Sublime

the ancient and often barbaric kind of humour that goes by the name of the pun.

Patrick Leigh Fermor would be quite high on any list, starting with The Traveller’s Tree, a wonderful book about the Caribbean, absolutely splendid. Everything he does, he has a sort of magic touch with. And I think Evelyn Waugh is very observant, very funny. I’ve read his books more than once.

"Well, I am a trifle tired," said Fisher, "of the Simple Life and the Strenuous Life as lived by our little set. We're all really dependent in nearly everything, and we all make a fuss about being independent in something.

Like most barmen, Bobby is a great expert on sexual questions.

blarzy,

Lydgate was no Puritan, but he did not care to play, and winning money at it had always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal of life which made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of small sums thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants had been supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse

Right out of Kafka: the person who does not want to do the ridiculous thing is the person who is ridiculous. (Idea: Kafka at an AmherstlMt. Holyoke mixer, never referred to by name, only as “F. K. ,” only one not dancing . . . ) Modern party-dance an evil thing.

A quite spacious bookshop. A customer enters and approaches the counter, behind which stands an assistant. Assistant: Good morning, sir. Mr Pest: Good morning. Can you help me? Do you have a copy of Thirty Days in the Samarkand Desert with a Spoon by A. E. J. Elliott? Assistant: Um . . . well, we haven’t got it in stock, sir. Mr Pest: Never mind. H