So there we were, 6-and-a-half-year-old Son of The Anthony Show and I, sitting in the Barnes & Noble cafe two days ago, quite a rare location for the two of us on a weeknight. I had an appointment that ended in time for me to pick up Son at the bus stop and spirit him to the bookstore so Mrs. The Anthony Show could keep working while undisturbed. Son enjoyed the novelty of doing his homework at the bookstore while devouring a brownie, and I was relished being able to sit across from him, sipping a small latte while scanning the latest issue of
Lapham's Quarterly.
(Simply being able to read a periodical is a rare luxury, these days.)
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| The spoiler is in the title. |
The theme of the issue was "celebrity" throughout history, and I was finishing an article on Orson Welles — how most people in the 1970s and 1980s knew he was a famous director, but likely saw none of his movies and only knew about his career because of the appearances of his corpulent but magisterial frame in commercials and on the talk show circuit. Anyway, I was finishing the article and reflecting on his notorious epitaph, attributed to Welles himself: "The world's youngest has-been," when I was interrupted by Son's voice:
"I wanna read that book by Arthur Miller."
He pointed at a wall, along which were huge-scale reproductions of famous works of literature, including...
