Halberstam’s Gift: A Big Question Mark

I’m riding the bus again down to NYC. The driver goes right past NY and takes the GW Bridge over to Jersey, then around into the Lincoln tunnel. I guess the extra miles are worth it since traffic is terrible. I ride the bus with a group of immigrants. Up front a man sits with a seeing eye dog on the seat beside him, and two Russian women are behind. An animated conversation in Spanish drifts up from the back. I love the bus because I hate driving and this affords me a chance to read, type, and listen to the sounds of travel. Oh, and I also watched part of the movie 21 Grams on my laptop.

In this week’s Newsweek, I read a wonderful memorial to David Halberstam, the writer who died a few weeks ago, written by Anna Quindlen. She recounts one time that she showed up a dinner at his house and he told her she looked like ‘a vietnamese peasant.’ Which coming from one of the war’s most lucid reporters, was actually a compliment. Quindlen writes about her late friend with fondness and admiration.

She remembers that each time she and her husband would visit the Halberstam’s for dinner, upon their departure, David always said the same thing as he rumbled ahead of them to take his dog out for a walk. “Aren’t we lucky?”

“He was the most curious person I have ever known. His totem was the question mark. Sometimes he would turn himself into one, head lowered, broad back curved. He was a big imposing man with dark, drill-bit eyes, and perhaps because of that, when he spoke to certain people, kids mainly, he would arrange his body closer to the ground. he was an aerobic listener who asked questions in a voice so sonorous that it sounded like an avalanche in a deep canyon.”