Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles's soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into the serious or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin's casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbed with that absurd solemnity that the transience of of existence conferred upon even the smallest act.

The Atria Summer 2012 Beach-Read Bag: Escape the Heat with Excerpts from Cool Reads (ed. Simon and Schuster, 2012) - ISBN: 9781476700045