Free The Biology of Luck by Jacob M. Appel

that,” he finally says. “I thought I had something.”
    â€œAny progress?”
    â€œNone whatsoever. Except that I’ve discarded another possibility. Who said that genius is the dross of the process of elimination?”
    â€œSounds like Edison.”
    â€œThat’s the problem. I’ve read too many books of quotable quotations. Everything these days is starting to sound like Edison. Tell me the truth, man, you don’t think I’m nuts, do you? I had a conversation with my sister-in-law last night and she made me out to be certifiably stark-raving bonkers. It kind of shook me up.”
    â€œDon’t you always say there’s a fine line between genius and madness?” Larry answers, choosing his words carefully. “What about Nietzsche? And Immanuel Kant? Most great thinkers go unappreciated in their own lifetimes. Are you a bit idiosyncratic? Certainly. But crazy? Don’t let it get to you. What in God’s name does your sister-in-law know about genius?”
    â€œThe half-wit holds a MacArthur fellowship,” says Borasch. “But I take your point. I like to think of myself as functionally insane, you know, but sometimes I get to thinking that maybe she has it right, that maybe everybody else has it right, and I really am mad as a hatter. Can you reassure me one more time? You don’t really think I’m nuts?”
    â€œNot at all.”
    Larry’s gaze wanders over the rows of indecipherable squiggles in Borasch’s open notebook and he wonders precisely what he should think about the state of his guru’s mental health. He’s spent so many years reassuring his former colleague since the strike-shortened semester when they shared an office as adjuncts at Jefferson Community College, in the dark age when Larry still believed that flair at the lectern might lead to conquest in the bedroom and Borasch laundered his clothing regularly, that it’s difficult to cast off the cloak of the loyaldisciple and form an objective opinion. Larry knows Borasch’s search for the Great American Sentence is pointless, an intellectual cul-de-sac. It is the final refuge of an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist who has abandoned one too many Great American Novels and Great American Short Stories. The fate of the treatise on coincidence is less certain. Larry attempted to read several early chapters, mostly pages of logic symbols and Greek letters scrawled in longhand, and the material proved to be as dense, as thoroughly abstruse, as
Principia Mathematica
or
Finnegan’s Wake
, maybe more so, so while there is no saying that Ziggy Borasch isn’t a latter-day Bertrand Russell, deep down Larry suspects that
Fate, Fluke & Happenstance
is more style than substance.
    Borasch examines Larry with his appraiser’s eyes, seemingly searching for his own sanity in his companion’s reassuring smile. But even Borasch must know that he doesn’t have whatever it takes to write a revolutionary book; his only hope is to maintain the illusion that his meditations will alter the course of Western Civilization, for his own ego, for the expectations of others, until it no longer matters. Is that insanity? Quite possibly. And yet Larry would probably act no differently under like circumstances. Ziggy Borasch has done Larry so many good turns over the years, touting his abilities to an acquaintance at Empire Tours, referring him to his former agent at Stroop & Stone, that Larry feels obliged to perpetuate his mentor’s delusions, to revere the man into his dotage. We all have our hours of need; some just last longer than others.
    An unlikely couple occupies the table opposite: The man, although suffocating under a three-piece suit like an armored knight, is archetypically handsome. He boasts defined cheekbones and high temples, a sharp nose and a cleft chin, his strong but studious features converging on some mid-century standard of beauty. His is