Saturday, May 16, 2009

Excerpt: Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

From the very end of the novel (don't worry, there aren't any "spoilers" in here), the protoganist and his mother are on the Staten Island Ferry and he describes the Manhatten skyline; definitely got chills up my spine when finished reading this.

"The structures clustered at its tip made a warm, familiar crowd, and as their surfaces brightened ever more fiercely with sunlight it was possible to imagine that vertical accumlations of humanity were gathering to greet our arrival. The day was darkening at the margins, but so what? A world was lighting up before us, its uprights putting me in mind, now that I'm adrift, of new pencils standing at attention in a Caran d' Ache box belonging in the deep of my childhood, in particular the purplish platoon of sticks that emerged by degrees form the reds and, turning bluer and bluer and bluer, faded out; a world concentrated most glamorously of all, it goes almost without saying, in the lilac acres of two amazingly high towers going up above all others, on one of which, as the boat drew us nearer, the sun began to make a brilliant yellow mess. To speculate about the meaning of such a moment would be a stained, suspect business; but there is, I think, no need to speculate. Factual assertions can be made. I can state that I wasn't the only person on that ferry who'd seen a pinky watery sunset in his time, and I can state that I wasn't the only one of us to make out and accept an extraordinary promise in what we saw -- the tall approaching cape, a people risen in light. You only had to look at our faces.
Which makes me remember my mother. I remember how I turned and caught her -- how could I have forgotten this until now? -- looking not at New York but at me, and smiling."