Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing
among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into
the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, booming on in
darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day so bright
and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, through the
fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the hay, through the
chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through the rock, among
objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the
traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly within him: like as
in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!
He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb.
– Ray Bradbury, “Farenheit 451”, 1953
The first time I “read” The Gunslinger it was an audio book, and it opened in the middle of the titular slinger gunning down an entire town. I was impressed with the in media res slam-opening. Only to be somewhat disappointed to find I had started with the second cassette.
Thirdly, this was no “short story competition” or sanctioned event. It was alleged to be him making a bet with his Algonquin Round Table buddies and trying to show off.
I was writing it from memory; a highly untrustworthy source. Still I’d prefer to ascribe it to Saki rather than Hemingway as Munro seemed to lead the more blameless life
On Snopes, they post an image apparently of a classified advert from a 1945 Tuscon newspaper
Even the weather isn’t as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a summer day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were.
