meme: the prompt

[timepiececlock]

You give me the title to a story I didn't write (or that no one wrote, it doesn't have to be a real title to anything), and I'll give you a synopsis of what the story would be, were it written by me.

((stolen from minim_calibre))

Comments

[mswyrr]

The Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is an awesome book. There's much discussion/exploration of what cities/peoples evolve and de-evolve into over time, which leads to my favorite bit of the whole book. It's an interesting response to the "hell is other people" idea.


"He said: It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us."

And Polo replied: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno we live every day, that we form by living together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, and then make them endure, give them space."