CHAPTER 1

Rough Magic

November 2003.

I was teaching The Tempest when the department office managercalled me out of class. My comparative literature seniorseminar had eight students, all but one of them young womenwhose fathers were college professors, social activists, artists, orscientists. It was supposed to be a course in literary theory withan emphasis on gender and interpretation, but the syllabus—Shakespeare,Marx, Freud, Saussure, De Man, Erich Auerbach,and Judith Butler—soon morphed into weekly meditations onauthority and pedagogy, reading things for what they weren't,and the students' own literary tastes. Theory became a familyromance for them, a way of understanding authorship as if it werepaternalism, reading as if it were a household chore. We were afew weeks into the seminar, finishing Shakespeare and turning tolater versions of the play—the postcolonial Une Tempête of AiméCésaire, the science fiction of Forbidden Planet—when the officemanager opened the door. "You have to come right now." I staredacross the table at my eager Mirandas and said, quietly, "I thinkwe'll have to stop."

I took the call in the department office, and before I even heardthe doctor's voice I knew that Dad was gone. I called my wife,walked to my car without my coat in the rain, and drove to thehospital.

Driving.

As a child I never slept. At night, Dad would pile me into thecar (no baby seat, no seat belts, a cigarette held out the window)and drive for hours till I dropped off. Sometimes, he would singas he drove, his tuneless voice repeating the same nursery rhymeover and over.

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear,
But a silver nutmeg, and a golden pear.

And then I would awake in my own bed, not knowing how I gotthere, the smell of Kents hanging on my pj's like a caul.

Some nights, we'd all go out—Dad, Mom, my baby brother—justto fill the time. Whenever we got out of the car, my eyes woulddart right to the ground. I'd pick up anything: a rusted bolt, a spentflashbulb, string, wire, pennies. I was collecting material for somegreat project, a machine that would transmute these scraps intoa mystery, or that would reanimate the tossed-off body parts ofold equipment. Every now and then, there'd be a real find. Once,when I was six, we drove out to Long Island to an Alexander'sstore to buy my mom a fur coat. In the parking lot, I found apiece of jetsam from another car. It may have been a solenoid, ora carburetor valve, or a gear. Whatever it had once been, it turnedinto a talisman in my pocket, and I held on to it on the ride back,as I fell asleep against Mom's new mouton coat.

And then, after we moved to Boston, there were the endlessdrives returning to New York to see relatives or friends. We alwaysdrove at night. Eight p.m. and the dinner dishes done, my fatherwould announce, "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm readyto go." And sure as simpletons, my brother and I would jump up.Sure, let's go, what an adventure. Let's drive all night back to NewYork. In those days, the two-hundred-and-forty-mile trip tooknine hours, over old US highways, turnpikes, and toll roads. Stopsalong the way, great empty cities like Hartford, trucks, backups,midnight snacks. Then the wall of traffic when we reached Co-opCity. Finally, the place we'd stay. "You're father was too cheap,"Mom would say, "to spend a night in a real hotel. We always livedon handouts." But that was the way then. You were expected todrop in, you expected people. Anyone could come at any time.Keep the fridge full, you never know when guests might showup. When we moved to Boston, we kept the fridge full for threeyears. No one came.

One day, when I was in eleventh grade, my friends and I droveto Kentucky from Pittsburgh. It was one of those vague Saturdaysof late high school, one of those I-don't-know-what-do-you-want-to-dodays, and we piled into our old Renault and drove. Justdrove. South, through Pennsylvania coal country, West Virginiahills. Cars up on blocks in gas stations for sale for seventy-fivedollars, farm eggs a nickel apiece. We stopped at a roadside placewhere my friend, to my horror, ordered a liverwurst sandwich,and I don't know what I had but I pulled a twenty out of my walletand the counter fell silent, like they'd never seen one before, andwho was this kid with the Pennsylvania plates coming in withhis buds and a twenty.

But that's what I learned from Dad: to pull a twenty from yourwallet like it's magic, to show up out of nowhere and amaze thecrowd and disappear.

Years later, I was listening to an interview with Shari Lewis onthe radio, and she went on, not about Lamb Chop or her bangs,but about her dad. He was a founding member of Yeshiva University,and in the evenings after classes he would teach her magictricks. "My father," she reflected, "was like the official magicianof New York." Passing a closet one day, "Daddy heard my sisterscreaming to be let out. He opened the door, and my sister wasnowhere to be seen." Shari had discovered her ability to throwher voice. Her parents put her onstage at eighteen months. "Myparents were school teachers. They ran summer camps, and I wasput onstage with a crepe-paper bow."

My father was the unofficial magician of New York. He did nojuggling, no ventriloquism. Unlike my friends' fathers, he couldnot fix a leak, start a lawn mower, or change a broken lightbulbwith a raw potato. He worked, instead, his magic in the car. Thetheater of his majesty was the front seat, as he drove almost withoutlooking, talking to me next to him, waving at strangers outthe window. I swear he had a third eye in his left ear; otherwise,how could he see the road?

We would drive for hours around Brooklyn, often with one ofhis friends (usually a former student who, now in his twenties, hadlittle to do but cruise the city with a teacher and his kid), downPitkin Avenue to Jacks, looking for two-dollar sport coats, or tothe Knox Hat Shop, where rows of...