Saturday, January 31, 2009
Books / Life Paragraph of the Day
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 2:19 PM
One aspect of childhood Fanshawe had not expected to return in old age was the mutability of things—the willingness of a chair, say, to become a leggy animal in the corner of his vision, or the sensation that the solid darkness of an unlit room is teeming with inimical presences. Headlights floated on the skin of Fanshawe's windshield like cherry blossoms on black water, whether signifying four motorcycles or two trucks he had no idea, and he drove braced, every second, to crash into an invisible obstacle.
That's the first paragraph of a short story called "Playing with Dynamite" by John Updike, who's been dead for four days now.
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There's a very similar metaphor in Roger's Version (1886), where the all-white hero is visiting the all-black projects, and ascends the stairs in the scary building as two black young guys descend; instead of mugging him as he fears, they harmlessly pass him on either side, and Updike compares the sensation to a driver who thinks he's about to collide with a truck that turns out to be two motorcycles.
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