(via booklover, libraryland, and samsaramotel)

"And so I imagine Faulkner and Kafka sitting together at a wobbly table in a café in an unnamed city built with thousand-year-old stones, drinking something locally distilled, a little tipsy and loquacious, twilight setting in, and so they help each other stand up and discover themselves skipping down the street and humming a tune and giggling until they get to an alley and they realize it’s dark and time to go home, and melancholy sets in, and they stare up at the sky in silence for a moment and they see the stars through industrial haze, and there’s a new one up there, shimmering, and at the same time, without even realizing it, without knowing why, the two men whisper a word whose meaning they don’t understand, Saramago, and then walk home, slowly, in opposite directions through the endless darkness of night."

The Mumpsimus, reacting to the news that Jose Saramago has passed away.