A Couple Of Nights Before Christmas by J.F. Powers, 1957
The magic trick:
Quiet, petty, hilarious workplace comedy
Father Urban is here to wish you a Merry Christmas.
Which means hilarious workplace comedy. Priests angling for petty power plays.
It’s dry. It’s slow. It’s very quiet. As such, it takes time to get the hang of the rhythms. But once you do – if you do – the comedy here is the best.
And that’s quite a trick on Powers’s part.
The selection:
“Chess is a very old game,” Wilf informed them, from his chair.
Father Urban looked over at Wilf in annoyance. A remark like that was actually meant to be instructive.
“Ever play it?” Jack asked.
“No, and I don’t intend to,” said Father Urban.
“Well, we don’t have a board,” Jack said, as if to reassure him.
From the other side of the newspaper, which cloistered him from them but did nothing of the sort for them, Wilf said, “Your board’s the same, but your counters are different.”
“Is that so?” said Father Urban.
“Oh, yes. Altogether different. It’s a different game,” said Wilf.
That was the kind of thing that made Father Urban want to fight.
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