One or Two Finely Tuned Sentences

Towards the end of the day a book of condolences was passed around. No doubt they should have brought it out earlier, for it took a long time to get around the room. The problem with these literary/academic funerals is that almost everyone there takes writing too seriously. Some people there took close to half an hour to construct a single line. I would like to think that they were struggling to capture the essence of Speyer’s personality, or the weight of our loss, in one or two finely tuned sentences. The truth, however, is that they weren’t really thinking of Speyer at all. They were competing with one another…

The last part of my memoir has been posted. Enjoy it here.