Song On Royal Street by Richard Blessing, 1983
The magic trick:
Moving the story’s tone rapidly across several vibes
Beware: you may get whiplash reading this one. It starts sweet and funny, moves quickly into contentious, gets dark, and then even darker.
And that’s quite a trick on Blessing’s part.
The selection:
“It’s just nothing is like we planned,” he says. “Like I planned.”
“Nothing ever is. For anybody. But has it been so bad?”
Tulane Stadium rises out of the mist like a cathedral in some history book, dwarfing the houses for blocks around.
“Not for you, maybe,” he says. “You have the baby.”
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