“Just heard Terry Gross do her 1990 interview with Paul? Brown, who died last week at 53 of a heart-attack. He was the fireman who became a writer. I actually mentioned him to you, as the result of an NPR broadcast in a late nineties that featured his life and work.<\/p>\n
I thought you could publish your life on the internet, and, low and
\nbehold, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty much what happened. The Blog appeared. Now you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being discovered: by your self, your family, not mention an endearingly wide circle of friends. Maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where it ends, happily, without the wide world looking in, and the heart attack looking out.<\/p>\n
When I thought I would write you about this story, I suddenly remembered how I had been reading the obituaries since I was ten. Not formally, but I’d always notice in the succeeding years how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d fixate on the death of some kid slightly younger than me. My reflex would be …Well, I made it past him. <\/p>\n
Funny how I hardly ever think about those thoughts, yet they were a regular fixture in my thinking for years and years, only to be replaced, for some time, by the feeling that I would be shot in the back on a dark city street, or in restaurant, which is why I hated sitting with my back to the door, and why dark city streets make my neck hairs stand on end. And why, I suppose, my dream would deal with that anxiety by featuring a dark urban night, where I suddenly faced a circle of figures with clubs, to which I responded, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, I get it, this is a stickup.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And so it goes. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the fireman, dead. You, writing about deaths and your near-death experiences, and there’s me, still in my childhood factory of apocalypses, ringed by a good humor zone. ”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Just heard Terry Gross do her 1990 interview with Paul? Brown, who died last week at 53 of a heart-attack. He was the fireman who became a writer. I actually mentioned him to you, as the result of an NPR … Continue reading