The news that Gerald Furness had died was met with the same reaction in New York City, where he was born; in Berlin, where he studied under Hoffner and then Matz, impressing the former, infuriating the latter; in Paris, where he developed what no less an authority than Canguilhem called “an entirely original take on epistemology”; in Boston, where he taught for two decades, sharpening some minds, rounding others, demonstrating an imperious manner in either event, earning acclaim, courting controversy, leaving only when his health failed him; in the small torn in Central California where he recovered from a series of mini-strokes and, in his own words, “played out the string,” deceptive words, no doubt, as a more candid account would have also mentioned his purchase and management of a small pistachio farm and his concurrent acquisition, finally, after frustrating false starts in Paris and Boston, an (again, in his own words) “agreeable domestic locus,” one that must be attributed largely to his second wife, Sandra, and the three daughters born to her in quick succession, Holly, Molly, and Mabel; in Reno, where he spent his final half-decade working on a “philosophy of chance,” estranged from his entire family save Mabel, who moved to be near him, who bought him clean clothes and brought him the fast food he craved, who sketched a series of moving charcoal portraits of her father in decline even as she acknowledged that the anger that taken root in her mother and her sisters was not only justified but incumbent upon them: silence.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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