In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

37 Breathless. On the phone Joel sounded breathless, as if the rarity of human exchange made him anxious—or perhaps he was excited at the contact. In his last years, he became more and more oblique and fragmentary in conversation and could or would not tell a story that I could follow. He deflected talk from topics he didn’t want to discuss. This was especially true with regard to employment. He had from long years of essential solitude fallen out of the habits of social relations less confined than the strictly professional, or had chosen to ignore their parameters because he had become exclusive to himself, disassembling the rudiments of interaction. Or perhaps he found all conversation stressful because, as he claimed, the medications he took to block the pain of neuropathy (see Neuropathy, diabetic) confused his grammar and memory. In any case, the result was that we knew little about the actualities of Joel’s life. When we attempted to find out, to pose questions, to follow up a glancing suggestion, we ran into a wall. He was Melville’s Bartleby; he preferred not to speak of it. His obscure talk reflected his sense of his life—a sidelong look of the briefest duration was all it merited. ...

Share