This vivid, funny, terrific sentence could have been drawn from Lewis Carroll, but it’s from the middle of a deadline story on the frustrations of two “peace commissions” that were unable to keep the peace in Vietnam. The observer is a Polish Army colonel assigned to one of the commissions. He was drinking lukewarm coconut milk at the bar of a down-at-the-heels hotel — the Grand Hotel — in My Tho, Vietnam. In 30 words, it conveys tropical boredom, lazy flirtation and timeless absurdity. It’s stuck with me for decades (though I had to look up the exact wording) and it still works. And it’s only enhanced in the next graf by the colonel’s deadpan candor: "'Our work is stopped,’ Col. Wiernokowski said, conceding when asked that it had not yet begun."
“He watched a mouse saunter up the electric cord leading to the nonfunctioning clock over the hotel bar and asked the Chinese waitress in German whether it was a tiger.”
Related
One Great Moment
“Besides, there’s more room …”
From a tribute by Mary Lou Logsdon, a spiritual advisor and writer in St. Paul, Minnesota, upon the death of a friend
Jacqui Banaszynski
One Great Moment
“Go out, little book, into the world.”
From an interview with author Margaret Atwood
Jacqui Banaszynski
One Great Moment
… that he who does good …
From the novel "North Woods" by Daniel Mason
Jacqui Banaszynski