I envied my colleague and dear friend — not for the ALS that was consuming him, of course, but for how it freed him to speak so directly. It had always been hard for me to get that kind of honesty right. I’d touched it perhaps a dozen times in my fifty-two years, with women I’d loved, with old friends, now and then with strangers on airplanes or trains. For Tony, as he neared the end, it became second nature. In his books he’d always expressed himself with precision, but his conversation was loose and free, generous, ripe with sly humor and innuendo and digression, never stinting; his best jokes, and he had many excellent jokes, were those made at his own expense. A vast, untrammeled soul resided within that compact body, belied by the tidy sweater vest and dated gray suit, the impeccable nails and pencil moustache, the readers on a chain around his neck. So to hear him as he was in those final days — strict and concise as a village imam — was galvanizing. If I took the Eurostar up from Paris to Leiden every Saturday to see him, it wasn’t only because I knew he’d soon be gone. His immense clarity held me captive.
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June 19, 2020 at 07:10PM
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2020 Nelson Algren Short Story Award Winner: ‘Haddad: A Requiem’ by Edward Hamlin - Chicago Tribune
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