…friendly in an ill-tempered way.

I just started life of pi by Yann Martel. This won’t be a review, because I am not nearly finished. I ran across a sentence that made me want to say something about it. Early in the book, there is a sentence that reads: “The porters…were limping old men, friendly in an ill-tempered way.” How cool is that? The juxtaposition of friendly and ill-tempered to describe the same person is elegantly spot-on. I know exactly the person being described. I can see myself trying to ruffle their feathers just to see what kind of reaction I would get. It makes me feel like I am there.