“The most notable literary response to last year’s financial crisis was not to turn to the obvious genre – books about Wall Street shenanigans in the 1920s – but to skip several historical stages and to go straight to Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, in which heroic titans of industry are persecuted by a meddling government. The book’s sales skyrocketed in early 2009, proving that when bankers puff asset bubbles and wreck the world, a large part of the public can be counted on to learn from that experience that bankers are the real victims of society, presumably deserving even more tax cuts and deregulation.”

(Tom Frank, “The Red Scare Returns”.)

“In the two extremes (insufficient installation in ordinary circumstances and almost total rejection of the), the story sins through impermeability; it works with momentarily justified materials among which there is no osmosis, no convincing formulation. The good reader senses that none of these things had to be there, not the strangling hand, nor the gentleman who determines to spend the night in a desolate dwelling on a bet. This type of story, which deadens anthologies of the genre, recalls Edward Lear’s recipe for a pie whose glorious name I have forgotten: take a hog, tie it to a stake, and beat it violently, while at the same time preparing a gruel of diverse ingredients, interrupting its cooking only to continue beating the hog. If at the end of three days the glop and the hog have not formed a homogeneous substance, the pie must be considered a failure, the hog released, and the glop consigned to the garbage. Which is precisely what we do with stories in which there is no osmosis, where the fantastic and the ordinary are brought together without forming the pie we want to enjoy trembling.”

(Julio Cortázar, from “On the Short Story and Its Environs,” p. 167 in Around the Day in Eighty Worlds, trans. Thomas Christensen. Lear’s recipe is for Gosky Patties.)

“An illustrious bell-caster, with a long beard and unconditionally an atheist, one day received a visit from two clients. They were dressed in black, and very serious, and showed a swelling on their shoulders, which made it cross the atheist’s mind that that was where their wings might be, as are said to be found on angels; but he paid this thought no attention, since it didn’t align with his convictions. The two gentlemen commissioned a bell of great dimensions – the master had never before made anything similar – and they wanted it cast in an alloy he had never before employed. They explained that the bell would emit a special sound, utterly different from the sound of any other bell. At the moment of departing, the two gentlemen explained, not without a trace of embarrassment, that the bell was to serve for Judgment Day, which by now was imminent. The master bell-maker laughed a friendly laugh, and said that there would never be a Judgment Day, but that all the same he would make the bell as indicated, and within the established time. The two gentlemen paid him a visit every two or three weeks to see how the work was proceeding. They were two gloomy gentlemen, and, despite their admiration for the master’s work, seemed secretly dissatisfied. Then, for a time, they didn’t return. Meanwhile, the master bell-caster had brought to completion the largest bell of his life, and recognized that he was proud of it; and in the secret place of his dreams he could see himself desire that so beautiful a bell, unique throughout the world, be used on the occasion of Judgment Day. When the bell had been finished, and mounted on a great wooden trestle, the two gentlemen reappeared; they looked upon the bell with admiration, and at the very same time with profound despondency. They sighed. Finally, the one who seemed more authoritative turned to the bell-caster and confessed in a low voice, ‘You were right, dear master; there will never be, neither now nor ever, any Judgment Day. There has been a terrible mistake.’ The master bell-maker regarded the two gentlemen, he too with a melancholy air, but his melancholy was happy and benevolent. ‘I’m afraid it’s too late, gentlemen,’ he said with a quiet, steady voice. He pulled the cord, and the great bell swung and sounded, loud and strong, and, as it had to be, the Heavens opened.”

(Giorgio Manganelli, from Centuria: 100 Ouroboric Novels, trans. Henry Martin, pp. 135–6.)

“To begin with, the partisans changed the style of their hair to a quite novel fashion, having cut it very differently from the other Romans. They did not touch moustache or beard at all, but were always anxious to let them grow as long as possible, like the Persians. But the hair on the front of the head they cut right back tot he temples, allowing the growth behind to hang down to its full length in a disorderly mass, like the Massagetae. That is why they sometimes called this the Hunnish style.”

(Procopius, The Secret History 7.3, p. 72 in G. A. Williamson’s translation.)

“Flitting along the beds, Miss Hancock reached a patch, as yet practically unravished, before which a couple of dames were discussing a forthcoming divorce – an obstinate wife, it seemed, that refused to reside in Jackson Heights. . . . ‘my dear, she swears nothing on God’s earth will make her mount there; she quite hates the neighbourhood; the very notion of Jackson Heights makes her dizzy!’ ”

(Ronald Firbank, The New Rythum and Other Pieces, p. 100.)

“From a fragment of a short story written at the age of about twelve:

Mrs Keston put the dog in its basket, tidid her hair before a mirror, langwidley sat down and calved a chicken.

[A girl at a boarding school told to eat up the underdone beef she had left on her plate replies:]
‘I have quite enough blood in my family without going to a bullock for more.’ ”

(Ronald Firbank, The New Rythum and Other Pieces, p. 115.)