Jag är djupt inne i en av mina årliga Flann O’Brien-perioder. Lyssna på detta. Lyssna, alltså, inte läs.

I smiled at him in good-humoured perplexity and said:

‘Tricky-looking man, you are hard to place and it is not easy to guess your station. You seem very contented in one way but then again you do not seem to be satisfied. What is your objection to life?’

He blew little bags of smoke at me and looked at me closely from behind the bushes of hair which were growing about his eyes.

‘Is it life?’ he answered. ‘I would rather be without it,’ he said, ‘for there is a queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.’

‘That is a nice way to be talking on this grand lively day,’ I chided, ‘when the sun is roaring in the sky and sending great tidings into our weary bones.’

‘Or like feather-beds,’ he continued, ‘or bread manufactured with powerful steam machinery. Is it life you say? Life?’

(Från ‘The Third Policeman‘. Som förut: hade jag haft Magnus Hedlunds utmärkta översättning till hands hade jag nog inte använt den ändå, för originalet är så suveränt. Sorry.)