![]() The floor was scattered with nails and misplaced tools, drywall dust. It is a backward-looking fantasy, one he indulges in daily while sleeping.įrom ages seven to eighteen, I lived in a fixer-upper initially intended to be flipped, with parents whose former home had been five thousand miles away. As his life spirals horrific-his wife thinks he’s a coward, he fails at his job-Willoughby from the window waxes idyllic: parasols, pushcarts, summertime in 1888. It’s a cold winter, and Gart is an advertising executive so beleaguered by both wife and boss that his only respite is the commute he spends dreaming of a better place. Williams’s protection fell away and left him a naked target.” A naked target, the episode suggests, for virulent daydreaming. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. The opening narration begins: “This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor, all held together by one bolt. I grew up in Willoughby, Ohio, the supposed subject of the Twilight Zone episode “A Stop at Willoughby” (1960), in which a man falls asleep during his daily commute and DREAMS of a train station for a UTOPIAN TOWN. There shall be NO NIGHT there: they need no candle, neither light of the Sun for the Lord God giveth them LIGHT and THEY SHALL REIGN FOR EVER and EVER. Eventually we’re pointed to this: a vision of the New City. As a writing style, its effect is in guiding the EYE to see ONE THING over another. ![]() Larkin directs the reader to symbols like THE SEVEN SEALS, a kingdom made of STONE, and the NEW HEAVEN and NEW EARTH. Reading it doesn’t feel like being shouted at but rather kind and intimate, as though he’s DIRECTING our attention in the same way a CHILD is directed to look at CARDINALS and CATERPILLARS during NATURE WALKS. A screening of “A Stop at Willoughby” at the Last Stop Willoughby Festival.Ĭlarence Larkin’s commentary on THE BOOK OF REVELATION is written LIKE THIS, crafted with occasional capitalizations to emphasize IMAGES and TERMS.
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