by Adam Gopnik
back straight, stick out, unsmiling, taking one ring after another and slipping it down his wood baton.
I was unreasonably pleased and then felt a little guilty about my own pleasure. It seemed so American, so competitive; the other French fathers on the bench just sat there, watching with sober pleasure, not seeing even a carousel as a competitive sport. But as Luke whirled around, now really going fast, and grabbed still another ring—I only knew it now by the slight clang of wood on metal and the ring missing—I couldn't help myself.
"Hey, sir"—I call him sir a lot, Johnsonianly—"you're unconscious."
Luke, a blur of gray coat on the brown horse.
"What means unconscious?" I heard him ask, his voice clear and then fading away as the carousel whipped him around.
"It means you're doing great without even thinking about it," I called out.
The carousel was beginning to slow down now—the normal five-minute ride at an end. I saw the man's hand on the lever, bringing the ride to its close.
"Daddy," Luke said, and I thought I heard a little concern in his voice, a small edge of worry, "Daddy, I am thinking about it," he said, and he didn't even try for the one last ring that the man held out, before the carousel stopped for good and the man took back the stick and shook off the rings, so dearly won, to give to the next child who would get up on the carousel in the Luxembourg Gardens and give it a try.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
adam gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986, and his work for the magazine has won the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism as well as the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting. He broadcasts regularly for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and is the author of the article on the culture of the United States in the last two editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. From 1995 to 2000 Gopnik lived in Paris, where the newspaper Le Monde profiled him as a "witty and Voltairean commentator on French life," and the weekly magazine Le Point wrote, "It is impossible to resist delighting in the nuances of his articles, for the details concerning French culture that one discovers even when one is French oneself." He now lives in New York with his wife, Martha Parker, and their two children, Luke Auden and Olivia Esme Claire.
ABOUT THE TYPE
This book was set in Fairfield, the first typeface from the hand of the distinguished American artist and engraver Rudolph Ruzicka (1883-1978). In its structure Fairfield displays the sober and sane qualities of the master craftsman whose talent has long been dedicated to clarity. It is this trait that accounts for the trim grace and vigor, the spirited design and sensitive balance, of this original typeface.
