Table for Two

by Amor Towles

When God the Father is smiling on a nation, when average incomes are on the rise, food is plentiful, and soldiers are biding their time with card games in their barracks, nothing seems worthier of condescension than a discussion of the weather. At dinner parties and afternoon teas, those who routinely turn to the topic are deemed boring, even insufferable. The possibility of precipitation seems worthy as a topic only to those without the imagination or intelligence to speak of the latest literature, the cinema, and the international situation—or, in short, the times. But when a society is in turmoil, a discussion of the weather doesn’t seem quite so unwelcome. . . .

For to serve the ones we love and receive their approval in return, need life be any more complicated than that?

If there is a terrain conducive to apple trees, within a few generations there will be all manner of apple trees growing branch to branch. If there is a neighborhood conducive to poetry, all manner of poets will soon be scribbling side by side.

The human race is famously adaptive, but there is nothing that a human will adapt to more quickly than an improved standard of living.

Oh, what crueler irony could there be than for the gods to infuse a young man with dreams of literary fame and then provide him with no experiences?

ten issues of Forbes magazine, which were literally (well, not literally literally, but figuratively literally) brimming with exciting new words and concepts.

Touchett

Touche?! Touch it? Tourette?

fate had brought him face-to-face with the devoted, the committed, the impassioned.

in this life, we fashion ourselves. We pick our spot and our companions and how we’ll earn our keep, and that’s how we go about the fashioning. Through the where of it, and the who, and the how. But if that is how we fashion ourselves, then surely it follows that with the loss of each of these elements comes the winnowing away.