User:Nephomant

Hermester Barrington (aka Nephomant) is a world famous author--but only famous in parts of the world where no one ever seems to have been, or come back from. Born in 1906 in Phoenicia, New York, he passed most of his adult life as archivist for the Law Firm of Petty, Smilodon, and Ruth, which was as exciting as watching the moss grow on a three toed sloth. Hermester did not notice, however, for he was one those who sleepwalk through life--that is, until he received a transplant of Sasquatch testicles by one of Dr. Voronoff's protegés (and please note that said Sasquatch was captured and released, mostly unharmed, by none other than famed wrestler Dr. Jerry Graham and chanteuse Mrs. Miller). This operation not only released him from his walking death, but inspired him with enough vim, vigor, and testosterone to flee his old life and the hospital, taking with him the impossibly beautiful nurses' assistant Fayaway, who soon agreed to make him her husband. Together they travel over this globe, seeking strange protozoa, paranormal phenomena, and invisible books (books that exist by mention only in other books).

As a writer, Hermester seems to occupy an unfortunate position between the Confabulists (who, under one name or another, have their share in all the current literature of the world) and the great body of pen-and-ink men who address the intellect and sympathies of the multitude. If not too refined, at all events too remote, too shadowy, and unsubstantial in his modes of development to suit the taste of the latter class, and yet too popular to satisfy the spiritual or metaphysical requisitions of the former, he must necessarily find himself without an audience, except here and there an individual or possibly an isolated clique. His writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of the present day, and sometimes, so far as can be discovered, have little or no reference either to time or space. In any case, he generally contents himself with a very slight embroidery of outward manners,--the faintest possible counterfeit of real life,--and endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious peculiarity of the subject. Occasionally a breath of Nature, a raindrop of pathos and tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we were yet within the limits of our native earth. We will only add to this very cursory notice that Hermester Barrington's productions, if the reader chance to take them in precisely the proper point of view, may amuse a leisure hour as well as those of a brighter man; if otherwise, they can hardly fail to look excessively like nonsense.

Our author is voluminous; he continues to write and publish with as much praiseworthy and indefatigable prolixity as if his efforts were crowned with the brilliant success that so justly attends those of M. de l'Aubepine. His first appearance was a collection of monographs under the general title of Hitherto Unknown Protozoa of Neglected, Faraway, or Unknown Lands, including Protozoa of Dammed Rivers, Reservoirs, and Artificial Lakes of the Catskills, Protozoa Ecology in the Waters of Macondo, and Protozoa of Typee and Devil's Reef. Mr. Barrington has complemented these scientific treaties with scribblings based upon his own life. His memoirs, collectively titled The Autobiography of a Jackalope, recount his multiple travels and adventures. Volumes in this series include The Great Unknown of Lago Lácar; Life among the Geladas, or, How I Became Alpha Male of a Tribe of Cynocephalids; The Melvilles: My Life with Fayaway and the Missionary Movement of the Marquesas; Stalking the Wild Protozoa; Soul of Iron, Heart of Gold, Voice of Fluttering Quicksilver: A Life of Mrs. Miller; and Wrestling with Pan: How I Defeated Zamfir's Attempted Seduction of Fayaway. The latest volume in this series, yet in preparation, is tentatively titled An Encounter with Mr. Bass, or How I Narrowly Escaped being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Fungus Cult of Pacific Grove. He has also penned works of fiction, among them numerous scandalous tales of a salacious nature, which appeal only to deviates and reprobates, and, being published under an assumed name, and in journals with which no gentleman would soil his hands, can in no way be linked to Mr. Barrington. Other writings include a translation of Nicolas Bourbaki's A Brief History of Invisible Cities, Imagined Communities, and Visionary Empires of the Twentieth Century, and the metaphysico-allegorico-symbolic narrative Death Trap at La Puente: El Físico Nuclear and The Agents of Cal-International Pro Wrestling, Inc. That this voluminous body of work remains almost unknown to his compatriots does not surprise him, and neither has it hindered him from continuing to put pen to paper.

When he is not globetrotting, he is Visiting Professor of Mostly Invisible Organisms at The University of Ediacara, and Professor of Protozoology at Miskatonic University.