This tome is quite something else. It would drive some folks as mad bananas on toast, and others, would like as not fling it across the room, praying it had not the properties of a boomerang, and therefore never returns to them again. For myself – I loved it. I am going to post a small taster – this has never been done before, but I have come to the conclusion that actually, so long as nothing of the plot is given away…it might be rather useful to do so, and give one a flavour, indeed a soupçon of the smell of the thing. If you follow me. Which you clearly do, or you would not be reading these very words! Ha! Unless you are a random passer-by, in which case I bid you good day, and suggest you stop fingering the Cloud, and make yourself known, or begone. Or not. Whatever you prefer.

Out of those I know here in the blogosphere, I am confident (probably), that the P&F, H, FF, and MM (or SM depending on how fruity he feels I guess), will find this slim volume to be right up their street/avenue/walk/drive/road/way/park/alley/cat/stevens/The Remains of the Day/Doris. This is not to say others won’t enjoy the book –  (please do go wild and try it should the excerpt appeal) – simply that from their own writings alone, I highly suspect the former mentioned miscreants shall find it decidedly appealing. It is a humorous tale, which begins at sanity and then loses its marbles. Enjoy.  – nods and smiles

(a small addition to the above in retrospect – please give nothing of the plot away in any comments. If by chance it happens, fear not, I shall edit out the spoilers –  smiles*).

 

“OF ALL the many striking statements made by de Selby, I do not think that any of them can rival his assertion that ‘ a journey is an hallucination ‘.

Whatever about the soundness of de Selby’s theories, there is ample evidence that they were honestly held and that several attempts were made to put them into practice. During his stay in England, he happened at one time to be living in Bath and found it necessary to go from there to Folkestone on pressing business. His method of doing so was far from conventional. Instead of going to the railway station and inquiring about trains, he shut himself up in a room in his lodgings with a supply of picture postcards of the areas which would be traversed on such a journey, together with an elaborate arrangement of clocks and barometric instruments and a device for regulating the gaslight in conformity with the changing light of the outside day. What happened in the room or how precisely the clocks and other machines were manipulated will never be known. It seems that he emerged after a lapse of seven hours convinced that he was in Folkestone and possibly that he had evolved a formula for travellers which would be extremely distasteful to railway and shipping companies. There is no record of the extent of his disillusionment when he found himself still in the familiar surroundings of Bath, but one authority relates that he claimed without turning a hair to have been to Folkestone and back again. Reference is made to a man (un- named) declaring to have actually seen the savant coming out of a Folkestone bank on the material date.”