Installing Windows considered as a literary genre

Cory Doctorow 9:43 pm Thu Dec 17, 2009

During a discussion of Charlie Stross's epic tale of Windows installation, a Making Light reader called Ajay worked up this killer formal structure of "the well-established genre, the tale of godawful Windows-installation woes":

I. Exordium. The narrator introduces himself, establishes his experience in computing (ethos) and exhorts the listeners to gather round.

II. Prolegomenon. Customarily, the hardware spec of the machine is outlined here.

III. Praeinstallatio. The narrator describes his initial attempt to install Windows.

IV. Contrainstallatio. The installation goes wrong.

V. Descendo. The narrator describes his increasingly desperate attempts to get things to go right.

VI. Depilatio. The narrator is reduced to despair and frustration.

VII. Inertio. The narrator sinks into a horrified stupor as his machine gurgles and clunks to itself for anything up to three days.

VIII. Peroratio. The narrator rises into fury as he describes how long and painful an experience the install was;

which may be followed by

IX. Aptenodytes forsteri, the narrator switches to Linux.

Chkdsk red in tooth and claw

(Image: Frustration!, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from basykes' photostream)

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