My father was a man who believed history repeated itself. Not in the large ways, of nations and of wars, but in the smaller ways of families. He was a religious man

I was a difficult little boy, and when my mother’s chronic illnesses made it impossible for her to care for me, she packed me off to her errant ­father, the filmmaker Anton Pavlak.

“The Great Sandusky” was a hard man to get to know. Indeed, getting to meet him was my first campaign. We were both strong men of the world. He would help me. That he was in the city was common knowledge to all the regulars in the gym. I had seen a feature article on him in the paper.

On Sunday Bertie walked into an apartment building in St. Louis, a city where, in the past, he had changed trains, waited for buses, or thought about Klaff, and where, more recently, truckers dropped him, or traveling salesmen stopped their Pontiacs downtown just long enough for him to reach into the back seat for his trumpetcase and get out.

“IT DON’T MEAN A THING IF IT AIN’T GOT THAT SWING” Mary Kingsley: My parents died and suddenly I was left with nothing to do. I went back to the piano, but Mozart would no longer calm me,

 Listen friend, let me tell you bout the metro. Tha’s the subway in Paris, aw ratheh the meat packin business. See, they pack you in that train like a suitcase, you know, at rush hour; everybody rushin, nobody movin and stuff. And you is stuffed, baby.

Men together bullying, boasting, bragging, buddying up, being belligerent, being bureaucratic, having a blast at banquets and booze-ups, bearing briefcases, breaking promises, and brokering big-shot business deals.

Barry Wingate walked out of the tunnel. He stopped in front of the barn across the lawn and took his windbreaker off. He began feeding dried com ears into a machine. Kernels of com spewed into a pail, making clattery noises. 

Bubbers was standing on tiptoes, his wily face pressed against the bars of the entrance gate that led to a fine old Kentucky estate known as "Locust." In her fifties—Bubbers had—her— her—

Legs stained... stains turn into fur patches... fur patches turn into puma hide ...palaver re escape route... boy’s lips... chicken feather along outer perimeter of lower redder one, with up-and-down wrinkles... too much pursing... s