Memorial Days

Nature is a remorseless reminder of human insignificance. Daytime, nighttime—there’s no escape from the realization of how little we matter.

“In his writing he was always at his funniest, his smartest, his most thoughtful, and his most courageous and adventurous…. Prose so good it would make you laugh until you cried. I recognize now that his books are not the shade of him. They’re the quintessence of his soul, the distillation of a great adventurer and a good man. He’s still with us th

A memorial is like a joyless wedding, one to which the whole world is invited, and of that infinite set of possible guests, you have only a vague idea how many will show up. The imperative to get it right—to do justice to the life—is immense. It is another thing that a grieving person is ill-equipped to do.

“Our marriage still the one thing I feel is utterly mine, created out of clean cloth, no taint of all that makes me uncomfortable, my refuge. Without her, god knows…really sure of nothing but her these days, of my love for her which I wish I knew better how to express.”

“Happiness writes white,” said the French author Henry de Montherlant; it is not easily inscribed on the page. Dark thoughts, fears, the insecure ramblings of insomniac nights—these are more easily prodded with the pen, the ink more easily spilled, more legible.

Alone in Cairo on February 27, 1989, he wrote: “It seems very remote now that I shall ever really amount to something in journalism.” Reading this, alone on the deck, I hoot with laughter. By Christmas of that same year, he would be dodging rifle fire on the streets of Timişoara, covering Romania’s revolution as the new star reporter in The Wall St

He makes a New Year’s resolution to view his writing “NOT as a mood activity, but as work to be done each and every day. So, yes, you may write better on a stoned Saturday night, but it is the weekday mornings of throwaways that make those moments of inspiration fluid, and it has been a long time since my writing felt fluid in that manner, and some

‘Take that, you running-dog, raghead-loving J-Streeter!’ he

My ambitions, such as they were, had always been my own. My parents had never pushed me. Whatever I did was just fine by them. If I got distinctions, they were thrilled, but they didn’t expect them, and there was no sense that I’d disappoint them if I fell short.