James Atlas on Elmore Leonard’s short story:

Those of us who read it at the time really did experience a shock of recognition. […] Many people I know remembered the story long after forgetting everything else in the issue. We were charmed by the story’s invention, though this could hardly explain the intensity of our response, since you didn’t have to be a New Yorker, you could as well live in London or Singapore, in order to admire Schwartz’s technical bravura. Still, it was the invention — the sheer cleverness of it — that one noticed first. A movie theatre becomes the site of dreams; the screen, a reflector of old events we know will be turning sour. The narrator watches father propose to mother at a Coney Island restaurant. Already, during the delights of courtship, they become entangled in the vanities and deceptions that will embitter their later years. But what can the audience do about it? The past revived must obey to its own unfolding, true to the law of mistakes. The reel must run its course: it cannot be cut; it cannot be edited.