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    Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours
    Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours
    Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours
    Ebook117 pages2 hours

    Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours

    By Roger Rosenblatt

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    About this ebook

    A look at the human comedy from a prize-winning writer who is “bright, funny and tells it like it is” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
     
    In this insightful collection, an accomplished essayist and humorist offers a class in “Tyranny for Beginners;” warns about the snares of dinner parties; explains the mind-set of barbarians; suggests the perfect gift for Mother—a wildebeest—and tells what happens when his dog’s barking drives him to thoughts of murder.
     
    Roger Rosenblatt forces us to laugh at the silliness of the world we have created, refocuses our minds on what really matters, and alerts us to the injustice and cruelty that lie just below the skin. A recipient of a Peabody Award, an Emmy, and two Polk Awards, and the author of Rules for Aging and Making Toast, he offers an entertaining and enlightening read filled with his “trademark droll wit” (Tulsa World).
     
    “The best thing about reading an essay by Rosenblatt is that he makes you think.” —Town & Country
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 10, 2004
    ISBN9780547678535
    Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours
    Author

    Roger Rosenblatt

    Roger Rosenblatt  is the author of six off-Broadway plays and eighteen books, including Lapham Rising, Making Toast, Kayak Morning and The Boy Detective. He is the recipient of the 2015 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

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    • 5/5
      I bought this when my favourite used book store (call out for Russel Books in Victoria, BC!) didn't have Fay Weldon's Booker-nominated Praxis, but this caught my eye. It opens with: Doris Dubois is twenty-three years younger than I am. She is slimmer than I am, and more clever. She has a degree in economics, and hosts a TV arts programme. She lives in a big house with a swimming pool at the end of a country lane. It used to be mine...I tried to kill her once, but failed.And from there we're off on a satirical, fast-paced romp through wealthy London circa 2000. Grace has survived having her world yanked out from under her feet and a stint in prison, but maybe now the winds will blow her way. In her mid-fifties (and poorer than she expected to be at this age) she's not about to get riled by her ex-husband's new wife, "Britain's sweetheart," who is gunning for her. A younger man is smitten with Grace, and their relationship gives him the mature gravitas he craves, and Grace shocks everyone with her increasing youthfulness. In the meantime, despite all their efforts, things aren't going so well for the Ex- and his new Mrs. This story is undoubtedly slanted in Grace's favour, but the author makes interesting shifts in points of view, and sometimes in unexpected places. Sort of like when you're watching a movie and the camera quickly catches a secondary-character's reaction to something that the main character might not see. It was odd, but it worked. The other thing that was odd was the names: Doris Dubois (she pulled this surname out of her butt, it's actually something Eastern European) and the young lover-artist Walter Wells -- these two are around 30, which means they are slightly younger than me (in 2000), and "Doris" and "Walter" read much older. It turns out there was a literary reason for Doris, and I guess the Walter character just really wanted to be older. It took some adjusting from me though. And then there was a secondary character in the same age range named "Ethel." All very odd. The weirdest name, by far, was the ex-husband. Barley Salt. I first read it as "Bailey," but then realized, no, it's Barley. Okay, never heard that given name. And the surname Salt is not exactly common. Now put them together. They are both things we eat. Oats Pepper. Rice Nutmeg. Like I said, odd. Recommended for: People who like social satire. Readers who don't like to read about rich people will hate this.
    • 3/5
      Uproar in the life of an upwardly mobile property developer, his ex-wife and the jealous current one (the creator of most of the uproar). Peripheral characters from the British Government, the BBC, high-class jewellers and the art world. Frank about marital disharmony and sex for the middle-aged, easy to read, mostly amusing but with more serious undertones.

    Book preview

    Anything Can Happen - Roger Rosenblatt

    Copyright © 2003 by Roger Rosenblatt

    All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

    hmhco.com

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

    Rosenblatt, Roger.

    Anything can happen: notes on my inadequate life and yours/

    Roger Rosenblatt.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

    ISBN 0-15-100866-3

    1. American wit and humor. I. Title.

    PN6165.R67 2003

    818'.5402—dc21 2002153234

    ISBN 978-0-151-00866-7 hardcover

    ISBN 978-0-156-02955-1 paperback

    eISBN 978-0-547-67853-5

    v2.0518

    for Carl, Amy, John, Wendy, and Harris

    exceptionally adequate children

    The girls were so frightened. You know how children are? Suppose we’re taken into the air? And Doctor Paynter laughed and laughed. That can’t happen. And on the way home, I thought about Dan dying. We walked through the red rain. And I thought about you killing. And we stepped into great red puddles. And I said to the girls, I will now give you a great lesson. Because the girls must be taught. Anything can happen. That is the most horrid fact about living. Anything can happen. And we were home. And I looked at the house. And I looked at the red ocean. And it had all happened here. What we had been. What we had become. What we were.

    —LYDIE BREEZE by John Guare

    Don’t blame me. I didn’t make the world. I barely live in it.

    —Oscar Levant to John Garfield in HUMORESQUE

    Take Two

    I’d like to do that again, if I could, Mr. DeMille.

    We haven’t got all day.

    I know, I’m sorry. But I think I could make it work so much better this time. One more take?

    The first was fine. Time is money.

    Yes, yes. Time is money. But there is so much more I could bring to the lines with a second try. I’ve been thinking about the part a lot. Me as a child, for instance. I was much happier than I played it. You know? And the cruelty of my folks? Their blunders? Their neglect? That wasn’t exactly right, either. They were just people, you know? I probably haven’t done much better as a parent.

    Or worse.

    Or worse! Exactly! That’s what I mean, Mr. DeMille. If I could just do it over, I would make a few corrections. The marriage scenes, the scenes at work. And I wouldn’t thrash around as if I regretted every move I’d ever made, either. You know? That’s just acting. I didn’t come close to regretting much in my life. I really liked my life. I was just wallowing in a mood.

    Like the rest of us.

    You said it, Mr. DeMille. Like the rest of us. And as for the lonely times—the times I dwelt on?—well, they were also the most useful. You know? Like those Sunday afternoons in winter when I wandered the city like a ghost. I played those scenes as if I’d been abandoned forever when the truth was that the time by myself made me self-confident, kind of brave. So, you see, if I could . . .

    Do you realize what you’re talking about? You’re talking about reshooting the whole picture! You must be nuts!

    I just don’t want to leave the wrong impression.

    Everybody leaves the wrong impression, kiddo. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Oh, wow. The story was better than you played it. Happier, kinder, sweeter. Big deal.

    That’s it, Mr. DeMille. That’s what I mean.

    And if we rolled again, you’d play it happier, kinder, sweeter.

    I would! I would!

    And get it right this time.

    Absolutely!

    Know what your trouble is, kid?

    What, Mr. DeMille? What’s my trouble?

    You don’t know bupkis about movies.

    My Bear

    My bear is of the polar variety. He squats at the other end of my kitchen table every morning, and he stares at me with his black, black eyes. He does not move, but I hear his even snorting. Gnnn, gnnn, gnnn. Like that, in a low guttural snort that is neither threatening nor amiable. If my kitchen window is open, the breeze will flutter the tips of his white fur. He is seven or eight feet tall (I haven’t measured). There is nothing immediately alarming about him; yet, once I sit down, I am afraid to move.

    He has something to do with my innermost fears—anyone can see that. Or with my mood swings. Once I suggested to him that he might be a bipolar bear, but he showed no amusement. I offered him Frosted Flakes one morning, too. I do not think that bears have a sense of humor.

    I cannot recall when he first appeared—some years ago, certainly. It was not in the morning that I first saw him but rather one midnight, when, for lack of sleep, I came downstairs for a snack of Jell-O and there he was, glowing white in the light of a full moon. I sat and stared at him as he stared at me. Eventually, I got sleepy and retired.

    Lately, he has stirred from the kitchen, where he spends his days, and has moved up to the bedroom at night, where he squats at the foot of my bed. He seems to wish to be with me night and day. I do not know what it is about me that attracts him. If he wanted to kill me, he could have done that long ago. Bears may look cute, but they are ferocious. One swipe of the paw and I would be scattered around the room like so many pieces of paper.

    One night I decided to flatter him, but it made no impression. One night I presented a philosophical monologue to him—something that yoked the fates of bears and men together in harmony. He did not so much as blink. One night I cursed him out. I don’t know where I

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