Here We Are_My Friendship With Philip Roth by Benjamin Taylor

Author:Benjamin Taylor [Taylor, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9780525505242
Goodreads: 48635840
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2020-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

A renowned comedian, formerly thought funny, lives in my building. Philip is intrigued by this figure, whom he calls an anti-Semite’s delight, and is forever pumping me for information about him.

I phone late.

“Was hoping you’d call.”

I tell him You-Know-Who has sprung for a new toupee, a brilliant red one. When he sees you he says, “Hello, hello,” his laugh line of yesteryear. He thinks it’s a scream. Late nights he lurks in the lobby, adjusting his rug in the mirror—he’s vain about it—while awaiting a car to deliver him to the night’s pleasures. “He’s got a harem of prostitutes he calls ‘my schvartzes,’ lovingly. The man is an open sewer.”

“Who’s his pimp?”

I report that he uses several. I’ve seen him out front with a variety of sketchy characters.

“He nicely makes my point about the Jews: They are neither worse nor better than other people. Therefore neither anti- nor philo-Semite be. Email me tomorrow, Ben. At my email address up here in the country.”

I say that we’ve been through that already. That email addresses aren’t location-specific. Your email is in the ether, not at any street address. He hangs up without goodbye, as so often. When was this? Around 2012? Soon enough he was reading iPhone for Dummies and getting abreast of the new technology.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.