Friday, October 17, 2008

The tyranny of words

A joke to lighten the mood...



A monk joins an abbey ready to dedicate his
life to copying ancient books by hand. After the first
day though, he reports to the head priest. He’s
concerned that all the monks have been copying
from copies made from still more copies.
“If someone makes a mistake,” he points out.
“It would be impossible to detect. Even worse the
error would continue to be made.”
A bit startled, the priest decides that he better
check their latest effort against the original which
is kept in a vault beneath the abbey. A place only he
has access to.
Well two days, then three days pass without the
priest resurfacing. Finally the new monk decides to
see if the old guy’s alright. When he gets down there
though, he discovers the priest hunched over both a
newly copied book and the ancient original text. He
is sobbing and by the look of things has been
sobbing for a long time.
“Father?” the monk whispers.
“Oh Lord Jesus,” the priest wails. “The word is
‘celebrate.’”



…taken from a book I’m currently reading

2 comments:

Andreea said...

Is the book House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski?

Adrian said...

It is indeed. Have you read it?...Well, you obviously have I suppose.