GG Pedersen

Jens Pedersen builds clinker-built wooden boats in a shed on the fjord, two or three a year, for people who have learned not to telephone about it. He apprenticed at fifteen under a master who communicated almost entirely through disapproval, and he has kept the manner along with the trade. The game came from the lunch break, on a board with shavings on it, and he still plays it with the hands he works with, quick and certain and not open to discussion. There is one deliberate cruelty in his method: the longer you think, the faster he replies, until the rhythm of the evening belongs to him and you are the only one in a hurry.