Word: rockaways
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...Says he: "Yachts and fleets of limousines and private airplanes don't appeal to me at all. I want a comfortable life. What's the point of all that hassle?" The only son of a New York City schoolteacher and a lawyer, Icahn was the first student from Far Rockaway High School in Queens to be accepted by Princeton, where he studied philosophy. His mother worried about his future when he dropped out of medical school...
...suspicious New York City residents, the activity in Far Rockaway, a seaside community of modest homes near the city's John F. Kennedy Airport, may look like a felony in progress. But no need to call the police: the disheveled mansion is scheduled for authorized demolition. Before the bulldozers are due to arrive, Stephen Israel, an ex-hippie entrepreneur with a Grateful Dead- style beard and twinkling brown eyes that focus on the minutiae of history, has come to salvage pieces of the past: window frames, carved moldings, gargoyles and anything else of architectural interest that can be pried loose...
...this morning in Far Rockaway, the architecturals are still firmly attached to history. In the rubble-strewn grand hall that smells of ashes and mildew, Israel carefully pries at a piece of mahogany doorway molding. "You can't just come in and say, 'Hey, let's rip it down.' You have to get a feel for the construction," he says. "You have to ask if the craftsmen used nails, glue or screws...
...Rockaway, as the afternoon sun slants through the broken windows, a workman emerges from the basement and yells, "Look what I found!" Israel and the others gather around an old, 10-gal., green-glass water jug. There is a bit of water in the bottom. For a moment it almost seems that these salvage men, so thirsty for the details of the past, might take a sip of vintage 1907. But a 747 rumbles overhead, and the mood is broken. "Should we take the jug?" someone asks. "Sure," says Israel. "Somebody might want it." They pick up their tools...
Jill Eisenstadt hopes that unlike From Rockaway, the second novel will stand on its own binding. "I don't mean to sound defensive," she says at the end of our interview. "But that's the thing--people are always making me defensive about the book when it's supposed to speak for itself without you having to defend it to people. And that makes you feel like you really failed as a writer, because people aren't understanding...