bloated with self-regard, even back when their lives had first become so extreme. Instead, the writers of the letter always deliberately seemed to hold back, as if not wanting to assail their friends with the minutiae of their good fortune.
Ash and Ethan’s letter went into the mail each year in the protective sheath of a thick, square, fat envelope that included on the back only a return address, though not one they ever lived at for more than a few weeks in a given year: “Bending Spring Ranch, Cole Valley, Colorado.”
“What kind of a ranch is it anyway?” Dennis had asked Jules originally when the property had been purchased. “Cattle? Dude? I wasn’t really sure.”
“No, it’s a
tax
ranch,” she’d said. “See, they raise little tax brackets there. It’s the only one of its kind in the world.”
“You’re bad news,” he’d said, mostly joking, but they both knew, back then, that her envy had no power of its own; it was a sickly and spreading thing that enclosed her, and all she could do was make lightly sarcastic jokes in order to expel a little hostility and remain friends with Ash and Ethan. Without the jokes, the sarcasm, the muttered comments, she wouldn’t have been able to cope too well with how much Ash and Ethan had in comparison with her and Dennis. So she talked on and on about life on the tax ranch, telling Dennis about the ranch hands who’d been hired to lasso the little tax brackets that tried to get away; she also described how the ranch owners, Ash and Ethan, sat on their porch swing, contentedly watching the laborers in action. “Not a single child laborer can be found on that ranch,” Jules said to Dennis. “The ranch owners are very proud.”
But her scenario suggested that somehow in reality Ash and Ethan were lazy and casually cruel taskmasters, when both of them were actually known to be respectful and generous to the people who worked for them, and not in a knee-jerk fashion but in a real way. Also, as everyone knew, Ash and Ethan worked constantly, going from project to project, both artistic and philanthropic. Even Ethan, in possession of a series of successes that, by the time the Christmas letter of 2009 had arrived, spanned more than two decades, never stopped and never wanted to. “When you stop, you die,” he’d said once at dinner, and everyone at the table had somberly agreed. Stopping was
death.
Stopping meant you’d given up and turned the keys of the world over to other people. The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.
Ethan Figman’s ideas were so much more valuable now than they had been in 1984, when, only three years after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he’d made a deal for an animated adult TV show called
Figland
. After the pilot was finished and had tested well, the network ordered a whole season. Ethan had insisted on doing the voice of Wally Figman’s amusingly infuriated father, Herb Figman, and that of a lesser character who lived in the parallel universe of Figland, Vice President Sturm. He’d also insisted that he had to stay in New York, not move to LA, and after a lot of tense discussion, the network, astonishingly, agreed, opening a studio for the show in an office building in midtown Manhattan. In its first year,
Figland
became a startling hit. Very few people had any idea that Ethan’s technique had been learned in an animation shed on the grounds of a summer camp under the tutelage of Old Mo Templeton—who had probably never, Jules realized, been referred to in his lifetime as Young Mo Templeton. Ethan, though, stayed youngish over the years of all his accomplishments. At fifty he was as deeply homely as he’d been at fifteen, but his curls had thinned out and turned a kind of burned goldish silver, and his homeliness gave him cachet. Once in a while, someone recognized him on
Ash and Ethan’s letter went into the mail each year in the protective sheath of a thick, square, fat envelope that included on the back only a return address, though not one they ever lived at for more than a few weeks in a given year: “Bending Spring Ranch, Cole Valley, Colorado.”
“What kind of a ranch is it anyway?” Dennis had asked Jules originally when the property had been purchased. “Cattle? Dude? I wasn’t really sure.”
“No, it’s a
tax
ranch,” she’d said. “See, they raise little tax brackets there. It’s the only one of its kind in the world.”
“You’re bad news,” he’d said, mostly joking, but they both knew, back then, that her envy had no power of its own; it was a sickly and spreading thing that enclosed her, and all she could do was make lightly sarcastic jokes in order to expel a little hostility and remain friends with Ash and Ethan. Without the jokes, the sarcasm, the muttered comments, she wouldn’t have been able to cope too well with how much Ash and Ethan had in comparison with her and Dennis. So she talked on and on about life on the tax ranch, telling Dennis about the ranch hands who’d been hired to lasso the little tax brackets that tried to get away; she also described how the ranch owners, Ash and Ethan, sat on their porch swing, contentedly watching the laborers in action. “Not a single child laborer can be found on that ranch,” Jules said to Dennis. “The ranch owners are very proud.”
But her scenario suggested that somehow in reality Ash and Ethan were lazy and casually cruel taskmasters, when both of them were actually known to be respectful and generous to the people who worked for them, and not in a knee-jerk fashion but in a real way. Also, as everyone knew, Ash and Ethan worked constantly, going from project to project, both artistic and philanthropic. Even Ethan, in possession of a series of successes that, by the time the Christmas letter of 2009 had arrived, spanned more than two decades, never stopped and never wanted to. “When you stop, you die,” he’d said once at dinner, and everyone at the table had somberly agreed. Stopping was
death.
Stopping meant you’d given up and turned the keys of the world over to other people. The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.
Ethan Figman’s ideas were so much more valuable now than they had been in 1984, when, only three years after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, he’d made a deal for an animated adult TV show called
Figland
. After the pilot was finished and had tested well, the network ordered a whole season. Ethan had insisted on doing the voice of Wally Figman’s amusingly infuriated father, Herb Figman, and that of a lesser character who lived in the parallel universe of Figland, Vice President Sturm. He’d also insisted that he had to stay in New York, not move to LA, and after a lot of tense discussion, the network, astonishingly, agreed, opening a studio for the show in an office building in midtown Manhattan. In its first year,
Figland
became a startling hit. Very few people had any idea that Ethan’s technique had been learned in an animation shed on the grounds of a summer camp under the tutelage of Old Mo Templeton—who had probably never, Jules realized, been referred to in his lifetime as Young Mo Templeton. Ethan, though, stayed youngish over the years of all his accomplishments. At fifty he was as deeply homely as he’d been at fifteen, but his curls had thinned out and turned a kind of burned goldish silver, and his homeliness gave him cachet. Once in a while, someone recognized him on
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