fwriction

As the Halloween season is upon us, I found myself quite taken with this article over at Grantland, by Colson Whitehead, author of the new novel Zone One. Enjoy.

Why’d I pick downtown Manhattan? Partially because if you get caught down there after 9 p.m., you’re in a desolate, depopulated landscape. The streets are still, the buildings lifeless. The apocalypse is here, unfurling its darkness every day in different corners of the city. It’s just you and whatever destination you’ve kidded yourself is worth heading to. I like the city at times like that, when you fall into an eddy of emptiness, and the streets are yours and yours alone for a few moments. Then the dream ends — a cab comes around the corner, or a yahoo stumbles out of a saloon. But for a brief time you can enjoy the illusion that everyone is gone … and you’re Chuck Heston cruising the streets and watching movies in empty multiplexes. That’s the wish-fulfillment part of the apocalypse for me, perhaps — that maybe I’d get a little more “me time.” (“Time Enough At Last.”) I don’t know how transformed I’d be in the end-times. Certainly I wouldn’t make much of a hero. I can’t outrun a fireball. Farts, though…