Following are some email excerpts I put together for an informal gathering of Jacob's Columbia friends last May. They hit some of the themes that seemed to be central to Jacob's role at Columbia: his knowledge (and the generosity with which he shared it) of literature and philosophy, his denouncement of writing he didn't like, his thoughts on his own writing, his humor, and his burgeoning identity as a keen, ruthless bridge player. I thought other people might enjoy these bits of Jacob's voice too; please read on. -Kelly


i can't remember exactly why i write in lower case letters. it's either that i'm totally impotent, radically insecure, or i picked it up as some sort of time-saving cool-guy web affectation.

i think your remarks about grit sort of miss the point. of course, it's not at all true that only negative emotions produce pearls. but at the same time, writing well is so hard, that it's extremely unlikely that anyone whose need to express isn't fuelled by some sort of emotional turmoil will achieve much. there are no counterexpamples to this proposition. nabokov, the only thing maybe like one, was certainly faking it.

i'm so relieved. i just got a response to the email i sent to my comp lit prof which indicated she didn't think there was anything untoward about the timetable i've adopted. my mother asked to and read a draft of the story on the flight out. radically surprisingly, she had a few good suggestions. i'll probably send it in tomorrow, confident that it's quite good and without a worry.

i'd love to learn bridge. i've for some time thought of my inability to play as a small chink in my otherwise near-seamless social armor.

i pray to god that your 'funny' book on proust is not by alain de button. if so, we need to have a serious talk....i realized that in my ranting about alain, i neglected a key detail: he has good ideas for books, which he then writes horriby but, somehow, no one seems to notice that. the highlight of my review reading this year was when jonathon lear, a philosophy prof i know at yale and chicago skewered alain's second book _the consolations of philosophy_ in the tls. i quote from memory 'gives an account of the socratic method of such stunning banality that it would appear that hte only reason most people aren't philosophers is that it would be too boring.'

doozy can be used if the speaker's intention is obviously ironic, but when the lead singer in mishka's band said "we only have time for one more song, but it's a doozy," there was no reason to think he was belittling the coming tune. not that i even know what irony is. how ironic.

wittgenstein is one of the most difficult writers to read on one's own (he's probably the most difficult who is also, largely, right). that said, _on certainty_ is probably the best place to start. there's also a truly great biography of him written by ray monk, which is fascinating in its own right and also provides an introduction of sorts to his work.

i'm now almost ready to give the third-person narrator a shot. i think part of the problem with joseph as narrator is that my natural irony and his self-serving religious, misanthropic irony (no they're not the same thing) raise the overall level so high as to overwhelm the reader. moving to 3rd person would also address the problem of narrowness of scope, for i've tried only to include what joseph might conceivably think was important. and as i only make changes which set me back quite a bit in terms of finishing the book, this would qualify most splendidly.

a further thought about the bridge, on the five heart hand we were one short on, if i'd known we could open the bidding with thirteen, i would have assumed we were short for the slam and not opted for the blackwood, but it's probably just as well for the egos of our adversaries.