is the title of a short story by Bernard Quiriny, an excerpt of which I’d like to share with you, in these times when it has, tragically, with the environmental debacle of the “Crisis on the Coast,” once more become apposite. It was first published in 2008, in his collection Contes carnivores, which took Belgium’s top literary honor, the Prix Rossel. Its satirical drift is, I think, readily apparent, and reminds me of T.C. Boyle’s work. The quotation in “Gould’s pamphlet” is from Thomas de Quincey’s “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.”
At two a.m., we made out a crowd and saw light coming from the beach below. Gould, who’d taken the wheel around MuxÃa, slammed on the brakes, parked the minibus and, elated, ran toward the sea shouting hurrahs. There were many people on the dunes; in broken English, Vincent and I asked two passersby if the oil had already been sighted. They nodded and gestured wildly to convey the scope of the disaster while a breathless Gould called out for us to hurry and join him.
We reached the beach at last. The spectacle was breathtaking. Everywhere around us bustled people in rubber jumpsuits, like astronauts; bulldozers growled, trucks towed trailers where petroleum pancakes were tossed by the shovelful. Before us, waves were sweeping in the first patches of fuel; despite the darkness of the hour, we made out the sticky black mud slowly covering the blond sand. The club members and I contemplated the scene, deeply moved, and I must admit I found all this magnificent. » Read the rest of this entry «