“The Red Lion scavenged a lean life from the takings of the public bar … Like alcohol for a terminal alcoholic, the bar was both the means of the hotel’s survival and the guarantee that it couldn’t survive much longer. It seemed helplessly set in its ways, making no attempt to adapt itself to a changing situation … There was a long wooden counter. There were some wooden tables and wooden chairs set out across a wide expanse of fraying carpet. There was, dominating a room that could feel as large as a church when empty, the big gantry like an organ for the evocation of pagan moods.”
McIlvanney, The Big Man
“As large as a church when empty” I doubt. “Church,” I imagine, is arrived at via an inspired look at the gantry, and is an apt thought to reach – there’s plenty of room for reverence; for the other-worldly hush when the choir, the faithful, and the visitors are elsewhere; for rituals, incantations, stepping inwards and away from the spinning brightness outside towards the thick near-colors (sepias, silvery transparencies) bottled along dark, dusted shelves - but “as large as” is forced. It’s not that kind of church. The gantry, however, is perfect: “like an organ for the evocation of pagan moods.”
No comments:
Post a Comment