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Mar. 28th, 2019 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sideways"He heard the first thud before I felt it. I saw it in his face. Then there were two separate jolts in the blood vessel I had my fingers on under her jaw, and then some uneven, jerky little bumps, and then at last, unbelievably, slow, rhythmic, and strengthening, the life-giving ba-boom ba-boom ba-boom of a heart back in business.
Roderick's mouth tightened and twisted as he raised his head, and the cords in his neck stood out with the effort he was putting into not weeping. But the tears ran for all that down his cheeks, and he tried to get rid of them with his fingers.
I pretended not to see, if that was what he wanted. But I knew, Heaven forgive me, that one day I would put that face, that reaction, into a film.
[...]
Conrad, too, seemed temporarily to have run out of 'dear boy's. But I guessed sharply that the blankness in his face as he watched the proceedings was not the result of shock. He was at his business, as I had been at mine, seeing an electrocution in terms of camera angles, atmospheric shadows, impact-making colours. And at what point, I wondered, did making use of other people's agonies become a spiritual sin."
"Smokescreen", Dick Francis
Roderick's mouth tightened and twisted as he raised his head, and the cords in his neck stood out with the effort he was putting into not weeping. But the tears ran for all that down his cheeks, and he tried to get rid of them with his fingers.
I pretended not to see, if that was what he wanted. But I knew, Heaven forgive me, that one day I would put that face, that reaction, into a film.
[...]
Conrad, too, seemed temporarily to have run out of 'dear boy's. But I guessed sharply that the blankness in his face as he watched the proceedings was not the result of shock. He was at his business, as I had been at mine, seeing an electrocution in terms of camera angles, atmospheric shadows, impact-making colours. And at what point, I wondered, did making use of other people's agonies become a spiritual sin."
"Smokescreen", Dick Francis
As best I can tell, this passage of work will follow me for the rest of my life, gently shaming me at every turn. Called Out By A Book From The Bloody 1970s, By An Old English Man Who Probably Wrote These Words Because He'd Been There: A Ghost Story.
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Date: 2019-04-02 12:39 pm (UTC)