Thursday, April 20, 2023

“One fluke visible”

Steven Millhauser, “Klassik Komix #1,“ in The Barnum Museum (1990).

Can you guess what klassik is getting a komix-treatment?

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

comments: 5

Fresca said...

Uh, TS Eliot? I should have ragged claws scuttling in the ocean floor “?
Otherwise, no—what klassic?

Geo-B said...

Moby-Dick?

Michael Leddy said...

It’s Prufrock. The story continues: “Panel 1. A city panorama at evening. The sky is red above a row of tall black buildings with yellow windows. Stretched over the tops of the buildings, in the sky, is the supine figure of a man with a white sheet up to his chin. A dim doctor in a surgical mask bends over him, holding against his mouth a white cloth. In one hand the doctor holds a bottle marked ETHER.”

I wish I’d known this story when I was teaching. I did though have Martin Rowson’s graphic-novel version of The Waste Land.

Fresca said...

Really??? I was kidding with my klassic, but I was right???

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, Prufrock, with a nod to The Waste Land: “Those are pearls that were his eyes,” from The Tempest.