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There's a well-known saying by Coleridge about fiction and poetry -- that it requires "a willing suspension of disbelief."
It brings to mind a famous short stort by Ambrose Bierce, called "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
In the story a Confederate spy is captured by Union soldiers and strung up on a makeshift gallows on the Owl Creek Bridge. As the gallows is sprung, he hurtles toward the water, but the rope apparently snaps, and he falls harmlessly into the river where he quickly makes his escape into the nearby woods. As he wanders through the woods, everything he sees and hears seems strangely magnified. The foliage is intensely colored and fragrant, the insects huge and noisy, every sound and sight heightened. Finally, he reaches a clearing where he sees in the distance his home, and his wife and children are running to greet him. But just as they reach him , everything dissolves into a blinding white flash.
The scene then shifts back to the Owl Creek Bridge, where we see a dead body dangling from the end of a rope. Turns out that the enitre escape had been imagined, an illusion occurring between the time the trap was sprung and the rope snapped his neck, causing the blinding white flash.
Which brings us back to the Coleridge saying, except that, some years ago, I had the brainstorm that what "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" really requires is not a "willing suspension of disbelief" but rather "a willing _________ in __________." (Hint: turnabout is fair play)
And to somehow tie this to the UConn basketball scene, these past 13 months do seem a bit like fiction, requiring "a willing suspension of disbelief." Let's hope there's no blinding white flash in the works.
It brings to mind a famous short stort by Ambrose Bierce, called "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."
In the story a Confederate spy is captured by Union soldiers and strung up on a makeshift gallows on the Owl Creek Bridge. As the gallows is sprung, he hurtles toward the water, but the rope apparently snaps, and he falls harmlessly into the river where he quickly makes his escape into the nearby woods. As he wanders through the woods, everything he sees and hears seems strangely magnified. The foliage is intensely colored and fragrant, the insects huge and noisy, every sound and sight heightened. Finally, he reaches a clearing where he sees in the distance his home, and his wife and children are running to greet him. But just as they reach him , everything dissolves into a blinding white flash.
The scene then shifts back to the Owl Creek Bridge, where we see a dead body dangling from the end of a rope. Turns out that the enitre escape had been imagined, an illusion occurring between the time the trap was sprung and the rope snapped his neck, causing the blinding white flash.
Which brings us back to the Coleridge saying, except that, some years ago, I had the brainstorm that what "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" really requires is not a "willing suspension of disbelief" but rather "a willing _________ in __________." (Hint: turnabout is fair play)
And to somehow tie this to the UConn basketball scene, these past 13 months do seem a bit like fiction, requiring "a willing suspension of disbelief." Let's hope there's no blinding white flash in the works.