A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall (48 page)

He distilled each day's best thought or experience until it was no more than a cliché: while watching gulls circle the sky, he missed a step and slipped in a hummock field—head in the clouds; his desiccated hands now cracked in tire treads—you are what you eat; ebullient at the realization that he was finally making no claim to originality—nothing's new under the sun.

He decided he would dictate the status of his own freedom. Sunrise started calling him to the basalt beach a few miles away. And each morning on the black shore, grinding his way over egg-shaped stones, he swung his trekking poles overhead in great aluminum loops to keep the arctic terns from diving at his head. He walked over stones in a riffle of tide and a roil of squawks, untouched by talons and tracing bracelets over the dark earth with his poles. From above, he was one man with a revolving ensemble of birds, one man conducting the sky.

Eric Groff was the most talented of all of us. He invited me up to Montana and listened patiently to my early ravings about this book. He was the first person to take me seriously as a writer and told me to emphasize the undeveloped character of the father—which ended up being the key to the story. Eric was a brilliant reader, writer, and person. I've never met anyone as vital. He inspired his friends and his students to live bigger. I picture him with his massive arms crossed, red goatee jawing the sky, laughing that those typewritten rambles amounted to this. Thank you, Eric. Man, you're missed.

There's no way this book would exist in any form without Kevin Jaszek. As a reader, he's both brilliant and savage. As a friend, he kept me sane and focused on the book. Thank you for having the patience to suffer me—who knew how much trouble could come from a game of hangman? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Thank you to my daughter, Vivian, born with a fierce love of yellow, for teaching me to see the world in new, brighter ways. I hope you always carry with you a world steeped in color, wonder, and hilarity. All my love.

Thank you to my parents and my family for unwavering, unconditional—and totally unwarranted—trust and support.

Thank you to Jonathan Burnham and Michael Signorelli for the rare gamble they took on me and on this book. And to Barry Harbaugh for really loving books.

This novel took a long time to write. I've leaned so heavily on my friends that
Brave Man
should really be published as three pages of story and three hundred ninety-seven pages detailing all of the amazing things the following people have done. I am forever indebted to:

Erwin Cook. Jon Jackson. Billy Hart. Noah Lit. Jenny and Tom Terbell. Damian Loeb. Daniel Subkoff. James Fuentes. Alex Adler. Viktor Timofeev. Chris Arp. Miranda Ottewell. Ben Okaty. Paul Lynch. Dina Pugh. Brian Heifferon. Paolo Resmini. Kevin Shaffer. Alex Auritt. Brendan Jones. Atisha Paulson. Thomas McEvilley. Tim Carey. Chien Si Harriman. Dez Croan. Maria Wade. Casey McMahon. Alaska McFadden. Louis Epstein. Akiva Elstein. Lindsay Welsch. Aaron Zubaty. Igor Ramírez. Marcello Pisu. Peter Murphy. Matt Bardin. Michael Englander. Marc Englander. Matt Abramcyk. Jared Kushner. Rune Hedeman. Josh Cody. Barry Crooks. Chris Kartalia. Jackson Wagener. Jay Wagener. Chad Schafer. Steffen Angstmann. Kyra Barry. James Killough. Bill Beslow. Gianfranco Galluzzo. Stanley Bard. John Kule. Jon Jonisch. Van Rainy Hecht-Nelson. Drew Machat. Borut Grgic. Chris Stein. Matt Witte. Kate D'Esmond. Gabe Saporta. Tom Russotti. Russell Kerr. Josh Griffiths. Marek Berry. Josh Wyrtzen. Armin Rosencranz.

WILL CHANCELLOR
lives in New York City. This is his first book.

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This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

A BRAVE MAN SEVEN STOREYS TALL.
Copyright © 2014 by Will Chancellor. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition May 2014 ISBN 9780062280015

ISBN 978-0-06-228000-8

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