Away

New posts next week

Dismal Similes

In an old TLS I read that Borges and his Boswell figure Adolfo Bioy Casares used to enliven their Argentinian ennui by inventing deliberately banal and pompous lines of what you might call pulp poetry: “The trees standing in line like memories”, was one of Borges'. On the way out of Bioy’s flat one night, Bioy declaimed “The light remained trapped in the lift, like a bird in a cage” and Borges snapped back with “we slipped into the darkness of the night like messages dropped into a letter-box”.

The Fez Knows

Danilo shrugged. "Here. You'd better wear these." He handed Bevis and Cyprian each a fez. Cyprian's was so small it had to be forced onto the back of his head with a sort of screwing motion, while Bevis's kept falling over his eyes and ears. "Wait, then, we'll switch fezzes." Most strangely, this did not resolve the difficulty.
"Makes no sense," Bevis muttered.
"It happens sometimes", Danilo darkly, "but more in the old tales than in our present day. The head of an infidel betrays him by rejecting the fez . Perhaps you are both quite devout Christians?"
"Not especially," Cyprian and Bevis protested at the same time.
"The fez knows," said Danilo. "You cannot fool the fez".

Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day , p. 933.