A man receives a vision in the psych ward that causes him to perceive his own life in its terms.
*foreshadowing*
[The rest was added much later. That line was an idea I once had for a story about a man who is studying history and a crime that occurred in the past, when his (original idea was for neural disease/cancer) delusions overlap his life with the past, and he discovers that he was the murderer, and thus that he is a divine actor.]
IDEA BASED ON KAFKA’s SOUP[I]:
Earl Grey – by Kafka, as translated by Suskind (cf. The Pigeon for influence, from K I take his “mundane, modern man’s world twisted in the Lovecraftian angle, only so far as dignity can be maintained, no matter how farcical”)
A story about a man whose method of tea (e.g. how much sugar, milk or not) dictates his mood/character for the next day. Or at least he is deluded to thinking this, and thus makes Herculean decisions (e.g. whether to force himself to have honey in his tea, in order that he continue to destroy his marriage by flirting with his secretary)
[This is not so much Kafka, as a hodgepodge of those guys. Nietzche’s modern man choosing honey, Jung agonising, post-Romanticism, post-Goethe, but still addicted to meaning/significance]
Narrative order idea:
- Narrator studying tea in offer in the airport lounge
- Discourse on the uniting force
- Introduce a confession, because within this uniting emblem (i.e. tea) is a personal malady, a misstep with time
Or
What about Kafka meets 007. Q describes the latest invention: an asylum from which 007 could be launched to commit incredible feats…
Go Borgesian: Not sure whether Q is an inmate, rather. Or if the whole world has become asylum, etc. At the end.
Bla Bla. Was thinking these because imagining a man who decides that tea determines his fate is sabotaged by a switched mug. An unintentional marriage is saved.
[I] “Kafka’s Soup is a literary pastiche in the form of a cookbook. It contains 14 recipes each written in the style of a famous author from history”. For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafka%27s_Soup.
