# Most recursive fiction? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 21, 2013, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-recursive-fiction/661553 "2013-06-21T13:52:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 56
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-recursive-fiction/661553/56 "2013-06-27T17:34:28Z")
[ENOCH SOAMES, a short story by Max Beerbohm](http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/427/) has only two or three degrees of recursion, but still seems worth mentioning. I stumbled across a mention of it just a few minutes ago (in Littlewood’s _Mathematician’s Miscellania_ of all places – he writes “Reflexiveness flickers delicately in and out of the latter part of Max Beerbohm’s story Enoch Soames”) and Googled for it only because of this thread. It’s 11,000 words – is that typical for a short story? – but I enjoyed it. As an extra level of recursion, I remember being mystified (never having heard of Soames) 16 years ago to read [an account that Soames did indeed visit the British Museum’s reading room](http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97nov/teller.htm) as predicted 80-odd years earlier! The story has been mentioned at SDMB before in threads titled Fictional references that became true Proof that time travel is impossible? What’s your favorite Short Story? Famous People Who NEVER Existed! For example: > [@Fictional references that became true](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-references-that-became-true/514656/82): > > A particularly interesting example is the story of [Enoch Soames.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Soames) In 1919 Max Beerbohm wrote a short story, set in 1897, in which a man called Enoch Soames travels through time to visit the British Library at a given hour on a given date in 1997. Teller, of Penn & Teller, liked the story so much that he arranged for a ‘real’ Enoch Soames to appear in the British Library at the scheduled time. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-recursive-fiction/661553)._