Black Books

I found myself blockaded this morning- a deluge of books that I haven't had a librarian catalogue yet had fallen down, blocking both entrances to the chateau. I was "booked in", to play on the American phrase "snowed in". Thus, I couldn't actually get out of the chateau today- I've been reading through each book that blocks the main entrance and discarding it when read- "digging through" the books, so to speak.

By noon I had my first visitor- I never have visitors before noon, so I occupied the morning by reading War and Peace, A Spot Of Bother, Pale Fire and so on- just a few books, no more than 50 in total. An Artist Of The Floating World caught my attention in particular- the whole "Floating World" allusion gave me an idea: to escape from my deluge of books faster, I could build a boat.

Obviously, a boat to move through the books- by now more had gathered, from where I don't know (once one surpasses a certain amount of books, one finds that they start to appear by themselves- like a bank account with a high interest rate), would not be a normal sort of boat. (That was a long sentence! I felt like Joyce for a bit there). This boat would obviously have to be built of editors, who happen to make books cower in their covers. When an editor is near a book, the text starts running into one another- an "a" runs into a "b", "z" runs into "!", "!" runs into "?" forming a "?!", ?!" goes into a pub and the proprietor asks "What sort of beer would you like?" and "?!", quite surprised by it's newly personified state, promptly becomes an alcoholic and ends up as a prostitute before writing a bestselling autobiography. Meanwhile, the proprietor of said pub runs into an entire sentence and everything gets very messy- they realize that they're old friends who haven't seen each other for years and stay fixedly in the center of the book, whilst pandemonium takes place before them. Eventually, logic simply gives up and the book vanishes in a puff of absurdity, all thanks to the editor.

So I place an ad in the newspaper for editors. I rang up the man and said "Hello"- "Hello Karl" he said, and I said- "How do you know it is me?", to which he replied "your Franco-German-Swedish accent is rather distinct", to which I agreed. Eventually I placed an ad for editors- specifically, ones who are legally blind without wearing glasses, and ones who have several critically-regarded authors under their Prada belts. Eventually these editors knocked at my door- I could see them arrive, flying through the air and landing on my doorstep with umbrellas a la Merry Poppins. The books cowered back. I fashion a microphone out of one of my high collars, and ordered them to form a boat.

"You are going to form a boat in an orderly fashion and then you will cruise through my front door"
"What's the angle you're going for, Karl?" one said.
"Research shows that if you paint your door purple it'll be more appealing to children" said another.
"If we change the colour of your grass to a logo of some sort- how about the Chanel logo- that'll be more appealing to the crucial 18-30 year old market" said yet another one.

Eventually they did form a boat- two hours later, after I had finally convinced them that my abode is chic and perfect and all I hired them to do is form a boat. They burst through the front door, as the books rearranged themselves into orderly piles- somewhat orderly, and attempted to disguise themselves as different things in order to avoid editing. One became a lamp. It has not yet changed back from a lamp- so I think I'm stuck with it! It's a very chic lamp, anyway, so I can't complain. The only Ayn Rand book I own (I was sent it by a perverse stalker who knows how much I loath Ms. Rand) turned into a pile of rubbish, and I had an assistant sweep it out. The rubbish-man came an hour later.