The Giant's House: A Romance

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I do not love mankind.

People think they’re interesting. That’s their first mistake. Every retiree you meet wants to supply you with his life story.

An example: thirty-five years ago a woman came into the library. She’d just heard about oral histories, and wanted to string one together herself.

“We have so many wonderful old people around,” she said. “They have such wonderful stories. We could capture them on tape, then maybe transcribe them — don’t you think that would make a wonderful record of the area? My father, for instance, is in a nursing home—”

Her father. Of course. She was not interested in the past, but her past.

“If I wanted to listen to old people nattering on,” I told her, “I would ride a Greyhound bus across country. Such things get boring rather quickly, don’t they.”

The woman looked at me with the same smile she’d had on the entire conversation. She laughed experimentally.

“Oh Miss Cort,” she said. “Surely you didn’t mean that.”

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