A wall no longer visible

The afternoon heat could bleach those towns so clean that the houses and the buildings seemed always on the verge of dematerializing; there was the sense that to close one’s eyes on a Valley town was to risk opening them a moment later on dry fields, the sun bleaching out the last traces of habitation, a flowered straw hat, a neon advertisement which had blinked a moment before from a wall no longer visible: More Yield from Every Acre with Seeds from Northrup-King.

Joan Didion, Run River (1963)
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Published by: David Ewald

David Ewald is the author of the novels The Thief of THAT, The Book of Stan, and He Who Shall Remain Shameless, the collection The Fallible: Stories, the cycle Great Awakenings & Other Plays, and the novelette Markson's Pier (co-written with Stuart Ross). He writes, teaches and parents in California's Central Valley.

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