Fabulous Small Jews by Joseph Epstein

Author:Joseph Epstein [Epstein, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Perhaps I had been around too many writers, academics, lawyers, people shuffling one kind of paper or another, but I found Freddy Duchamp's direct experience of life impressive, and that he had also thought so clearly about his choices in life made him seem somehow attractive. I knew that I hadn't the courage to operate so wholly on my own.

“I'm sure you've heard it before, David—O.K. to call you David?—but life is a gamble. You get up every morning hoping you don't find a funny little lump in your gonads when showering, or a throbbing in your left arm when driving to work. You turn onto the freeway and wonder if some hopped-up punk in an old beater isn't going to smash you to pieces. You come home at night and hope your wife hasn't taken off with the nice-looking guy that runs the produce department at the supermarket. It's all a gamble, right?”

“From a certain point of view,” I said, “I suppose it is. But most of what you're calling gambles are really out of a man's control: the cancer, the car crash, the wife running off. Doesn't a full-time gambler like to court danger? He's asking for it—he can't live without it.”

“Can you live without writing?”

“Probably not, but if I don't write, or if I start a book that flops, it isn't the same as losing twenty grand in Vegas.”

“I don't go to Vegas. I don't go to racetracks, either. The crowds at both places, so many losers under one roof, make me sadder than hell. But I'll tell you something you might think crazy. A good loss every now and then isn't such a terrible thing. Take my word for it: I've had some high-voltage jolts in this business. But a big loss can put the world in perspective. After you're tapped out you can sometimes see things a lot clearer. You know you have to stir yourself, rebound, not let defeat get the best of you. Don't get me wrong. Between winning and losing, winning is always a lot better. But even losing isn't, if you get my drift, a total loss.”

“Forgive my asking, but is doing time at Joliet part of losing?”

“No, that shouldn't have happened. But I did something stupid. I got in the hole with the boys. I made the mistake of borrowing from Guido to pay Dominic. I'm talking juice. Guido started to lean on me. One day a few of the boys picked me up outside my apartment on Marine Drive. They knocked the windows out of my car—windshield and everything—with a baseball bat, an aluminum one. They promised to do the same to my head if I didn't get up-to-date on my payments. I bought a gun, which I began to keep in the glove compartment.”

“So that's why a nice half-Jewish boy like you was packing heat?”

“Heat? I see you go to the movies. Well, carrying a gun by itself isn't going to get you into much trouble. A warning, a slap on the wrist, usually nothing more.

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