The 100 Great Books
we laughed when the author spoke of "the divan"
and we squealed with delight when the author mentioned "the louvre"
and when the author had a character take out a handkerchief to "mop his brow"
we could hardly contain ourselves. nor could we contain ourselves when that same character, soon after had had mopped his brow, exclaimed the following:
"what the deuce!"
in fact,
it wasn't until we looked up from the book
and
saw that we were surrounded by tiny green soldiers
carrying
very real-looking tommie guns filled with bullets
that
looked just like history books that we stopped
laughing
and began instead to sense and understand
a certain quality of danger in the air
The 2River View, 3_4 (Summer 1999)