Author:: Steven Millhauser Link:: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/coming-soon Tags:#media/article shortstory fiction
- Summary::
- refugee from big city settles into a small town that is growing, always suffused by men and work which is why he enjoys it, but the change comes too fast, it’s too dizzying becauwe even while everything is changing in the details, nothing practically is changing
- notes::
- “The city was a lost cause, what with the jammed-up traffic, the filthy subways, the decaying neighborhoods and crumbling buildings. The future lay in towns—in small, well-managed towns. ”
- "wherever you looked, on curbsides and street corners, in vacant lots and fenced-off fields, men and machines at work" quote work Psychopolitics labor culture of work
- “As he drifted toward sleep, he was aware of the sounds of his neighborhood: the clatter of skateboard wheels, the zzzroom zzzroom of a chainsaw, the dull rumble of a closing garage door, a burst of laughter, and always the chorus of hand mowers and riding mowers, of hedge trimmers and pressure washers, of electric edgers and power pruners, and, beneath or above them all, like the beat at the hidden heart of things, the ring of hammers through the summer air”
- work is always happening
- “Levinson was all too familiar with the kind of person who deplored change, who swooned over old buildings and spoke vaguely but reverently of earlier times, and though he was startled and a little dizzied by the sight of the new downtown, which made him wonder whether he had fallen asleep on his front porch and was dreaming it all, he looked out at the street with sharp interest, for he was wide awake, drinking his iced cappuccino on a Saturday afternoon in town, and was not one of those people who, whenever the wrecking ball swung against the side of a building, felt that a country or a civilization was coming to an end.”
- change is good, isnt it?
- “At the next street, he turned left toward Main. He had a clear view of the new sidewalk café, with its red fabric railing; next door, workmen were replacing brick with stone, under a sign that read “coming soon.” He had a confused sense, as he crossed Main Street, that the stores were no longer the same, that everything had changed again, but surely he was mistaken, an effect of overexcitement in the oppressive afternoon heat”