Beyond Disbelief

Zaleski, Carol, The Christian Century

I GREW UP in an apartment on the 12th floor of a World War II era red-brick apartment building in lower Manhattan, with my parents and a goldfinch. In an identical red-brick building, across from the playground where I got m), head stuck between iron bars and had to be rescued by the rite department, lived Berenice, an elderly lady who had been my grandmother's best friend during their days at Cornell. Berenice was a pulp fiction writer who had carried on a dalliance with a celebrated author, but never married. She wrote and lectured on the "great experiment" of Soviet communism, and kept a daily journal which by her death at age 97 had grown to 85 volumes.

Her conversation was a pastiche of recitations from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and other works a photographic memory had engraved upon her mind. I can still hear …

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Beyond Disbelief. Contributors: Zaleski, Carol - Author. Magazine title: The Christian Century. Volume: 122. Issue: 2 Publication date: January 25, 2005. Page number: 33. © 2009 The Christian Century Foundation. COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group.

This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means.