Trucks with coughing klaxons speeded up, here, to make the grade to the bridge…

August 10, 2014 Part Three: The Joke He started out, and at once ran into the inferno that was 59th. Trucks with coughing klaxons speeded up, here, to make the grade to the bridge, the vast resounding grinding structure of the Queensboro bridge. The traffic was incoherent bedlam. Trolleys danged and clanged up the slope. Overhead the L exploded periodically with the supernatural rush and roar of a rocket-train out of the comics. His eyes fixed on his goal, he passed through it all like a sleepwalker in a nightmare, shaken by every insane noise but with one increasing purpose in his reeling mind: to reach the end of the dream and wake up. He staggered up the slight rise of ground to 60th Street and into a sidewalk world again of vegetable and fruit markets like pushcarts; bakeries, florists, funeral parlors, stores for rent, tinsmiths and paint shops and thrift shops. The smells. The sights. The dyed-hair and wigs; the poor; the nigger-pink-and-green playsuits; the hatless bald men carrying groceries home; the blind musicians; the broad broad women, the million bandanaed women, the million pregnant women. The noise. And in the intervals between trains passing overhead, the sound of the[…] All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings