October 2007
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Here we are again in Alameda, California. Last night, just after 8 pm, we were lying in bed reading (me: Conrad’s The Secret Agent; she, Roth’s Exit, Ghost) and recuperating from the grandchildren’s pre-Hallowe’en hysteria, when I said to A., "Would you please stop shaking the bed." She, of course, replied, "I’m not moving," and…
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First the exchange, exacty as it occured in real life, and then the gloss. The cashier: "Breakfast of Champions?" Me: "Well, I’m a vegetarian." The cashier: "Yeah, I know, all organic." So here’s the story. We were driving across the western, uninhabited part of South Dakota, heading toward the glorious Black Hills and the Badlands.…
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I’m trying to remember the name of the superstitious 1940s Dodger pitcher, who, when the inning ended, would flip his mitt into the first base coaching box, then walk over and reposition it so that the fingers pointed directly toward the mound. (I’d better stop here and remind the young folks that in days of…
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Back in the early '60s, when I was just beginning to learn about literature, I enrolled in a course on the eighteenth-century English novel. I diligently worked my way through an ambitious syllabus. There were more than twenty novels, some of them monumental in size, like Clarissa and Tristram Shandy; and others blessedly brief, like…