Monday, April 23, 2012

Jane Smiley on ownership...

From Horse Heaven:

...there was no reason for the man not to sell the horse. Herman Newman was not a horseman, and seemed uncomfortable in his new role as owner. All over the world, on the other hand, there were deserving men who had spent dozens of years and millions of dollars without ever coming to a horse like Epic Steam. Why should Herman Newman, a man who couldn't remember what a blinker was from one day to the next, run a horse like this one, when men who knew horses, who had horses in their blood, who in some cases believed that they had been horses in previous lifetimes, had no chance at him? Ah. Well. Of all the things that were unfair, ownership, the simplest of them, often seemed the unfairest of all.

2 comments:

Tulkinghorn said...

One of the many wonders of "Horse Heaven" is Smiley's ability to communicate the wonder of a horse like Epic Steam -- a particular facet of the sense of wonder which had never occurred to me in my life before..

David Chute said...

Ann Beattie describes reading Don De Lillo and thinking, "Why even bother?" I know the feeling.