...of the book to end all books

The preliminary work was painful, Crab admits it; he really sweated over it. More than anything else, it was terribly time-consuming. Neither dangerous nor particularly difficult, mind you, more like child's play or home-work. Crab never had to leave his table, his patience alone was tested. He worked quickly, following an infallible method, both simple and effective, nonetheless requiring close attention and great discipline. Crab kept up the pace, but it was an enormous task, involving, in this first stage, the combination of every word listed in the dictionary, in every possible permutation. He stolidly settled down to the thankless job. It will come as no surprise to learn that he devoted many years to this project, to the detriment of all others.
Crab took the words individually, as distributed by alphabetical; each word was combined with the next, in every possible manner and in all possible declensions, then combined with the word after; next combined with the latter and the one before; combined with a third; with that one and the two preceding ones; with that one and the first alone; with that one and the second alone; with a fourth, and so on. Crab copied all this onto large sheets of paper, and each page, duly filled up and numbered, was added to the stack piled on the carpet. He was soon forced to take out the ceiling and then to make a sizeable opening in the roof.
But one night it was all done. The manuscript was as tall as a mountain. Crab had to hoist himself up to the summit in order to finally begin the second stage of the project, a rather more delicate operation, not so much because of the danger of falling as because of the very nature of the work to be created, a masterwork, the book to end all books, after which the world would enter an epoch of meditative silence - for what more is there to say? what is there to add? - and man would spend the rest of his days reading and rereading these pages, nodding his head.

[The Crab Nebula, Chevillard, E.]