A WRITER'S WIT
There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
Norman Mailer
Born January 31, 1923
An Emerald Indeed
Zohar Lazar February 3, 2014, Donald Antrim, “The Emerald Light in the Air”: Billy French, a man in his fifties, a man who has suffered through a number of family deaths and whose wife has left him, muddles through a series of experiences that serve up a certain redemption. ¶ Some stories envelop the reader from the first sentence. Then the second one swallows you further. And then you’re mired, like Billy, in the muck of the road, where, in his vintage Mercedes, he gets stuck. The man, a middle school art teacher, has endured the loss of his wife who’s left him.
“'I’m searching for something that isn’t quite there,' she once said" (63).
Billy has endured electroconvulsive therapy, which the author describes in such vividly seductive detail that you sense he may have experienced it himself. Billy endures one more test, one that even in his potted sensibilities, he manages to surpass himself—and most of us—as a human being. This story, you must read. Antrim’s story collection The Emerald Light in the Air, in which this story appears last, comes out in September.
Zohar Lazar, Illustrator
SATURDAY: Some Grog for the Game
TUESDAY: MY BOOK WORLD
“'I’m searching for something that isn’t quite there,' she once said" (63).
Billy has endured electroconvulsive therapy, which the author describes in such vividly seductive detail that you sense he may have experienced it himself. Billy endures one more test, one that even in his potted sensibilities, he manages to surpass himself—and most of us—as a human being. This story, you must read. Antrim’s story collection The Emerald Light in the Air, in which this story appears last, comes out in September.
Zohar Lazar, Illustrator
SATURDAY: Some Grog for the Game
TUESDAY: MY BOOK WORLD
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