Value Menu

1. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy.

2. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragi-comedy.

3. Everything that begins as comedy inevitably ends as comedy.

4. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a cryptographic exercise.

5. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a horror movie.

6. What begins as comedy ends as a triumphal march, wouldn't you say?

7. Everything that begins as comedy inevitably ends as mystery.

8. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a dirge in the void.

9. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a comic monologue, but we aren't laughing anymore.


The previous lines are taken from The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, a novel I am currently reading at the moment. They come at the end of short passages from different narrators in a specific chapter. I find it extremely interesting to explore such options, if one can consider them options, meaning that one believes that he can choose how the comedy ends up.
Perhaps Bolano would be angered at me exacting just these lines, and cutting out everything in between, including the characters who said them. But I am only trying to look at this in the context of life, my own life or that of anothers. On many days, I might believe number 4 to be true, but there are of course the days when 1 or 7 seem plausible, even number 5 in extreme cases.
I felt like writing more but I'm feeling kind of like a number 8 right now. Sounds like I'm ordering off the value menu.