Context: Richard Brautigan/Stark

"There were so many blackberries back in there that it was hard to believe. They were huge like black diamonds but it took a lot of medieval blackberry engineering, chopping entrances and laying bridges, to be successful like the siege of a castle."

That's form a story called "Blackberry Motorist." The title caught my eye, as if it were written yesterday. Motorists using Blackberries while driving! But actually it's from Richard Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962–1970.

Reading a tense passage of description in one of Richard Stark's Parker novels, I realized it wouldn't seem tense without the setup. It would just seem like Parker was looking to buy a used truck.