Look! Up in the sky!

"Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful. Some thought at first that it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall. Others figured it might be the perfect city joke -- stand around and point upward, until people gathered, tilted their heads, nodded, affirmed, until all were staring upward at nothing at all, like waiting for the end of a Lenny Bruce gag. But the longer they watched, the surer they were. He stood at the very edge of the building, shaped dark against the gray of the morning. A window washer maybe. Or a construction worker. Or a jumper."

(Opening of Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, with thanks to Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute for drawing this passage to my attention.)

The first sentence draws us in, quiets us with the word "hushed," makes us pause over the unanswered questions, the mysterious "him." Then the focus sharpens. Those street names, each a separate sentence, tell us exactly where we are. Like the sentences, we move jerkily forward toward the still-unclear focus of attention. Naming things--not just any street but West Street--is one of the best ways to bring a scene to life.

"A silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful" grabs us with personification and oxymoron; we're not sure yet what to feel. In the next few sentences, words pile up like gawkers joining the throng, until we all freeze with the possibilities, thrown at us in three deliberately separate fragments. And after "Or a jumper," that terrible, inviting white space.

I don't need to read further--though I surely will--to know that we're in the hands of a master of words, of punctuation, even of space, itself a tool of writing.

In case you haven't figured it out, the figure at the top of the World Trade Center is Philippe Petit, who in 1974 walked a tightrope strung between the towers.