In a similar way my father blessed every court report and obituary notice with the weight of a remarkable life, finding unexpected depths and breadths in the thinnest journalese and kitschest sentiment, the words nothing, the drift of them everything. His kitchen filled daily with insights that belonged to an order other than that of the rags he read. He told one of my brothers that a single In Memoriam column could contain purer feeling than a book of poetry. He didn’t need literature to essay the universe. His mind only needed the smallest spark.
