to search for this book in the local used bookstores. The first bookstore didn’t have a copy of the book on the shelves, but I figured I’d ask the salesperson if she knew of a copy lingering in one of the many unpacked boxes. When I told her the book’s title, her eyes—they were white-blue, the irises seemed to spiral toward the vanishing point of her pupils—got really wide. She didn’t have a copy, she said. But she knew the book very well and had read it many times herself, because the woman who’d written it was her aunt.
I couldn’t believe it. The woman, also stunned, nonetheless seemed so excited to talk to me about the book. Yetshe didn’t say a word. She just stared at me expectantly, as though I were the person who might enlighten her about her own relative, and her eyes spiraled more quickly, and the whole situation grew surreal and uncomfortable, and without learning anything more about her aunt, I left.
We did eventually, due to our own growing misery, get divorced, my first husband and I. The end of our marriage came as no surprise to either of us, though he and I maintained different perspectives on the cause of death. He blames this and that marital moment of callous disrespect or unintended harm as the cause. I take the more deterministic view. Our divorce seemed at the time, and still seems to me, to have been fated from the outset, though I know this fate is unrelated to Edith Wharton, or to randomly meeting the niece of a woman who might have been murdered by her husband, or to the fact that we were supposed to spend our mini-moon in that first, terrible room.
Today we had dinner at the German villa in which we are living until December. (Technically, my family and I are not living in the villa; we are living in a small cottage by the gate. We do, however, eat meals at the villa.) This villa was built in the late 1800s and has a WWII-related story I’ve been told secondhand; roughly it involves the Jewish family who once owned the place and the gratitude they felt toward the avenging Americans, who, after the war, used it as a rec house for military personnel and filled it with Ping-Pong tables. When the Americans left, the family, in order to ensure a future of continued GermanAmerican ideas exchange, donated the villa to an American ambassador who turned it into an academy (minus, sadly, the Ping-Pong tables). This story, or some slightly more accurate version, is how the villa came into my country’s possession; this is how I am being served a fancy dinner in it.
Most everyone living at this villa is an expert on foreign policy, on American and European intellectual history, on international economic issues, and on other topics I know nothing about. For months, my husband and I have worried that we’ll have nothing to say to the experts at the many meals we’re meant to share with them. Here is a good example of why we are worried. Last night my husband and I, in bed, Googled
WW1 why did it happen
.
At breakfast the other day, I chitchatted with an expert who was trying so hard to relate to me on my turf, such as he understood it; he said how much he appreciated having writers around because they added levity to the usually grave proceedings. But he also had such respect for writers! He brought up the fact that UNESCO had recently awarded
Das Kapital
a distinction, or maybe it was a prize. I asked if UNESCO only named nonfiction books as winners of this distinction or prize, and he replied, “Oh no, they’ve also named…” and he cited a very long title in German. I admitted that I had never heard of this book. He repeated the title. I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know it.” And then he said, “It’s the incredibly famous Middle High German epic on which Wagner based
The Ring
series.” I said, “Oh, right,
right
!” The expert seemed a little crestfallen. He could forgive me for failing to be an expert in his area of expertise; he seemed slightly less willing to forgive
I couldn’t believe it. The woman, also stunned, nonetheless seemed so excited to talk to me about the book. Yetshe didn’t say a word. She just stared at me expectantly, as though I were the person who might enlighten her about her own relative, and her eyes spiraled more quickly, and the whole situation grew surreal and uncomfortable, and without learning anything more about her aunt, I left.
We did eventually, due to our own growing misery, get divorced, my first husband and I. The end of our marriage came as no surprise to either of us, though he and I maintained different perspectives on the cause of death. He blames this and that marital moment of callous disrespect or unintended harm as the cause. I take the more deterministic view. Our divorce seemed at the time, and still seems to me, to have been fated from the outset, though I know this fate is unrelated to Edith Wharton, or to randomly meeting the niece of a woman who might have been murdered by her husband, or to the fact that we were supposed to spend our mini-moon in that first, terrible room.
Today we had dinner at the German villa in which we are living until December. (Technically, my family and I are not living in the villa; we are living in a small cottage by the gate. We do, however, eat meals at the villa.) This villa was built in the late 1800s and has a WWII-related story I’ve been told secondhand; roughly it involves the Jewish family who once owned the place and the gratitude they felt toward the avenging Americans, who, after the war, used it as a rec house for military personnel and filled it with Ping-Pong tables. When the Americans left, the family, in order to ensure a future of continued GermanAmerican ideas exchange, donated the villa to an American ambassador who turned it into an academy (minus, sadly, the Ping-Pong tables). This story, or some slightly more accurate version, is how the villa came into my country’s possession; this is how I am being served a fancy dinner in it.
Most everyone living at this villa is an expert on foreign policy, on American and European intellectual history, on international economic issues, and on other topics I know nothing about. For months, my husband and I have worried that we’ll have nothing to say to the experts at the many meals we’re meant to share with them. Here is a good example of why we are worried. Last night my husband and I, in bed, Googled
WW1 why did it happen
.
At breakfast the other day, I chitchatted with an expert who was trying so hard to relate to me on my turf, such as he understood it; he said how much he appreciated having writers around because they added levity to the usually grave proceedings. But he also had such respect for writers! He brought up the fact that UNESCO had recently awarded
Das Kapital
a distinction, or maybe it was a prize. I asked if UNESCO only named nonfiction books as winners of this distinction or prize, and he replied, “Oh no, they’ve also named…” and he cited a very long title in German. I admitted that I had never heard of this book. He repeated the title. I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know it.” And then he said, “It’s the incredibly famous Middle High German epic on which Wagner based
The Ring
series.” I said, “Oh, right,
right
!” The expert seemed a little crestfallen. He could forgive me for failing to be an expert in his area of expertise; he seemed slightly less willing to forgive
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