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September 4, 2026
from Making Toast
by Roger Rosenblatt
“I’m mad at Boppo.”
What role does humor play in a grief memoir? It is not a requirement of the form—grief can simply blot laughter out in some writers—but when it happens it is almost always a relief, a releif that in the end does not reduce the sadness, but increase it. I think of relief in sculpture, where the contrast against a flat surface allows the true subject to stand out more clearly.
Making Toast is Roger Rosemblatt’s wrenching memoir of the early death of his daughter, Amy, a pediatrician, wife, and mother of young children. The book includes moments of humor that lighten the load for the reader, but in the end make the story even more heartbreaking.
In lieu of a commentary, I’ll create a set up for the Paragraph of the Week.
Set Up
In Making Toast, Roger Rosenblatt tells the story of his nickname Boppo. Not content to have an ordinary grandparent name he chose El Guapo, “the handsome one,” after the good looking, albeit mediocre, Red Sox relief pitcher. His daughter Amy did not like the name, but took solace in the fact that the children could not pronounce it correctly. It came out as Boppo. “Such a sad story,” said Amy. “He thought of himself as the handsome one, but he became a clown.” Boppo certainly likes the name. “Whenever inspiration strikes,” he writes, “I launch into the ‘Boppo National Anthem,’” which begins “Boppo the Great! Boppo the Great!” and includes the memorable line, “I can’t wait for Boppo the Great!” All of this silliness makes Amy, the daughter who dies as a young mother, flicker alive briefly in this book about losing her. Amy wrote her own song about her boy Sammy that ended “You’ve got big toes and little feet” which Boppo thought cute though he believed “it lacked the grandeur of an anthem.” He goes on in the Paragraph of the Week to list one more advantage to a name that can, like humor, change the subject without changing it at all.
—THE
Paragraph of the Week
Yet the name has advantages. One morning Jessie had Hannah Montana's "Nobody's Perfect" cranked up to an obliterating level. "Turn it down, Jess," I told her. She obliged by grudgingly diminishing the volume one-hundredth of a millimeter. I scowled. She lowered the noise even less. "Turn it down, Jess!" She stomped over to the CD player, turned it off with a dramatic flick of the hand, stormed upstairs, and would not speak to me for much of the rest of the day. She was also grumpy with a playmate. "What's the matter with you?" I overheard Harris ask her. She said, “I’m mad at Boppo!” How long can one be mad at Boppo?
—Roger Rosenblatt
This Visible Speaking
Check out Kathryn Winograd’s new blog of words and photos called This Visible Speaking here. Read our feature on her book by the same name here.
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Announcements
The Beloved Republic Recognized
by the PEN Award Series
The Beloved Republic has been selected for the Longlist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
PEN International is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous International PEN centres in more than 100 countries.
Other goals include emphasizing the role of literature in the development of mutual understanding and world culture; fighting for freedom of expression, and acting as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed for their views.
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The Beloved Republic by Steven Harvey
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Closes Book Publication Arm
The Humble Essayist Press has always needed to stay humble in its ambitions, and with the publication of our final book, Time's Passage by Robert Root, the passage of time has brought the book publication arm of the Humble Essayist Press to an end. Its editors have set off on other composing and editing projects with much appreciation and admiration for the texts that THE Press was allowed to bring into the world. We hope those books continue to have readers and to those authors we urge, “Write on.” Thanks so much for giving us what you did.
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