Sunday literary moment

"Tuesday had come down through Dundrum and Foster Avenue, brine-fresh from sea-travel, a corn-yellow sun-drench that called forth the bees at an incustomary hour to their day of bumbling.  Small house-flies performed brightly in the embrasures of the windows, whirling without fear on imaginary trapezes in the limelight of the sunslants."     I have been re-reading Flann O'Brien's comic novel At Swim-Two-Birds over the past few days, and have just posted a review of it over at The BookBook.  I am something of a sceptic about this book: I adore O'Brien, but I think this is probably the weakest of his works, and not worthy of its 'cult classic' status, not worthy comparison to his real masterpiece The Third Policeman.  However, it does have passages of the most exquisite writing in it.  Even when, as here, he's just parodying something, his parody transcends the limitations of the thing it parodies and becomes a thing of wonder.  Pointlessly florid writing was never so beautifully done!