dennis scharnberg

“Time is a thing, a separable thing.” No.

Ashton Wilkes, Mathematical Investigations.

“We lie to ourselves, Emily. It’s a means of survival, I suppose. At least it is now, in this world.”

Lawton Trumbull, The Three Days.

“That’s just a silly superstition, George.”

“Oh, really? Can you tell me something that isn’t?”

Karl Buckling, Time Domain Blues.

What postmodernism lacks is a hard floor.

Chalmers van Nest, The Trivial Quadrivium.

Rock Singer: diminutive; theatrical hair; loud screaming voice; silly attire.

Callista Ralph, Alphabet Soup.

“Those bricks appear to be flying, sir.”

“Yes, of course. But bricks will do that, Jason, if you will only let them.”

Adrian Caliban, The Magnificent Egglestons.

The surreal was always the easiest button to push in modernist aesthetics. A facile modernism. I prefer Senor Wences.

Crispin Trove, The Viewer As Pest.

I will be fine

I will decline

Inside a deep mine

My voice to refine

My holdings divine

By drawing a line

I will be fine…

Patrick Malmsey, Manifest Toe. (from Book V)

A room is filled with smoke and cries

I never descended to despise

A better plan could not devise

Tired so soon of all the lies

A prince displayed outrageous ties

We shall see how much that buys

Showing fool in so many eyes

A face now coated with lemon pies

Inscrutable (tasty) new disguise….

Patrick Malmsey, Manifest Toe. (from Book IV)

Leslie—like so many others of his generation—came to regard Hegel as the philosopher who really cared.

Jason Starling, ed., Adventures in Narrative Parsimony.