Roth on being gone

Hermione Lee talks to Philip Roth in this week's New Yorker, and says something that, applied to the global soul, has particular resonance.

People go in search of ghosts whenever they return, after a long absence, to a place where they once lived. Who of us has returned to a childhood home or a city that may have figured prominently in his biography without knowing full well that seeing it again was bound to be an experience at once exciting and sad? "Haunted by the past" is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, "haunted," the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become. I agree with the Chekhov character who, when, in a crisis, he is reminded that "this, too, shall pass," responds, "Nothing passes."

Later in the interview, Roth reminds us that his character Zuckerman had "adventures as a writer" in Czechoslovakia, the U.K. and Israel. His imaginative landscape has that particular global reach. In the new novel, "Exit, Ghost," Zuckerman may finally be "gone for good," as the last words read, but the fact is he had been gone before, and not for bad.

Narco-gallina

Colombia's "El Tiempo" daily reports today on the capture and confinement of a drug smuggler near the Venezuelan border. Police report that the suspect, discovered hiding in a large agricultural sack on a bus, had several bags of coca paste, the basis for cocaine, tied to his legs and wings. The police further note that the suspect was a chicken. The chicken, reports Colonel Richard Portilla, director of operations for regional law enforcement, is being held at the local prosecutors office until further soup ingredients become necessary.

In the last year, several ducks and at least one turkey have also played mule.