This thing obviously looks awesome and I hope I can gooooo…
But also, it reminded me of senior year when I had to memorize a passage of something as part of my lit general exams (I think that’s what they were called). And I picked this, from Gogol’s Dead Souls, which is still incredible:
“Entering the great hall, Chichikov had to squint his eyes for a moment, because the brilliance of the candles, the lamps, and the ladies’ gowns was terrible. Everything was flooded with light. Black tailcoats flitted and darted about separately and in clusters here and there, as flies dart about a gleaming white sugar loaf in the hot summertime of July, while the old housekeeper hacks it up and divides it into glistening fragments before the open window; the children all gather round watching, following curiously the movements of her stiff arms raising the hammer, and the airborne squadrons of flies, lifted by the light air, fly in boldly, like full masters, and, profiting from the old woman’s weak sight and the sunshine which troubles her eyes, bestrew the dainty morsels, here scatteredly, there in thick clusters. Satiated by summer’s bounty, which anyhow offers dainty dishes at every step, they fly in not at all in order to eat, but only in order to show themselves off, to stroll back and forth on the heap of sugar, to rub their back or front legs together, or to scratch themselves under the wings, or, stretching out both front legs, to rub them over their heads, then turn and fly away, to come back again in new, pestering squadrons. Before Chichikov had time to look around, the governor seized him under the elbow and at once introduced him to his wife.”
This is how you let a metaphor completely get away from itself, and it rules. The flies and the sugar are nice analogues for guys in tuxedos and the great hall, but the thing about summertime, the housekeeper, and the children watching her chop is just in its own world. That kind of thing is where the book’s atmosphere of absurdity and unreality comes from, but it also very realistically mimics the kind of free-associative daydreams that it’s easy to fall into at a party where you don’t really know or like many people.
So yeah see you guys in standing room.
