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The Life of Art
- Abstract
Driving down Sheridan Road, heading north in the right lane, I noticed from the rear a body, a walk, a carriage that looked familiar. It’s Janet, I thought. She was wearing a brownish, leopard-skin-patterned blouse, an ankle-length denim skirt with lace trim along the bottom, sandals. I pulled over to the curb. She bent to pick up something, perhaps a coin. Although I couldn’t get a clear view of her face, I saw thick gray hair and rimless glasses. I was on the point of calling out—“Janet?”—but, after the slightest hesitation, drove on. Janet Natalsky had been a peripheral character in our very social high school—she lacked the clothes or the easy good looks required for any position closer to the center—but she didn’t carry herself like one. She carried herself as if she were a great beauty, which she wasn’t: she was tall, with poor skin and thickish features, and unruly red hair with a too-low hairline. Driving down Sheridan Road, heading north in the right lane, I noticed from the rear a body, a walk, a carriage that looked familiar. It’s Janet, I thought. She was wearing a brownish, leopard-skin-patterned blouse, an ankle-length denim skirt with lace trim along the bottom, sandals. I pulled over to the curb. She bent to pick up something, perhaps a coin. Although I couldn’t get a clear view of her face, I saw thick gray hair and rimless glasses. I was on the point of calling out—“Janet?”—but, after the slightest hesitation, drove on.
Janet Natalsky had been a peripheral character in our very social high school—she lacked the clothes or the easy good looks required for any position closer to the center—but she didn’t carry herself like one. She carried herself as if she were a great beauty, which she wasn’t: she was tall, with poor skin and thickish features, and unruly red hair with a too-low hairline. Better, she carried herself as if she were in possession of a great secret, which, it turns out, she was. As I would discover in later years, Janet’s secret was that she, alone in all the world, knew that she was destined to be an artist—specifically, a writer.
I, on the other hand, had no secrets at all. In those sweet adolescent days, I was perfectly happy to luxuriate dab in the center. A minor athlete, a jokey Jakey, a casual master of the arts of conformity, I floated through high school completely without care, as if on an inner tube on a clear lake on a balmy summer’s day that lasted four full years.
About the Author
Joseph Epstein is a regular contributor to COMMENTARY.
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