Work in Progress

In so far as there is an image of Berryman that exists in the public imagination, these clips are its embodiment: the poet’s beard is fulsome and his spectacles are large, black, and thickly-framed; he is wearing what might be a shoulder-padded overcoat. Berryman’s delivery is stilted, almost unnervingly so: his speech is alternately halting and rushed; he gestures extravagantly; his head bobs and weaves. Berryman “was drunk during filming, as the attentive viewer may notice,” runs the quippy description under the video, and sure, he was probably that too. More than drunk, though, he looks pained. Each word seems to come from a great distance, to emerge only after a violent struggle.

In an office about one hundred feet above the mine opening, Carlos Pinilla, the hard-driving general manager, hears the thunder crack and his first thought is: But they’re not supposed to be blasting today. He concludes that it’s probably another collapse of rock inside the Pit, which is nothing to be worried about. But the sound of rolling thunder doesn’t stop. His phone rings, and the voice on the line says, “Step out your door and look at the mine entrance.” Pinilla walks into the midday sun and sees a billowing cloud of dust bigger than any he’s seen before.

We’ve rounded up some of the best of what our authors have been doing, reading, and thinking this week.