The Good Parts
October 04, 2020
The Good Parts
I worshiped my older brother Don—handsome, popular, smart, track star and all that.
Growing up, we lived in a small house in Pittsburgh. I hadn’t thought about that house for years until last week when I was reading Sabbath’s Way for my course on Philip Roth. Those who have read Roth’s work know that he is a great writer, but his language is not for polite company.
My chances of seeing such a book on my own in 1948 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania would have been zero. But at the back of Don’s bedroom closet, he had hidden a paperback copy of The Amboy Dukes, and after getting me to promise that I wouldn’t tell Mother and Dad about it, he showed me the “good” parts.
Back then it was the best secret I had.
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