Fun thread! Here are some of my faves.
From
Suldrun’s Garden (Lyonesse book 1), by Jack Vance:
Quote:The surviving magicians, with the exception of Desmëi, invoked pressures which Sartzanek could not repugn. He was compressed into an iron post seven feet tall and four inches square, so that only upon careful scrutiny might his distorted features be noted. […] The Sartzanek post was implanted at the very peak of Mount Agon. Whenever lightning struck down, Sartzanek’s etched features were said to twitch and quiver.
From ‘A Narrow Escape’, by Lord Dunsany:
Quote:[The magician] decided one evening over his evil pipe, down there in his dank chamber, that London had lived long enough […].
From
Figures of Earth, by James Branch Cabell (this passage is a satirical response to the legal kerfuffle over the perceived obscenity of Cabell’s book
Jurgen; the brilliantly weird bit comes at the end):
Quote:“[...] The point is that the babies of the Philistines are brought to them by the stork; and that even an allusion to the possibility of misguided persons obtaining a baby in any other way these Philistines consider to be offensive and lewd and lascivious and obscene.â€
“Why, how droll of them! But are you sure of that, Manuel!â€
“All their best-thought-of and most popular writers, my dear, are unanimous upon the point; and their Seranim have passed any number of laws, their oil-merchants have founded a guild, especially to prosecute such references. No, there is, to be sure, a dwindling sect which favors putting up with what babies you may find in the cabbage patch, but all really self-respecting people when in need of offspring arrange to be visited by the stork.â€
“It is certainly a remarkable custom, but it sounds convenient if you can manage it,†said Niafer. “What I want is the baby, though, and of course we must try to get the baby in the manner of the Philistines, if you know that manner, for I am sure I have no wish to offend anybody.â€
So Manuel prepared to get a baby in the manner preferred by the Philistines. He performed the suitable incantation, putting this and that together in the manner formerly employed by the Thessalian witches and sorcerers, and he cried aloud a very ancient if indecent charm from the old Latin, saying, as Queen Stultitia had told him to say, without any mock-modest mincing of words:
Dictum est antiqua sandalio mulier habitavit,
Quae multos pueros habuit tum ut potuit nullum
Quod faciundum erat cognoscere. Sic Domina Anser.
Then Manuel took from his breast-pocket a piece of blue chalk and five curious objects something like small black stars. With the chalk he drew upon the floor two parallel straight lines. Manuel walked on one of these chalk lines very carefully, then beckoned Niafer to him. Standing there, he put his arms about her and kissed her. Then he placed the five black stars in a row,--
* * * * *
--and went over to the next line.
The stork having been thus properly summoned [...]â€
The Vance and Dunsany examples really fire my imagination: what does it look like exactly when someone is “compressed into an iron postâ€, especially by “invoked pressures†which he could not “repugnâ€? And how can a pipe be evil (a beautiful pathetic fallacy)?
The Cabell example jumped out at me, because its breaks the fourth wall, making the fictional world have an immediate effect in the world of the reader, reminding you that you are reading a book, but somehow enhancing the experience, rather than taking you out of the story. It’s hard to explain. Academics may have a fancy word for it; I call it magic.