When it happened I was standing in a bookstore reading. I had stopped at Three Lives on the way home ostensibly looking for a particular book, even though I knew that the store is so small, so demurely civilized that it almost never has the book I am looking for (not even when I was looking for Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays which features - on the cover! - a photo of a woman standing in Three Lives reading), and there was little chance that it would have George Steiner's book, The Uncommon Reader. The real reason that I was there was that stopping by a bookstore on the way home seemed like a special privilege, a way of turning the inevitable commute into a late afternoon stroll. As it turned out, Three Lives did not have the book I was looking for, or even the other book I was looking for, or even the new reissue of Eichmann in Jerusalem that I'd considered buying when I saw it there only a few weeks ago laid out neatly next to the other attractively packaged volumes in the Penguin “Great Ideas” series. I thought about buying a book by Orhan Pamuk and then felt embarrassed about being a part of the Nobel Prize-winner's "bump" in sales. I ended up reading E.L. Doctorow's new book, The Creationists – his short essay on Dos Passos. I was thinking about the opening of U.S.A. when I heard a man yelling. What was he saying? The word I heard was that unprintable, unmentionable word that one seems to hear all the time, on the street, on the radio, in movies, apparently stripped of its earlier violence. He shouted it again. The doors of the tiny bookstore had been left wide open to the street, inviting in passersby. As the man walked past the open door, I saw his face clearly, though all I remember now was that he was old and white, and did not look especially insane. He was dressed in a puffy winter coat and was carrying what looked like a laundry bag. I looked around. The woman who had told me a few minutes earlier that the store could “special order” the Steiner book was standing nearby, nervously facing the same direction. I tried to go back to reading the essay, back to Dos Passos, back to my admiration not only for his work, but for the life of the author, his ambition and productivity and commitment to putting himself in the center of the action, but then I heard the man's voice again, and I could not read another word. What would Dos Passos do? I had just been reading about the Spanish Civil War, about Hemingway and Dos Passos splitting over the murder of José Robles. I thought that I should walk over and punch the man in the face. This seemed like the brave act of principle until I reminded myself how little courage it would take to hit an old man. I could not tell if he was talking to anyone in particular. Whose defense would I come to? "You filthy, no good n-----." I couldn’t see the old man any more but I could still feel his presence. I listened for a response, waiting for some evidence of a victim, some sign to tell me how to act. Was reading cowardice? A young, pretty mother walked past the open doors holding her daughter's hand. The girl said something I couldn't hear, and then the mother who was like so many mothers in the neighborhood – finely dressed, composed, and well-married – said to her daughter, "Well, I don't like that word either." The wind picked up, colder than anyone had expected it to be. I couldn’t hear the man’s voice any longer. The store clerk went back to the cash register. I looked back down at the book that was still in my hands, unable to think of any surer response than this.
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