It was a cry he used even during the most ordinary civic oratory. The mayor was famous for this whoop-whoop. As he closed in on the great copper goddess in midriver, he cried out, "Whoop-whoop!" Then he cried again, for good measure, "Whoop-whoop!" Yes, "Whoop-whoop!" The mayor of the city, his King of Diamonds beard unmistakable even from the shore, had taken to the river in a canoe. As the word spread- She is here!-people sailed out by the hundreds- the hundreds!-to meet her in tugboats, patrol boats, fire boats, yachts, sloops, schooners, skiffs, dinghies, ketches, yawls, dories, gigs, kayaks and canoes, horns and whistles blowing, flags waving and voices screaming every cry of homage known to man, including "Whoop-whoop!"
Up the river she had come, on a barge toward the harbor, gateway to the ocean, across which came half the people and races of the world to this fabled shore.
A gigantic woman, made of hammered copper, glorious, goddess-like, gleaming in the sun, her hair pulled back, a Greek toga draped from her shoulder, her immense right arm reaching down, down, down toward the multitudes. I looked, I blinked, I looked again, I blinked some more, I rubbed my eyes. This piece- in which Wolfe reflects on the statue's centennial and reports on the 1985 unveiling of the Portlandia sculpture in Portland, Oregon- ran in Newsweek on July 14, 1986.
He wrote for Newsweek numerous times throughout his career, including in 1986, on the occasion of the Statue of Liberty's 100th birthday celebration. Tom Wolfe, the best-selling novelist and pioneer of New Journalism, has died at 88.
0 kommentar(er)
