From the Realms of Counterfactuality

Fri, Feb 25, 2005

“One Highlander on the beaches of Dunkirk was overheard telling a comrade: ‘If the English surrender too, it’s going to be a long war’” (318 qtd in. “Hitler’s England: What if Germany Had Invaded Britain in May 1940?” by Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson. In Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. Ed. Niall Ferguson. New York: Basic, 1999. 281-320).

I am currently going through Ferguson’s volume on the Rothschilds.

“At the Twilight of the Gods the serpent will devour the earth and the wolf the sun.” (Borges “The Uroboros,” Book of Imaginary Beings). It’s astounding how much this book figures in Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, though I was also wondering, what with the Riggs bank paying out eight million, how much the daily newspaper reports of torture and mayhem in South America in the seventies might have played in his mind.

Thanks to commenter Matt Weiner for suggesting the Borges, which I had somehow avoided reading up to this point.