As a result, his view of the world was largely created by sheer myopia—the weird new forms that everyday people and things can take on for the nearsighted and the wild surrealism that can flow from printed words misread. In addition, he possessed the very Liverpudlian traits of a fascination with language and an irresistible compulsion to play around with it. If his weak eyes did not misrepresent some word accidentally, his quick mind did so deliberately, missing no chance of a pun, a spoonerism, or double entendre; he was an instinctive cartoonist in speech as well as on paper.
