[b]Günter Grass
Once upon a time there was a musician who slew his four cats, stuffed them in a garbage can, left the building, and went to visit friends.[/b]
Of course once upon a time nothing much hasn’t happened.
We were convinced that she looked on with indifference if she noticed us at all. Today I know that everything watches, that nothing goes unseen, and that even wallpaper has a better memory than ours. It isn’t God in His heaven that sees all. A kitchen chair, a coathanger, a half-filled ash tray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can perfectly well serve as an unforgetting witness to every one of our acts.
In novels of course you can say things like this.
Behind all sorrows in the world Klepp saw a ravenous hunger; all human suffering, he believed, could be cured with a portion of blood sausage. What quantities of fresh blood sausage with rings of onion, washed down with beer, Oskar consumed in order to make his friend think his sorrow’s name was hunger and not Sister Dorothy.
On the other hand, just the words “blood sausage” give some of us the creeps.
We struck up a conversation, but took pains to keep to small talk at first. We touched on the most trivial of topics: I asked if he thought the fate of man was unalterable. He thought it was.
So, is that small enough for you?
You can begin a story in the middle and create confusion by striking out boldly, backward and forward. You can be modern, put aside all mention of time and distance and, when the whole thing is done, proclaim, or let someone else proclaim, that you have finally, at the last moment, solved the space-time problem.
You meaning not us I suspect.
You American intellectuals—you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!
He figured it must be the other American intellectuals.