Dying Inside

Observe how Selig’s reading becomes more rarefied as we reach the college years. Joyce, Proust, Ma

Here we have his files. A treasure-trove of personalia, awaiting a biographer yet unknown. Report cards, always with low marks for conduct. (“David shows little interest in his work and frequently disrupts the class.”) Crudely crayoned birthday cards for his mother and father. Old photographs: can this fat freckled boy be the gaunt individual who stands before you now? This man with the high forehead and the forced rigid smile is the late Paul Selig, father of our subject, deceased (olav hasholom!) 11 August 1971 of complications following surgery for a perforated ulcer. This gray-haired woman with the hyperthyroid eyes is the late Martha Selig, wife of Paul, mother of David, deceased (oy, veh, mama!) 15 March 1973 of mysterious rot of internal organs, probably cancerous. This grim young lady with cold knifeblade face is Judith Ha

Unfortunately we do not have the imaginary letters which he dictates constantly to himself but never sends. Dear Mr. Kierkegaard: I agree entirely with your celebrated dictum equating “the absurd” with “the fact that with God all things are possible,” and declaring, “The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen.” In my own experiences with the absurd. . . . Dear Mr. Shakespeare: How aptly you put it when you say, “Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.” Your so