With Shuddering Fall

Excerpt

Max sat back. Shar and the driver in the red car were approaching the turn before the other wing of the stadium. Shar eased out to give the car another prod, then he pulled past; he straightened out and began to move away. The crowd showed its disappointment. "Ought to show the bastard! The coward!" a very drunken man behind Karen screamed. Though the spectators seemed to think the fun was past, Jerry said into Karen's ear, "Watch this. Watch your boy." Karen stared as if there were something down on the track she ought to be seeing. "Here comes an accident if I ever saw one," Jerry murmured. "That son of a bitch!" And then it happened, as neatly and as surprisingly as if it were truly an accident—no one could blame Shar for this: at the turn, the silver car, going a little too fast, swerved out and sideswiped the red car, not very seriously. The silver car, shaking for a moment, regained control of itself. The red car seemed all right—everyone screamed, but for what, for whose sake, Karen could not tell—and, as if in answer to the crowd's secret desire, the car spun suddenly out of control. Out of the invisible ring of pressure it flew, and as Shar and the lead car sped away, the red car traded ends, dust exploded up like a bomb, the volume of the crowd's delight swelled to bursting.

Epigraph

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

—Nietzsche

Reviews

• Book Week, October 25, 1964, p21
• New York Times Book Review, October 25, 1964, p5
• Harpers, November 1964, p151
• Library Journal, November 15, 1964, p4562
• Saturday Review, November 28, 1964, p39
• New York Review of Books, December 17, 1964, p22
• Epoch, Winter 1965, p185-188

Other Editions