HUMORZO

Love was the greatest thing, wasn’t it?

The talent of Philip Roth floats freely in this rampaging novel with a plot thick as starlings winging to a tree and then flying off again.

In a morning fog on Wednesday — at 9:45 a.m. to be precise, according to a tweet by the California Department of Public Transportation — the piece of the road at Mud Creek, south of the Big Sur region, that had cut off so many travelers, was reopened. The most famous California road trip was back on.

Many seabirds navigate by smell, mapping the oceans by the distinctive fumes that come off krill and other microscopic food sources. The same chemical signature is attached to pieces of plastic that has been in the sea for a while, which is why seabirds die from eating plastic. They’re not stupid; it just smells like their food.

I'm sixty eight,” he said, ”I first bucked hay when I was seventeen. I thought, that day I started, I sure would hate to do this all my life. And dammit, that's just what I've gone and done.

She had told him that she was not a virgin. But that turned out to be a complicated half-truth, owing to the interference of a piano teacher, when she was fifteen. She had gone along with what the piano teacher wanted because she felt sorry for people who wanted things so badly.

Things aren’t like that. They stay, their little particular lusters Warmed by much handling. They almost purr.

Over my head I see the bronze butterfly Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine, behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year’s horses Blaze up like golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life.