I had no idea Philip Roth was my landlord, much less my next-door neighbor, until the night I moved in. When you share a wall with someone, you get to know him in unusual ways . . .
So I’m an old guy now, but when I was younger, I used to walk around with the thought that my late father gave me nothing, or next to nothing. I didn’t inherit any of his talents; My sister can weaponize a joke like him, my brother’s scalp, my Dad’s sad, eroding shoreline.
No one knew who originally proposed it; the government would mandate an exchange of shame. Citizens who held too much shame, which interfered with their lives and productivity, would come to an official site where their shame would be handed to a government official who had none.
Imagine for a moment that you own property on the U.S. southern border. Alarmed by the prospect of a presidential declaration of national emergency, you consult with an attorney on how you might challenge the federal government’s expropriation of your land.
We could have lived here forever, I heard Max Laberman say to my parents, all of us older now, our faces slipping at their various fault lines, my parents having bought the house from the Labermans how many years ago?
Dear Kid, Lady, Z—, Old Foe Friend Stranger Death,
Someday you’re going to get as far off the beaten track as Nevada, & your radio dial’s going to spin like a compass in the Arctic, with no place to lay its weary head, & you’re going to wonder . . .
There wasn’t much in the house. Just some furniture, linens, and old ceramic mugs; a box TV and a remote, a study with a little desk and some files, and a printing calculator almost the size of the landline telephone. There were a few coins under the cushions of the couch . . .
Chimney Point: since I know you’ve never been, I’ll sketch it for you. A forefinger of land that pinches into Lake Champlain & narrows it. On the other side, its opposable thumb, is Crown Point, New York, site of an old British . . .
