THE MAGIC HOUR

Seymour Ira Spencer of Manhattan and Southampton was a class act. Hey, the last thing you’d think was “movie producer.” No herringbone gold chain rested on a bed of chest hair; there was no fat mouth, definitely no cigar. If you could have seen him in his plain white terry-cloth bathrobe (which he was too well-bred to have monogrammed), standing on the tile deck of the pool of his beachfront estate, Sandy Court, sipping a glass of iced black-currant tea, talking softly into his portable phone, you would have thought: This is what they mean when they say good taste.

I’ll tell you how tasteful Sy Spencer was. He actually might have hung up, strolled inside and picked up a Marcel Proust book to reread. Except just then he got blasted by two bullets, one in his medulla, one in his left ventricle. He was dead before he hit the deck.

Too bad. It was a gorgeous August day. I remember. The sky was a blue so pure and powerful you almost couldn't look at it. Who could take that much beauty?...
The Magic Hour
Susan Isaacs
 

As I read the latest blog entry in French Word-a-Day, I was reminded of how for a number of years in the past Susan Isaacs was my favorite novelist. I think this book was my introduction to the phrase, the magic hour. Now, I'm loving the blue hour.
 
... The blue hour, the magic hour... crepuscule, twilight... the hour between daylight and night when the sky's luminosity draws artists out of their studios to see light's last glimmerings.



And, from Wikipedia: "The phrase is also used to refer to Paris immediately prior to World War I, which was considered to be a time of relative innocence."

http://french-word-a-day.typepad.com/motdujour/2010/07/lheure-bleue.html