Anything Can Happen : Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours

The author of the deft Rules for Aging returns with thirty hilarious and engaging tales about the everyday human comedy, forcing the reader to laugh out loud at the silliness of the world.Funny, ironic, and penetrating, Anything Can Happen is another rich and rewarding collection that demonstrates the agile wit that has endeared Roger Rosenblatt to readers everywhere.

ROGER ROSENBLATT is the winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize, a Peabody Award, an Emmy, and two George Polk awards. He writes essays for Time magazine and for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He lives in Manhattan and Quogue, Long Island.

CONTENTS

Take Two

My Bear

Lecture to One Suffering Yet Another Identity Crisis

On Aristocracy

What Bothers Me

Advice to Those About to Acquire a Rembrandt

Tyranny for Beginners

Don't Take Your Soul to New England

Stopping by Words on a Snowy Evening

On Your Conduct at the Dinner Party

My Stump Speech

On Class Distinctions

Shorter Than Bacon's

A Song for Jessica

New Year's at Luchow's

Yo, Weatherman

The Men's Room Wall: A Fantasy

Beautiful Houses

Lines Written Nowhere Near Tintern Abbey

Twenty Things One Would Like to See in Movies

Odes for a Rainy Afternoon

The Albatross That Brought Everyone Good Luck

Bring a Wildebeest Home to Mother

Jaws's Side of Things

Dogstoevsky

Love Song

Go Where You Are Loved

Essays. I, Too, Dislike Them

If in My Sleep

Instructions to the Housekeeper

"Neglect"

With Narcissus in the Aquarium

Kilroy Was Here

The Puppet Theater of Your Irrational Fears

Teach the Free Man How to Praise

The Day I Turned into the Westin

Cliff's Other Notes

Environmentalists

Hearing Test

Everywhere a Hit Person

Lessons for Grades 1 to 6

If You Had Given It a Moment's Thought

The Bathroom for You

13 Ways of Looking at a Blackboard

Something's Wrong

Shorter than Bacon's (More)

The Giant Rat of Sumatra

In the Madhouse in Beirut

Should Your Name Appear

Things I Can Take, Things I Can't

Relax

Cliff's Other Notes (More)

The Inventor of Time

Explanation to an Unprincipled Employer

Signs of Accomplishment as Depicted in the Rear Window of a Volvo

A Valediction for All Occasions

A Brief History of Idiocy

The Intervention of Facts

You Think I'm Kidding

Ashley Montana Goes Ashore in the Caicos

How to Live in the World

Aubade

Instructions to the Pallbearers

On the Other Hand

The Grateful Living