![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Again and again I play back how I picked up the phone and a man’s voice said: “Gail? This is Charles Dew.”Īnd then I try to make the jump to all the times over the last forty years when I have picked up the phone and a woman’s voice said: “Gail? This is Robb. I have spent a quiet week here on the hill with a baffled sense of absence. “Being Polite…” is a wife’s accusation hurled at her husband while they are arguing about the Rosenberg spy case. “Dale Loves Sophie…” refers to graffiti seen scrawled under a railway bridge. In the online obituary, you can see the covers of her first and last novels: “Dale Loves Sophie to Death,” which won the 1981 American Book Award for best first novel, and “Being Polite to Hitler,” (2011). Robb Forman Dew, novelist who charted daily life’s shifting emotions, dies at 73. The best obituary, which rises to the art of a literary portrait, is the May 27th one by Harrison Smith in the Washington Post. Because of the coronavirus, Charles and their sons Steve and Jack were unable to be with her in the hospital when she died. Complications from endocarditis, an inflammation of the heart’s inner lining. Last Monday morning I picked up the phone. Today is Saturday, May 30, 2020, still during the Plague. “The profound and the mundane are joined at the hip, and each one is dependent upon the human ability to recognize the other.” -Robb Forman Dew, Being Polite to Hitler (2011) ![]()
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