Having finished the book, no longer scared of running into spoilers (it is a murder mystery, after all), I promptly found this essay by Chabon, which neatly confirmed my theory. He came up with the idea for this book, it seems, discovering a Yiddish phrasebook for travellers–and realizing that such a thing no longer had a reason to exist.

In the short term, this attempt at social engineering has been indisputably successful; the congregation is thriving and growing. But, taking a broader perspective, this Wired article suggests the long-term futility of such efforts–telling the story of the profound confusion that erupted when, in 2004, the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma attempted to genetically screen their members for “authentic” Native descent.

But if the young discipline of DNA testing has taught us anything, it’s that the very notion of race is fading, at least from a genetic perspective. The world is populated by mongrels and half-breeds. Even those who base their self-worth on being of “pure” racial stock probably aren’t. Every family tree has a thousand branches.

That’s certainly true of the Orthodox-minded Jewish folks I know personally, many of whom are forced to conceal an ancestry even more muddled than mine from their co-religionists. I hope that at least a few of them can come round by the time I produce some Muggle children.

“I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in a very small town. I was thinking about that this morning, and I thought that the thing about growing up in the South in the 1950s and early ’60s was that it produced memories that look like the 1930s and 1940s…I think that contributed a lot to my worldview, and the way I look at things as a writer. I could simultaneously see this ancient Cormac McCarthy kind of reality in this Southern mountain world, plus Sputnik and Twilight Zone on television. The gap between where I lived and the media universe was much wider than it possibly could be, now that everybody’s online.”

(direct link)

It was as unseasonably sunny and warm today as it was unseasonably cold in New Orleans earlier this week, so I decided to explore the northwest corner of the city. The route you see there took me about 3½ hours to hike, but next time I’ll just start from the bridge, since that’s where the trail and the scenery got interesting. The dramatic views of the Pacific and the bridge definitely make it a worthwhile hike for a clear day.

And did you know that Ben Kingsley’s real name is Krishna Banji, and he’s Jewish? I guess the pre-IMDB criticisms of his ethnic authenticity in both Gandhi and Schindler’s List are hopelessly obsolete.

• Lots of friends and acquaintances in the area
• I hate the feeling that my day-to-day life has gotten so samey that it no longer sticks in my memory
• Trading in Everett LNG explosion and Canary Island tsunami disaster scenarios for The Big One and Pacific tsunamis
• More crunk (OK, not really)
• We figured we weren’t paying enough rent here in Boston
• The artistic temperament of the area is a good match for Justina’s work

We’ll definitely miss our wonderful friends, neighborhood, and apartment in Somerville, though.

I guess at this point I should mention that, on the train, the driver had asked us to stay on the lookout for a missing 290-pound autistic man. That might possibly be connected to what follows.

So I’m halfway to street level when I hear a bass bellow–”No!”–echoing up the subway exit as if it were the inside of a musical instrument. Because our long staircase is unautomated, nothing keeps carrying us forward when we all stop and turn as one to track the source of this bearish threatening noise. “No!” the roar sounds again, bigger and closer now, and a hulking red-faced man puffs into view at the bottom of the stairwell. He’s got glasses, he’s balding, he seems about equally tall and wide. He’s dressed in a white and gray gym outfit, t-shirt and shorts, too light for a cold morning. And now he’s got about a twenty-person audience.

“Don’t you know what you’re doing?” he barks at the two flyer-passers. He’s huge, and furious, but he doesn’t quite seem to present a clear threat to the pair–his voice has an autistic’s flat, unmodulated quality. Despite the arm-waving and shouting, he scrupulously refuses to close the last six feet between them. Everyone is silent. He looks up at us for the first time, and with a grand sweep of his arm delivers his next line:

“Abortion is murder!”

Now, every traveller who’s gotten this far is aware that the flyer-passers are anti-war protestors. So a wave of sheer cognitive dissonance sweeps through us, front to back, like one of those expanding fiery doughnut-shaped explosions that were so popular in late-’90s movies. The flyer woman sizes up the situation poorly, and shoots back a bit too quickly:

“War is murder too!”

But her enormous debate opponent is ready for that one. “Well, abortion is about cutting the heads off of the little babies!” he booms in reply.

“Nobody’s cutting anybody’s head off, all right?” says the flyer man slowly, moving from his spot for the first time and stepping between them. The big guy slumps his shoulders in defeat, and on that signal our communal sense of show’s-over sends us back to our stair-climbing. With his theater falling apart around him, our star rallies and gives us his very best effort.

“I hate abortion!” he screeches, his voice rising alarmingly to the register of a frightened child. “I hate the women…and the babies…and…”

He’s got us.

“…and…”

We all stop.

“…and the cunts!”

And with that he runs back into the station. I’ve read that autistics find it very difficult to tell a lie, especially about their own thoughts or feelings. Maybe today I met the world’s most honest anti-abortioneer.