I can't keep my nose to the grindstone or listen to reason or kick the problem around, so what chance have I got? I'd be down in the mouth about it if I had a mouth. I can't even put my foot in it. I can't show my hand or beat around the bush or face the music. I don't even know where it is, the music, I mean, or the bush either, I'm too stupid. If I had a heart, I'd be wearing it on my sleeve, if I had a sleeve. So what have I got? A routine. A lumber number. A dumb show, a curtain dropper, an act with nails, halfway between a hanky twister and a creepie. But I'm a pro, a reliable standby, an understud, a support who never lets you down, I'm an old hand who hasn't even got one. People like to wear me on their chests.
and so on.