It's the almost Dickensian grasp of narrative drive that I find so satisfying
if this doesn't make the Booker shortlist, the literary culture of this country is moribund.
( wotofco pissing in your swimming pool, Wed 24 Nov 2010, 11:46, archived)

booker? pffft. don't be so boorish.
nobel aaaall the way, baby.
( janet aylia y'all motherfuckers need jesus, Wed 24 Nov 2010, 11:50, archived)

There was a missing document: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of this document was where I would seek its whereabouts, its location, its dwelling-place, its home. I had signed it: it was not a court document. The document was as indexed as a very important document, of importance to fine ladies and gentlemen who would walk along the Strand saying to themselves, how they hoped their important yet not court document was safe in the keeping of myself, clerk and scribbler, player of novel sporting activities during my one day of leisure in the year.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, how this document came to be missing. I might have been inclined, myself, not to check on its whereabouts had not the morning been particularly slow and ponderous. But the wisdom of administration is a mystery, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that the document was missing.

The mention of this absence brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that the document was missing. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
( vladimir, Wed 24 Nov 2010, 11:59, archived)

This is beautiful

( wotofco pissing in your swimming pool, Wed 24 Nov 2010, 12:03, archived)

that's because it's Dickens
( vladimir, Wed 24 Nov 2010, 12:12, archived)