[Syme] saw something that he had not seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was too large to see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of the perspective, was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Syme had seen him, his first thought was that the weight of him must break down the balcony of stone. His vastness did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall and quite incredibly fat. This man was planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carved deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as seen from behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that stood out from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to scale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him all the other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. They were still sitting there as before with their flowers and frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining five children to tea.A modern analog of Thursday might be accomplished by some kind of lame Alan-Moore-meets-Terry-Gilliam-with-a-dash-of- The-Prisoner mash-up. But it still wouldn’t be as zesty and stupifyingly well-written as this 100-year-old gem. One for the ages.
10 Best Media Objects Of 2006 (Part 3)
“The most dangerous criminal is the entirely lawless modern philosopher.”