This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country. The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by the San Bernardino Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies off the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves. October is the bad month for the wind, the month when breathing is difficult and the hills blaze up spontaneously. There has been no rain since April. Every voice seems a scream.
If a scout was recording that sequence, he would mark the first sentence as a quality fastball, maybe a two-seamer in the mid 90s, certainly good enough for that crucial first-pitch strike. The second sentence, the one beginning with “The San Bernardino lies” is as long and loopy as any slow stuff: a curveball, changeup, or even a knuckler well off the outside corner. That sets up another fastball (“October is the bad month”) for strike two. Then Didion goes with another short sentence, a fastball perhaps just a few inches off the plate. With the count 2–2, Didion has set up the batter—I mean, reader—for a quick punch-out. And here comes the heat (“Every voice seems a scream”). It may be by us in a rush, but we won’t soon forget it.
-excerpt from an excerpt from High Heat by Tim Wendel
(Source: timwendel.com)
This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country. The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by the San Bernardino Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies off the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves. October is the bad month for the wind, the month when breathing is difficult and the hills blaze up spontaneously. There has been no rain since April. Every voice seems a scream.
If a scout was recording that sequence, he would mark the first sentence as a quality fastball, maybe a two-seamer in the mid 90s, certainly good enough for that crucial first-pitch strike. The second sentence, the one beginning with “The San Bernardino lies” is as long and loopy as any slow stuff: a curveball, changeup, or even a knuckler well off the outside corner. That sets up another fastball (“October is the bad month”) for strike two. Then Didion goes with another short sentence, a fastball perhaps just a few inches off the plate. With the count 2–2, Didion has set up the batter—I mean, reader—for a quick punch-out. And here comes the heat (“Every voice seems a scream”). It may be by us in a rush, but we won’t soon forget it.
-excerpt from an excerpt from High Heat by Tim Wendel
(Source: timwendel.com)
Posted 1 year ago Notes
