All the words in this
story are quotations which, I think you'll agree, lends it both a
feline playfulness and a deep profundity. Of course, some of these
quotes are plain and obvious, “Gimmes”, if you will. Who amongst
us could miss the fact that all the “thes” are taken from Franz
Kafka's “In the Penal Colony” ? But did you notice that some of
these “thes” are taken from Willa Muir's early translation -
these having a more austere bent - and others from Malcolm Paisley's
later work, with all the importance of punctuation surrounding the
“the's” that this implies?
Did you clock that I
cheekily (and some what arbitrarily) took the words “Franz” and
“Kafka” from two different sources? Kafka is obviously from
Borges's “Kafka and his Precursors”, yes, but have you considered
the implications of this? And Franz itself is borrowed from Harvey's
“Franz Ferdinand: And the Pop Renaissance” which, naturally, is
not as shallow as it seems at first glance.
Although brief, the
multitudes contained in this piece should, as James Joyce once said,
"keep the the professors busy for centuries". Where's that Joyce from?
And that Joyce? And that Joyce?