Sir Vidia's Shadow
“There is someone I want you to meet.”
“Someone” meant a friend. Yes, I wanted to meet my friend’s friend.
It was the hot English summer of 1977. Even the London heat did not diminish my happiness, spending days in pure invention, writing my novel Picture Palace. In the voice of a smart old woman, Maude Coffin Pratt, I wrote about the contradictions of writing by describing the life of a photographer. I promised myself that after I finished the book I would take a long trip, as an antidote to th...e several years I had spent in novel-writing confinement.
Still, it was not easy to write on the hottest days in London. Open windows made it noisy, the slate roofs blazed with glare, the bricks became crumbly and overbaked. The very earth underneath the city shrank, because London is built on thirsty clay. Subsiding houses began to split and crack, jagged seams opened in the pointing, and the masonry over windows collapsed. It was the intense heat.
Londoners cracked too. Unused to the heat, they became skittish and self-conscious and dressed more sloppily, and there were more of them on the street.MoreLess
“Someone” meant a friend. Yes, I wanted to meet my friend’s friend.
It was the hot English summer of 1977. Even the London heat did not diminish my happiness, spending days in pure invention, writing my novel Picture Palace. In the voice of a smart old woman, Maude Coffin Pratt, I wrote about the contradictions of writing by describing the life of a photographer. I promised myself that after I finished the book I would take a long trip, as an antidote to th...e several years I had spent in novel-writing confinement.
Still, it was not easy to write on the hottest days in London. Open windows made it noisy, the slate roofs blazed with glare, the bricks became crumbly and overbaked. The very earth underneath the city shrank, because London is built on thirsty clay. Subsiding houses began to split and crack, jagged seams opened in the pointing, and the masonry over windows collapsed. It was the intense heat.
Londoners cracked too. Unused to the heat, they became skittish and self-conscious and dressed more sloppily, and there were more of them on the street.MoreLess
Read book Sir Vidia's Shadow for free
You can download books for free in various formats, such as epub, pdf, azw, mobi, txt and others on book networks site. Additionally, the entire text is available for online reading through our e-reader. Our site is not responsible for the performance of third-party products (sites).
Write Review:
Guest
Read Also
8 / 10
8 / 10
User Reviews: