Feeling unique is what we all have in common, it’s the thing that’s always the same. - Jonathan Lethem

Anonymous, where among the hard-bitten, laid-off-lathe-operator

Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of relief at having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence? Detective stories always have too many characters anyway. And characters mentioned early on but never sighted, just lingering offstage, take on an awful portentous quality. Better to have them gone.

I jotted the name down mentally on that tattered notepad I call a memory. The pen skipped.