“The houses were as gray as ever; yet the roofs, the moldings above the upper floors, the gilt-edged lightning rods, the stone cupolas, the colonnettes — which nobody notices during the day, for day people seldom look up — were now bathed in rich ochre, the sunset’s airy warmth and thus they seemed unexpected and magical,…”
As I was reading this, I thought, if you should only read one short story in your lifetime, it should be this one. Mark’s happiness with Klara brought short by an unforgettable vision of death, or forgettable death itself. But then I thought — he had escaped such unexpected sorrow regarding Klara, that we knew about and he didn’t. Look up or down, chance is where the true magic is.
Made me write this FB post just now: ‘Some people say literature is too pretentious, too wordy or poetic …. not like life at all. I say it is perceived life that falls short of the true life that is literature.’
My review of the Vladimir Nabokov story included here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2018/10/06/collected-stories-vladimir-nabokov/
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