“ ‘Life, Rowena, is a song. By that I mean it’s short, like a song. It’s got an unhappy ending, like a song. It repeats itself, like a song. It can be loused up, like a song. You can go reggae or you can go heavy metal. You want fiddles I’ll give you fiddles. You want synthesizer I’ll give you synthesizer. You want to head sandpaper, I got guys that can sandpaper your heart into little pieces. So I ask you, is life not a song? Essentially?’ ”

(Donald Barthelme & Seymour Chwast, Sam’s Bar: An American Landscape, unpaginated.)