Literary Mashup #3

"-Money...? in a voice that rustled.
-Paper, yes.
-And we'd never seen it. Paper money.
-We never saw paper money till we came east.
-It looked so strange the first time we saw it. Lifeless.
-You couldn't believe it was worth a thing.
-Not after Father jingling his change.
-Those were silver dollars.
-And silver halves, yes and quarters, Julia. The ones from his pupils. I can hear him now...
Sunlight, pocketed in a cloud, spilled suddenly broken across the floor through the leaves of the trees outside.
-Coming up the veranda, how he jingled when he walked."

from William Gaddis's JR, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc 1975

The Fall - Dr Buck's Letter (2000)

pix Walker Evans - Two men seated

Literary Mashup #2

"My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetous temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and stil bestows, upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being moulded into all shapes. Nor am I exaggerating when I say I think that I might equally have been a Pharaoh, an ostler, a pimp, an archibishop, and that in the fulfilment of the duties of each a certain measure of success would have been mine."

from George Moore's Confessions of a Young Man, Chapter I, Swan Sonnershein Lowrey & Company, 1886

Literary Mashup #1

""Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with his gay bantings.
" 'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a cannikin, one of ye, and let's have a taste. By Lord, it's worth bottling!""

from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick or The Whale, Chapter 54, Penguin Books 1992