The Topeka School

by Ben Lerner

People say of a person that “fame has changed her,” or praise her by saying that it hasn’t, but the trouble with that formulation is that fame or notoriety of whatever sort changes everything around the person, every relationship in which she is embedded, no matter what the person in question does.

How does fame affect the family of the famous?

but cooler type outwitted by the super-eloquent

Americans consistently report that their greatest fear is public speaking—greater than nuclear war or flying or drowning or snakes or spiders, greater, according to the surveys, than death itself. But why, exactly? Is it obvious that it should be scarier than driving at high speeds or tearing through the atmosphere?

I used to feel this way. Now I find Presidential elections much more terrifying.

The funeral director kept showing Rose what he called “vessels for the remains of the dearly departed” in a heavy binder, but Rose found each option too expensive; after nearly an hour of negotiation in which she repeatedly asked the director to put the cremains in a plastic bag, “I can carry him in my purse,” which he insisted was illegal, he agreed to sell her—for forty dollars cash—the pine box in which one of his marble urns had shipped. At first my mom had been exasperated by her mom’s stubbornness; by the end, we were all laughing uproariously, cathartically, at her refusal to give an inch. If only they’d offered an urn of painted tin.)

What will you do with your loved ones cremains?