... a library catalogue's blurb.

... the most dazzling and unclassifiable work of fiction in any language.

... the first chapter of a novel.

You going to listen or talk?
I want it to be a long story.
It is a long story.
Put everything in it.
I always put everything in.
Is it good and long? Good stories are long.
Well, they ought to be, anyway. So, let's see ...

—William H. Gass, Omensetter's Luck, p. 24.

... a novel.

[The newspapers] could never tell you anything good, because the one fact that outweighs all others—that life is bearable to most of us, most of the time, in spite of everything—is not news.

—Christopher Isherwood, The World in the Evening.