Incongruities and Absurdities

Mark Twain on how to tell a story: "To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they
are absurdities, is the basis of the American art." (From How to Tell a Story and other essays 1897).

This remark seems a century before its time. We are now well accustomed to the sort of short story scattered with quirky and off-beat observations that is the sort of "Mac Story" (to paraphrase Donald Hall) mass produced by MFA-style courses in creative writing.