July 4, 2011

A story that would not be illuminated

“This was a shopping center that embodied the future for which El Salvador was presumably being saved, and I wrote it down dutifully, this being the kind of “colour” I knew how to interpret, the kind of inductive irony, the detail that was supposed to illuminate the story. As I wrote it down I realized that I was no longer much interested in this kind of irony, that this was a story that would not be illuminated by such details, that this was a story that would perhaps not be illuminated at all, that this was perhaps even less a “story” than a true noche obscura [dark night]. As I waited to cross back over the Boulevard de los Heroes to the Camino Real I noticed soliders herding a young civilian into a van, their guns at the boy’s back, and I walked straight ahead, not wanting to see anything at all.” –Joan Didion, Salvador