unearths some literary gems.
From The Man Who Lost His Past, by Frank Richardson:
[I was led to this book courtesy of Googling the expression "succès de fiasco," which I'd encountered in Vanity Fair.]
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The pointed black whiskers peered over the sheets like book-markers on the whiteness of the bed.
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As a hat it was either an insult or an unpractical joke.
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He was actually a perambulating plagiarism.
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a shadow, disowned by its substance
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But for the chenille eyebrow-fittings, like woolly caterpillars, his face was a blank sheet of of paper.
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[Bonus 1: Chapter IX is entitled "Mainly About Whiskers."]
[Bonus 2: a firm of solicitors called Higgins, Camperdown & Co.]
[Bonus 3a/3b: In-joke references to 19th-century tropes, to wit, a "shocking hat" and a legal case called Box v. Cox]
