February 11 turns out to be one of those Muscovite-like Chicago days, the temperature around 10 above zero, a sleety schmutz blowing in the wind. At Meiselman's suggestion we meet at a Greek restaurant called the Golden Olympic, upon whose awning is written, you'll have to believe me on this, "A Family Restaurant with Just a Touch of Greece." 

Meiselman is awaiting me, sitting at a table towards the back of the restaurant, papers spread out before him. In preparation for this lunch, I had dragged my eyes across his manuscript. Not exactly what people nowadays call an easy read. The writing is serious but with an air of hopelessness about it; or maybe it is hopeless with an air of seriousness about it. I'm not sure which. When I say hopeless what I mean is that it is beyond question unpublish-able. Meiselman's prose is clotted, filled with academic locutions (lots of "as it weres" and "if you wills"), its author stopping several times in his narrative to put down earlier scholars on the subject. Having said this, I have to add that it showed a great deal of hard work. Some of the footnotes reference books in Scandinavian languages, which made me wonder if its author had taught himself Swedish and Norwegian for this book.

Meiselman waves but does not get up. 

"How goes it, Ed?" he says, extending his childlike hand. His fingernails are dirty. Hair grows out of his ears. 

"OK," I say. "Colder, though, than a politician's kiss out there."

"Chicago, what do you expect? I'm just getting ready another draft chapter for you. It's on the Jews, our people," he says, with an odd, slightly contemptuous, chuckle.

"I'd have thought that subject maybe has been done to death."

"Not at all," Meiselman says. "Besides, I think I have a new angle on it."

"What is that?"

"It's that in emigrating from Europe, and especially Eastern Europe, the more adventurous Jews went inland and down south. The tamer Jews, exhausted by their trip, stayed in New York, which offered less in the way of opportunity. So it turns out that in New York you had lots of proletarian Jews — factory workers, house painters, milkmen — but not so many in other American cities, where Jews tended to open shops, sell goods, take more risks, be more entrepreneurial."

"Interesting," I say, and mean it. Have I underrated Irwin Isaac Meiselman?