The Common Ground Book: A Circle of Friends

Everyday people just rambling on about the major and minor events of their lives, not unlike the way they'd talk around the kitchen table with you if you hadn't seen them in a long time. And then every ten pages or so a famous somebody like George Plimpton or Mary Lou Retton pops up and has a say. Sometimes the topics and the words are fascinating for their very banality, sort of like the graphic stories of Harvey Pekar. And just as often you are moved by the eloquence and universality and "commonness" of all of us. Try to get a copy. It's a great bathroom book. A friend gave me one because she is among the hundreds of people featured in it. A year later I bought FIVE of them from a homeless street vendor in New York. They were kind of scuzzy with age and wear, and the homeless guy couldn't understand why I seemed so happy to find them. Nor could he remember where he had come upon them.