- 16th
- August
- 2011
Eventually the man comes to see that he has a mind, and that his mind is like a fist, wrapped tightly around a single thought. He cannot open the fist to look at the thought, for fear that it will fly away, but he knows that it is very important and that he must hang on to it, no matter the cost. He stares at the fist and hopes that it is very strong. He feels like a man who has fallen asleep at the wheel and has awakened to find his car lurching off a cliff. He has applied the brake, he has swung the wheel to the side, he has offered up a silent prayer, but it is too soon to see whether he has done these things in time. He can only wait for the next moment to come, and hope as hard as he can.
Ben Loory, “The TV”
I am excited about Loory’s book Stories For Nighttime And Some For The Day which will soon be on its way to me through the mail. I like this bit from his interview in The New Yorker: “I don’t balance anything; I never think about allegory. I never think about theme or meaning. I just write stories, beginning to end, from the standpoint of fear and desire.”
