Against the Day

by Thomas Pynchon

“Aitisi nai poroja,” replied Veikko, a pleasantry long grown routine, meaning, “Your mother fucks reindeer.”

The nightly talent included Professor Bogoslaw Borowicz, who put on what he called “Floor Shows,” which, due to his faulty grasp of the American idiom, turned out to be literal displays of floors—more usually fragments of them, detached and stolen from various locations around the city—Steeplechase Park, Grand Central station, McGurk’s on the Bowery (“ . . . you will notice interesting textures of tobacco juice and sawdust . . .”), strange tilings from demolition jobs