“Ingush proverb Who gathers knowledge gathers pain. Ecclesiastes 1:18 If I were living in the Causcasus, I would be writing fairy tales there. Chekhov, 1888 ONE LARRY WENT OFFICIALLY missing from the world on the second Monday of October, at ten minutes past eleven, when he failed to deliver his opening lecture of the new academic year. I am able to set the scene exactly because it was not so very long ago, in the same dreary Bath weather, that I had dragged Larry down to see the wre...tched place for the first time. To this day I have the most accusing memory of the brutalist slab barracks closing in on him like the walls of his new confinement. And of Larry's ever youthful back walking reproachfully away from me down the concrete canyon like a man going to his nemesis. If I had had a son, I thought as I stared after him, this was how it would feel to be dumping him at his first boarding school. "Hey, Timbo," he whispers over his shoulder, the way Larry can speak to you from miles away.MoreLessRead More Read Less
User Reviews: