‘You Know, I Think I Probably Could’

Michael Chabon, remembering Ricky Jay:

Though I knew him for seventeen years, I never had the chance to spend as much time with him as I would have liked. So I was, am, and always will be grateful that among those rare occasions was the day I accompanied him—traveled in his wake, would be more like it—to the California International Antiquarian Book Fair. The experience was kind of a cross between walking into a Strip casino with Frank Sinatra in his heyday, touring violin shops in Cremona with Itzhak Perlman, making a circuit of the Tokyo fish market with Jiro Ono, and returning to the North Pole with Santa Claus after a long night’s around-the-world journey.

★ Monday, 18 February 2019