I was (as one does) sitting in a bar in West 42nd street in 1939, nursing a
double bourbon with a beer chaser when dis bum sidled up to me and said,
"Buddy, can you spare a dime?"
Waht do you day?
"Look sunny jim, not only we in the wrong century, they ain't even going to
discover the concept of the police procedural noir detective novel [with a
post-modernist commentary] till thirty years down the line.
"Oh, right," grunted the bum, "Maigret?"
"All I wanted was a buck for hooch, and what do I get? A lecture on
trans-temporal literary aesthetics.
"Sod you an the horse you rode in on," he mumbled, bouncing against
the swing-doors of the bar on the way out.
Clarence Mumford
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