The World's Thinnest Fat Man

An Excerpt: Some decades back, a Quaker named Richard Millhouse Nixonwrote a book entitled Six Crises. An opposition psychiatrist wasquick to pick up on this title and note that President Nixon saw hislife in typically manic-depressive fashion. Psychiatry and politics andreligion aside, I suspect many of us perceive our lives just as that past-President did: if not in crises, at least in watersheds where we chooseone muddy river path over another; then fall onto or avoid a sunningcottonmouth; where we either sadly stumble over or gladly hop overthe mighty snag of regret.So what did Josey learn from Mr. Garner's visit and thoseuntimely deaths? I'd like to say-my friend, I'd truly like to say-that he absorbed a myriad of lessons. But he's forever been unable toassimilate even a damned comic book moral, much less true epiphany'sinspiration. In consequence he views himself not as a higher spiritualbeing, not even as a genetically select, silken white rat capable ofconquering life's mazes, but rather as the world's thinnest fat man, continually stunning crowds below by tossing off some dazzling jewel. . .