HERZOG ... Page 2 of 2

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Trepverter

is a Yiddish word

that means

 the perfect response

to what someone says

after you have departed

from that conversation

****

I first read Saul Bellow

more than fifty years ago

On the first page of Herzog,

he defines Trepverter

At that time,

I was a great reader

of first pages or first chapters,

unless the author was

Salinger or Sartre or Vonnegut

Second pages or second chapters

were usually eclipsed by

a pretty face

or 

baseball statistics

or 

NBA / NFL stories

before falling into 

the pit of neglect

 

This was true

for at least fifty books

***

More than fifty years ago,

I read Updike's 

Rabbit Redux

but

—of course—

only the first chapter

Two months ago,

I learned that

what Updike I had read

was NOT Rabbit Redux

It was

Rabbit Run

***

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