Books, Arts & Manners: That Trivial Finesse

World’s Fair, by E. L. Doctorow (Random House, 288 pp., $17.95)

“On the kitchen ceiling was a wooden rack with a clothesline strung up on it; you let it down like a shade by means of a rope attached to the wall, and you dried your clothes that way.” I read this sentence and, time warp, was back in our 1947 apartment on Thayer Street. To feel again the mossy groping of wet hems hung from that weird trellis. And our kitchen water pipe, whose spent, blistered silver paint I broke open under my five-year-old thumbnail. While Mother let me play postman with old World War II ration-stamp books. Or let me turn the meat-grinder handle, cuisine-sweat, C-clamped to our cabinet shelf edge. Or . . .

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

Featured Tags

World’s Fair, by E. L. Doctorow (Random House, 288 pp., $17.95)

“On the kitchen ceiling was a wooden rack with a clothesline strung up on it; you let it down like a shade by means of a rope attached to the wall, and you dried your clothes that way.” I read this sentence and, time warp, was back in our 1947 apartment on Thayer Street. To feel again the mossy groping of wet hems hung from that weird trellis. And our kitchen water pipe, whose spent, blistered silver paint I broke open under my five-year-old thumbnail. While Mother let me play postman with old World War II ration-stamp books. Or let me turn the meat-grinder handle, cuisine-sweat, C-clamped to our cabinet shelf edge. Or . . .

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.