No novels from Roth anymore

[Michael Bailey]

 Bled Welder wrote:
> Speaking of which, Bailey, ... are you going to speak again now, as I wish, or do I have to
> swim down to Florida and extract it from you?
>
>


Roth is an excellent novelist and apparently has chosen to divert his
attention to biography, his own...that's his prerogative but maybe he
will discover some new fictional ideas when reviewing his life...seems
like a possible...some late-life roguishness when he tires of the
sobriety (i mean, you can only be so serious for so long before a
lobster thermidorean reaction sets in)

as for me, why i'm not saying much the past few days -

my dad died last Tuesday.  he was 86, and went peacefully, but
still...life piled upon life were all too few

it's hard to be sober and solemn about it - he was such a jolly soul
that i'm remembering a lot of his sayings:

abn - always be nice
in our house we laugh and dance and sing
just the way i like it (especially when presented with burnt toast)


Mostly for the feeling (ie, "i don't mean anything by it") i find
myself now humming this evening this verse...


3. The bottles stand as empty, as they were filled before.
Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more.
Though I could not caution all, I still might warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.


as i said, i don't mean anything by it.  i don't have any particular
group - not even the house republicans - in mind when mentioning ship
of fools

...another thing he often quoted was Samuel Johnson about how the
knowledge one is to be hanged in 2 weeks concentrates the mind
wonderfully...it is Margaret I'm mourning for...

watching him live 86 years and his reactions as his old buds and
relatives and even people he didn't like dwindled, and were no more...
he used to twinklingly, maybe even a little bit raucously, quote "And
if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling."

after a quadruple bypass at age 49, and other stuff, detached retina,
hernia, abdominal aortic aneurism, angioplasty, so forth...he
continued working till he was 71, had a nice retirement, enjoyed the
heck out of his grandkids, passing away peacefully, though even at the
last, his vitality and responsiveness gave me (and some of the nurses)
the impression that he was going to make a comeback, maybe make 87,
but he was old and full of days...

He had this Cossack hat in the winter in Michigan and used to take us
sledding; he'd listen to JP McCarthy on WJR in the morning; he had an
inimitable and contagious smile; he was a good dad, and please forgive
the boast, but he was a magnificent person!





-- 
- where the bee sucks, there suck I