Not even a cat was out. The rain surged down with a steady drone. It meant to harm New York and everyone there. The gutters could not contain it. Long ago they had despaired of the job and surrendered. But the rain paid no attention to them…New York people never lived in houses or even in burrows. They inhabited cells in stone cliffs. They timed the cooking of their eggs by the nearest traffic light. If the light went wrong, so did the eggs…
“I don’t like civilization,” she said, to the rain.
-- from Barbara Newhall Follett's Lost Island, published in 1934 when she was 19 years old, 7 years after her first novel The House Without Windows arrived to stunning acclaim and 5 years before she disappeared forever.
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/vanishing-act.php?page=all
Posts
