Merlin celebrates writing:
…I clearly remember reading that first line of *Absalom, Absalom!* in 1988 and thinking, “Holy shit, I need to sit the fuck down, turn off The Smiths, and *just read this book*.”
I didn’t think about this for more than five second, but I didn’t have to either. Here’s a paragraph not so much written as shouted from the depths of Limbo:
“You bad woman!” I shout back, while she, turning into the shop, half-contemptuous, half-reassured, flourishes her fist in the air. “You bad woman! I begged you for a shovelful of the worst coal and you would not give it me.” And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and am lost forever.
It’s from the scariest story I know, Kafka’s The Bucket Rider.
