Buster Agonistes

On a hot July day in Kansas, 1898, a cyclone plucked the young Joseph Frank Keaton (aetatis suae iii) from the window of the second story room where he had been left under sedation, whisked him “high over trees and houses, too amazed to be afraid,” then coasted him “down a slow-relaxing ramp of air to land gently in the very center of an empty street” four blocks away. He sat there in his nightgown until rescued; his father offered the rescuer a receipt.

The reason he was under sedation was that a little earlier in the afternoon he had had his temple gashed by a falling rock. He did not see the rock coming because it fell on him through the branches of a peach tree. It had arrived at the point in space above the tree, from which point it fell, because the young Keaton had thrown it vertically to dislodge a peach, the descent of which he was awaiting with outstretched hand when the rock, retracing its trajectory, cut his head open.

HK

About the Author

Hugh Kenner

Featured Tags

On a hot July day in Kansas, 1898, a cyclone plucked the young Joseph Frank Keaton (aetatis suae iii) from the window of the second story room where he had been left under sedation, whisked him “high over trees and houses, too amazed to be afraid,” then coasted him “down a slow-relaxing ramp of air to land gently in the very center of an empty street” four blocks away. He sat there in his nightgown until rescued; his father offered the rescuer a receipt.

The reason he was under sedation was that a little earlier in the afternoon he had had his temple gashed by a falling rock. He did not see the rock coming because it fell on him through the branches of a peach tree. It had arrived at the point in space above the tree, from which point it fell, because the young Keaton had thrown it vertically to dislodge a peach, the descent of which he was awaiting with outstretched hand when the rock, retracing its trajectory, cut his head open.