“ ‘Vheissu is hardly a restful place. There’s barbarity, insurrection, internecine feud. It’s no different from any other godforsakenly remote region. The English have been jaunting in and out of places like Vheissu for centuries. Except . . .’
    She had been gazing at him. The parasol leaned against the bench, its handle hidden in the wet grass.
    ‘The colors. So many colors.’ His eyes were tightly closed, his forehead resting on the bowed edge of one hand. ‘The trees outside the head shaman’s house have spider monkeys which are iridescent. They change color in the sunlight. Everything changes. The mountains, the lowlands are never the same color from one hour to the next. No sequence of colors is the same from day to day. As if you lived inside a madman’s kaleidoscope. Even your dreams become flooded with colors, with shapes no Occidental ever saw. Not real shapes, not meaningful ones. Simply random, the way clouds change over a Yorkshire landscape.’ ”

—Thomas Pynchon, V., 1963.