Jeffrey Ford Quote
Even the streetcars moved at a more languorous pace, like great serpents swimming through a darkness made thick by the cast-off regrets of the day. I forestalled answering my own question by stopping at the corner of Thirty-third Street to peer across the avenue at the moonlit remains of what once had been the mansion of John Jacob Astor. I had read in the newspaper that his son, to spite the mother, was going to raze the old building and erect a fine hotel. There it sat, half dismantled, like the rotting carcass of some behemoth washed ashore in a painting by Vedder. Here was a testament to the corrosive power of the city’s new wealth. Even the old gods and their legacies were not protected from its onslaught. The new deity was fortune, and there was an army of Reeds willing to adjust their moral barometers in order to join the priesthood. Its catechism trickled down from the upper reaches of Manhattan Island all the way to the Lower East Side, where immigrant families chased the insubstantial spirit of what they could not readily grasp.
Even the streetcars moved at a more languorous pace, like great serpents swimming through a darkness made thick by the cast-off regrets of the day. I forestalled answering my own question by stopping at the corner of Thirty-third Street to peer across the avenue at the moonlit remains of what once had been the mansion of John Jacob Astor. I had read in the newspaper that his son, to spite the mother, was going to raze the old building and erect a fine hotel. There it sat, half dismantled, like the rotting carcass of some behemoth washed ashore in a painting by Vedder. Here was a testament to the corrosive power of the city’s new wealth. Even the old gods and their legacies were not protected from its onslaught. The new deity was fortune, and there was an army of Reeds willing to adjust their moral barometers in order to join the priesthood. Its catechism trickled down from the upper reaches of Manhattan Island all the way to the Lower East Side, where immigrant families chased the insubstantial spirit of what they could not readily grasp.
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About Jeffrey Ford
He lives in Ohio and teaches writing part-time at Ohio Wesleyan University. He has also taught as a guest lecturer at the Clarion Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers (2004 and 2012), The Antioch University Summer Writing Workshop (2013), LitReactor – 4 Week Online Horror Writing Course (2012), University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing (2011), The Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington, (2010).
Ford has contributed over 130 original short stories to numerous print and online magazines and anthologies: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, MAD Magazine, Weird Tales, Clarkesworld Magazine, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Subterranean, Fantasy Magazine, The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, New Jersey Noir, Stories, The Living Dead, The Faery Reel, After, The Dark, The Doll Collection, etc. His fiction has been translated into over fifteen languages and published around the world.