Pynchon

All the moneyed of Berkshire County congregated in the great ballroom of Baffy's spun-sugar manor house; the party lasted three days and the countryside was visited by the drunken wanderings of Pierrots pale in the light of the moon, hideous Borneo apes toting jugs of the local white lightning, lush and cherry-lipped actresses imported from New York, in silk capes, red corsets, long hose; wild Indians, princes of the Renaissance, characters from Dickens, paisley bulls, bears with nosegays; allegorical garlanded girls named Free Enterprise, Progress, Enlightenment; a giant Maine lobster that never got to extend its claw to the candidate.

[...] past pier glasses that gave them back their images dark and faded, as if some part were being kept as the price of admission; through doorways where old velvet hung whose pile was worn away into maplike patterns, seas and land masses taught in no geography their schools knew [...]

— The Secret Integration, Slow Learner