Then, in midsummer, I met Donovan Hohn, the author of “Moby-Duck,” a nonfiction book about tens of thousands of rubber ducks that fell off a container ship, in 1992, and were later found floating all over the globe. We arranged to rendezvous at a Starbucks near East Twenty-sixth Street, where the author/customs agent lived in quiet desperation after the failure of his whaling novel, and drive up to Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, to visit Melville’s grave. The car was a 2012 Fiat 500, white like the whale, with a transmission that had developed the unfortunate habit of popping out of third gear. I hoped it would not get stove in on the Mosholu.
Melville rests in the Catalpa section, under a big square block of stone:
Herman Melville.
Born August 1, 1819,
Died September 28, 1891
(Punctuation the engraver’s.) Most of the surface of the stone is devoted to an empty scroll—a tabula rasa. Admirers have left an assortment of pens and pencils on top, as if to help the writer overcome his fear of the blank white page. I contributed a Blackwing stub that I found in the glove compartment. Donovan and I took each other’s picture to document the occasion. I was wearing my most daring T-shirt—turquoise, with the Leviathan rippling across my chest—but at the last minute I slipped behind the monument, suddenly aware that whale apparel can invite unflattering comparisons.
On Halloween, I went on foot from Long Island City to Greenpoint via the Pulaski Bridge, to surprise Bernard in his bookstore. Greenpoint could have been Nantucket, with a torch burning outside the local inn. Three blocks in from the East River, Manhattan Avenue was bustling with trick-or-treaters—dinosaurs and Grim Reapers, celebrity chefs, Big Bananas from “Spongebob.” My costume was a sou’wester and a pea jacket over several Melville T-shirts. The original plan was to peel them off at the party, one by one, in a sort of merch striptease, except that on the way to Brooklyn I got cold and dispensed with the idea of a performance—wasn’t it enough just to show up?
On Freeman Street, I fetched up outside a curious storefront with a horned animal skull and various plants out front: Clown Show Prison. People were getting the shop ready for the party. Bernard was in the rafters, hoisting up a painting that nobody liked. He climbed down to talk, and I asked him something I had been wondering about ever since our chance encounter on the boardwalk: What is the significance of the name Clown Show Prison?
He explained that he and his crew—partners in the bookstore as well as roommates—were walking around the Lower East Side one day when they were invited to a show in progress and lured into a basement where students at a clown school were taking their final exam, trying to elicit laughter from a captive audience. It was painful. “We felt like we couldn’t leave,” Bernard said. When they got out, they referred to the experience as Clown Show Prison and thought of it when they needed a name for the store.
I bought a book, of course—there is no getting out of Clown Show Prison without buying a book—and then, on an impulse, I unpacked the only Melville T-shirt I was not already wearing and thrust it at Bernard. It was the single most unflattering item of clothing I owned: when donned, a tondo portrait of the bearded Melville fell directly over my paunch. I’d seen myself in it in a group photo and knew I would never wear it in public again. In fact, I fell out with the friend who sent me the photo. I could, however, do housework in it, and I happened to be wearing it while vacuuming on the morning of January 6, 2021, when I bore witness, via live TV, to the insurrection at the Capitol, a shocking act of treason that I still can’t believe happened, even though fresh shocks are administered daily.
“For me?” Bernard said. He couldn’t see that the shirt was cursed with conflict and cross-stitched with terror, but we both noticed that it was several sizes too large for him. Maybe he could use it as a flag.
Only now does it occur to me that Clown Show Prison is not just a good name for a bookstore but also the perfect metaphor for life under the current Administration. ♦
