History, the proverb says

History, the proverb says is made at night. The European civil servant normally sleeps at night. What waits in his IN basket to confront him at nine in the morning is history. He doesn’t fight it, he tries to coexist with it.

-Thomas Pynchon, in the novel V (p. 215, Bantam Windstone paperback edition, 1963)

Until last year

Until last year along came theFashoda crisis and quite early one morning Covess was discovered in spats and a pith helmet, working his way around Piccadilly trying to recruit volunteers to invade France. Therehad been some idea of commandeering a Cunard liner. By the time they caught him he’d sworn in several coster-mongers, two streetwalkers and a music-hall comedian. Stencil remembered painfully that they all had been singing Onward, Christian Soldiers in various key and tempi.

-Thomas Pynchon, in the novel V (p. 174, Bantam Windstone paperback edition, 1963)