To Texas, and another chapter in the storied evolution of the Great American Novel. "True story," tweets the singer Solange Knowles. "Out of gas. Stranded in the Texas desert. Had to pee by the railroad. Wiped with pages of The Great Gatsby."
From age-defining national epic to Beyoncé's sister's bogroll: if you had to dramatise the phrase "sic transit gloria mundi", I think you'd struggle to better this vignette. Although I'm willing to accept submissions for Justin Bieber blowing his nose on Gravity's Rainbow or Kim Kardashian wiping her arse on The Grapes of Wrath.
That said, I should point out that Solange felt moved to qualify her revelation later that day, declaring that the pages were "blank ones", adding "I'd sooner done a rain dance before I'd piss on F Scott's The Great Gatsby."
Well, you say that, Solange. But blank pages tend to come at the back of books, and having built a computer simulation of the incident, Lost in Showbiz calculates that there is a high probability that at least a drop might have besmirched that majestic ending, and with it marked the last death rattle of the American century. Or to put it another way: we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the piss.
