Category Archives: Uncategorized

Papa’s New York: from THE INVENTORS

You’d leave on Friday mornings. The trip took just a little over an hour, but you might as well have been taking off for Pluto or Neptune, it seemed so very far. As your father backed the Simca around the … Continue reading

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My Father and Mr. Aiken

During that first year at Harvard, my father met a man who, had circumstances been ever-so-slightly different, would have altered the course of his professional life. That someone was an older graduate student named Howard Aiken. Tall and handsome, with piercing, … Continue reading

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The Mind, too, has its Erections

In “Swimming with Oliver,” a memoir/essay about my twenty-year friendship with Oliver Sacks (to be published this coming Spring in the Colorado Review), the following passage occurs: On the way back from [a driving tour to] Canada, we discuss possible titles for … Continue reading

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My Great Uncle & James Joyce

My father rarely spoke about his family. I didn’t learn that he was Jewish until after he died, when at his funeral a stranger approached me with this news. In fact he descended from two prominent Italian Jewish families. Among his … Continue reading

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