Catalogue Raisonné of My Refrigerator Door

for Joshua Starbuck, master of montage A Caledonian megalith. A tinted bather from Cape Ann. The 1937 kith and kin of a Kentuckian beside their Model T sedan. The Celts. Who set me this arith- metic of icons? Who began by pasting in Bob Dylan? Zith- erpicking rhinestone charlatan. He tries to be American. Who tries to be American as hard as him? Not Aly Khan. Not George F. Babbitt the Zenith- ophiliac Zenithian. As sure as God made Granny Smith a pricier-sounding product than the Winesap or the Jonathan, there is a mystery and myth to being an American, and being an American compounds it. Kurosawa-san, steady my Nikon while I pan across the porches of forsyth- iabedizened Mattapan in search of ... dot dot dot ... the plan, the weltanschauung, the ethnith- ifying principle a pith helmeted Oxbridge fancy-dan could pounce on like a fiend from Ran and authenticate forthwith. The cromlech beetles o’er the frith. The ultimate American possession rattles his Kal-Kan, Prince, you’re a prince. A dog a man can talk to. What this caravan of adumbrations and antith- esises panteth for is Dith Pran and the long-lost Mrs. Pran: Far-fetched, tenacious, captious: fan tabulously American.