Where I live in western Massachusetts, a tiny...
Where I live in western Massachusetts, a tiny place in the hills there, I talk to the guy who runs the general store and to the lady at the post office
"What's the name of the town?"
"You wouldn't know itAbout ten miles from a college town called AthenaI met a famous writer there when I was just starting outNobody mentions him much anymore, his sense of virtue is too narrow for readers now, but he was revered back thenReclusion looked awfully austere to a kidHe maintained it solved his problems
"What's the problem?"
"Certain problems having been taken out of my life--that's the problemAt the store the Red Sox, at the post office the chanel reporter bag weather--that's it, my social discourseWhether we deserve the weather
When I come to pick up my mail and the sun is shining outside, the postmistress tells me, 'We don't deserve this weather' Can't argue with that
"And pussy?"
"OverLive without dinner, live without pussy
"Who are you, Socrates? I don't buy itThe single-minded writer
"Nothing more all along and I could have saved myself a lot of wear and tearThat's all I've had anyway to keep the shit at bay
"What's 'the shit'?"
"The picture we have of one anotherLayers and layers of misunderstandingThe picture we have of ourselvesOnly we go ahead and we live by these pictures'That's hermes tas what she is, that's what he is, this is what I amThis is what happened, this is why it happened--' EnoughYou know who I saw a couple of months ago? Your brotherDid he tell you?"
"No, he didn't
"He wrote me a letter and invited me to dinner in New YorkI drove down to meet himHe was composing a tribute to your old manIn the letter he asked for my helpI was curious about what he had in mindI was curious about him writing me to announce that he wanted to write somethingTo you he's just a brother--to me he's still 'the Swede' You carry those guys around with you foreverBut at dinner he never mentioned the tributeWe just uttered the pleasantriesAt omega speedmaster day-date some place called Vincent'sAs always, he looked terrific
"Your brother's dead?"
"Died WednesdayThat's why I was in JerseyWatched my big brother die
"Of what? How?"
"Cancer
"But he'd had prostate surgeryHe told me they got it out
Impatiently Jerry said, "What else was he going to tell you?"
"He was thin, that was allWhat, astoundingly to Mendy Gurlik, was decimating the Daredevils right up the middle; what, astoundingly to me, had, a year earlier, made of me "purely a writer"; what, in the wake of all the other isolating losses, in the wake of everything gone and everyone gone, had stripped me down into someone whose aging powers had chanel quilted replica now but a single and unswerving aim, a man who would be seeking his solace, like it or not, nowhere but in sentences, had managed the most astounding thing of all by carrying off the indestructible hero of the wartime Weequahic section, our neighborhood talisman, the legendary Swede
"Did he know," I asked, "when I saw him, that he was in trouble?"
"He had his hopes, but sure he knew
"I'm sorry to hear it
"His fiftieth was coming up next monthYou know what he said at the hospital on Tuesday? To me and his kids the day before he died? Most of the time he was incoherent, but twice he said, so we could understand him, 'Going to get to my dior logo fift