A WRITER'S WIT
There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.
Sinclair Lewis
Born February 7, 1885
Minister of Whose Interior?
Gil Inoue February 10, 2014, Zadie Smith, “Moonlit Landscape with Bridge”: The Minister of the Interior of an island nation deluged by a typhoon abandons his place in the world by using his last shred of power to board a plane to Paris, where this man in his sixties will join his family, whom he has sent ahead. ¶ The Minister’s internal turmoil is the engine that propels this story: along his way to the airport, his last ride in an official SUV of black, with a driver whose courage is fading fast; a look back at his purpose as he stops and unloads crates of bottled water to islanders so crazed with thirst that they are more greedy than grateful. During the water delivery, the Minister loses a shoe in the muck of the storm—emblematic of something else he is leaving behind. Then his one-hour trip to the airport evolves into a five-hour ordeal, and he suffers a broken elbow in a melee while stopping to take a leak in a public place. A knife-wielding maniac, a man the Minister was once comrades with, “hails” a ride to the airport only to shout BON VOI YAH GEE at the minister as he boards his jet. One senses, as the minister grimaces and moves toward across the tarmac, that his elbow will be the least of his pain. Smith is the author of NW.
Gil Inoue, Photographer
TUESDAY: MY BOOK WORLD
Gil Inoue, Photographer
TUESDAY: MY BOOK WORLD
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