Of comic novels that have quaffed the elixir of 'classic': Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm.
Cynthia OzickA writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, silhouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the mud, uncles' and cousins' books, tablets and capsules and powders...and then one day you find yourself leaning here, writing on that round glass table salvaged from the Park View Pharmacy--writing this, an impossibility, a summary of who you came to be where you are now, and where, God knows, is that?
Cynthia OzickWe are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection is taken as a full-scale revolution.
Cynthia Ozick