#SPARK IN THE DARK BLACK SERIES#
These jewel-like essays, developed from a series of lectures that Cole delivered at the University of Chicago in 2019, are testament both to his many talents and to the uncanny acuity with which he observes the world. But his curriculum vitae contains a great deal more: a PhD in art history from Columbia, opinion pieces on culture and politics in the New York Times, exhibitions of photography and, most recently, the Gore Vidal professorship of the practice of creative writing at Harvard. Cole is celebrated for his novels, Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief. This vignette takes place in the first essay of Cole’s astonishing new collection. Centuries have passed and the effects of time show in the damage to large areas of paint, but the work is no less magnificent for it. It is enormous: 10ft across, more than 13ft tall. The pair gaze in awe at Caravaggio’s early 17th-century painting Burial of Saint Lucy. What a rare taste of unencumbered movement.
As the two of them enter Santa Lucia alla Badia together, he is amazed that no one questions his presence. At a rendezvous with his companion for the afternoon, Teju Cole, D confesses that he has never set foot in a church: he was raised Muslim. D has an easy-going, intelligent manner – an unexpected grace given what he has endured. He arrived in Italy eight months previously, having been smuggled into the country by boat from Libya. A young Gambian man, let’s call him D, waits in Syracuse.
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