Leonard wrote up the paper in a single sitting, working out in a sort of frenzy, but with the utmost mathematical rigor, the worlds Barry Siegel had brought into being in 1970 with his almost inhuman shoe store obstinacy. There was the world in which Leonard did fundamental physics and Neil sold men’s shoes, the world in which Neil did fundamental physics and Leonard sold men’s shoes, the world in which both did physics, the world in which both sold shoes, and the infinite array of worlds in which Leonard and Neil were each probabilistically smeared between doing theoretical physics and selling men’s shoes.
Observing, by the paper’s own logic, that in half of these feasible universes it was Neil and not Leonard who authored it, Leonard put down his brother as his coauthor and sent it to him at Siegel’s Shoes for his perusal. Amazingly, his older brother’s pride (Neil responded in a terse little note that he had “never once envied you or regretted my decision to take over Dad’s store,” and demanded that his name be removed from “your unbelievably condescending article”) blinded him—whether or not he agreed with Leonard’s mathematical analysis of it—to the undeniable phenomenological fact that the Siegel brothers were perpetually flickering back and forth in their professional lives, both at times scientists, both at times proprietors of Siegel’s Shoes, which stands to this day in each and every one of these possible worlds at the corner of Monroe Street and State, and is now the oldest continuously operating shoe store in Chicago.
43: BREATHING PROBLEMS
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A son who moved back into his childhood home as an adult has become unhinged by his father’s audible breathing, which is impeding the son’s literary-philosophical writings. The father’s nose or sinuses must have changed over the years, according to the son, who in childhood never heard air rustling into or out of his father’s nose. He has persuaded his father to see an otolaryngologist.
The mother’s breathing is also audible, so she, too, will see an otolaryngologist.
These otolaryngology visits should hopefully shed light on what is happening to his parents’ nasal cavities.
44: THE CONVERSATIONALIST
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Ever since an evidently pivotal LSD experience in western Norway in 1971, the great Icelandic artist Karl Karlsson — until then an undistinguished landscape painter — has painted nothing but colossal canvases of two heads in conversation. Critics generally interpret the series as a long-running inquiry into the very possibility of conversation.
Although Karlsson’s earliest heads (1971–1976) seem to be involved in a genuine exchange, subsequent decades (1976–1997) saw a continual diminution in the size of their mouths. By 1998, Karlsson’s abstract interlocutors were entirely mouthless, and they remained so until 2009.
This is typically considered the most pessimistic phase of Karlsson’s career.
Since then, the mouths of his heads have been growing once more. Karlsson’s critics, collectors, and advocates cheered: it seemed that he had found new faith in the possibility of authentic human interaction. But there were signs by early 2012 that the mouths on his heads were getting a little too big, and by 2013 the mouths were clearly much too big for the heads. The mouths now take up most of the heads, and there are indications that one of the two heads — the one on the left — will actually swallow the other head, the one on the right, whole, probably as early as 2019.
It is interesting to note that Karlsson is not, as one might assume, some sort of recluse. He lives half of the year in London and is said to be exceedingly social, and a superb conversationalist.
45: THE STIPULATION
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A famous performer, celebrated around the globe for his singing and dancing, added to the detailed rider for his most recent tour the stipulation that his father must be kept “a certain distance” from him at all times, a distance “not greater than three hundred feet and not less than thirty feet.” According to the tour rider, the performer was unable to perform if he was too close to or too far from his father, a retired postal worker. When he was too close to his father he could not dance, and when he was too far he could not sing, the rider explained. Between thirty and three hundred feet was the proper range.
This did not mean, said the rider, which the performer is rumored to have written himself, that the father should be kept a fixed distance away from him at all times, such as 165 feet. Optimally, in the hours preceding a concert, the retired postal worker should be brought closer and then taken farther away, brought closer and then taken farther away, brought closer and then taken farther away, though of course never brought closer than 30 feet or taken farther away than 300. The periodic nearness and remoteness of his father was the only way to ensure that the performer could perform to the best of his ability, according to the rider: “The oscillation of the father is critical to the success of the engagement.”
Someone from the performer’s management company leaked the tour rider to the Internet, and the performer was, predictably, ridiculed for his demands. But I’ve noticed that most of the ridicule has come from women. Men — at least in the comment threads I have seen — have been largely sympathetic, many noting their own shattering realization as adults that they could exist neither near nor far from their fathers and would spend the rest of their lives moving cyclically toward and away from them in an endless attempt to determine the ideal distance—which was probably, they knew, a chimerical concept. If they could instruct venue employees to ferry their fathers toward and away from them in a continuous oscillatory fashion, never coming too close or going too far, they absolutely would.
46: RESEMBLANCE
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For nearly his entire career, the son of the great Dutch architect Willem de Waal has had to explain (ad nauseam) that while his buildings do bear a superficial resemblance to his famous father’s buildings, they’re in fact “a foot shorter” and “feel completely different.” A careful and honest comparison of his new Arrivals Terminal at Schiphol to his father’s legendary Terminal 2 at Chicago O’Hare — two structures which a critic at De Telegraaf libelously called “identical”—would show that the son’s building is one foot shorter and just feels completely different. His Gateway Arch of Guangzhou, which has drawn comparisons to his father’s Gateway Arch of St. Louis, is actually one foot shorter than that arch, and feels completely different. His neofuturism and his heavy use of catenary curves obviously owe something to his father’s neofuturism and use of catenary curves, but in the son’s aesthetic they feel completely different, and are one foot shorter.