I recently came across this hilarious excerpt from “Sodom and Gomorrah” by Marcel Proust (translation by John Sturrock):
[A cross-eyed chasseur is operating a lift and praises his sister, who is dating a rich gentleman]. She’s quite a humorist. She never leaves a hotel without relieving herself in a wardrobe or a chest of drawers, so as to leave a small memento for the chambermaid who’ll have to clean up. Sometimes she even does it in a cab, and after she’s paid the fare, she hides in a corner, so’s to have a good laugh watching the driver curse and swear when he’s got to wash down his cab again.
I think also of Bloom’s latrine scene in “Ulysses,” the bathroom attendant story from “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” and the vignette where the Parkinson’s victim hallucinates a talking turd in “The Corrections.”
Have you stumbled on scenes like these in other literature? Do they work?
[link] [comments]