“I didn't play golf, and he had never smoked marijuana.
I was a nail chewer, inclined to brood, and dubious of the motives
of other people. He was big and placid, uniformly kind to strangers
and friends, and never went anywhere without whistling a little song.
I minored in philosophy. He fell asleep watching television. He fell asleep
in movie theaters, too, and occasionally, I suspected, while driving.
He had been in the navy during World War II, which taught him, he said,
to sleep whenever he could. I, still troubled no doubt by perplexing questions
of ontology and epistemology raised during my brief flirtation with
logical positivism ten years earlier, was an insomniac.
I was also a Jew, of a sort; he was, when required, an Episcopalian.”
– Michael Chabon,
The Hand on My Shoulder, from
Manhood for Amateurs, 2009