Forty-seven years ago today, in our house in a quiet suburb of Geneva, I was awakened by my father, who was exuding beer fumes and a certain triumphalism. "I said so, didn't I?" he said. "I said they'd get him. Well, they got him." News had just come in of President Kennedy's assassination, in a place called Dealey Plaza in the faraway city of Dallas, Texas. I'm not sure who Dad's "they" were, but I remember the giant black headlines and the never-seen-since black border around the front page of The New York Times, European edition, that he was holding up. It was around nine at night in Switzerland. With the joy of the newshound and radio buff, he stayed up most of the night, tuning his short-wave radio into far-flung stations like Hilversum and Hong Kong and lining up his empties next to the chimney.
        When I visited Dealey Plaza a few years ago I was impressed by its state of preservation. Little if anything had changed since November 22, 1963. (Indeed, the city authorities have decreed that it should remain forever as it was on that day.) I recognized everything, as everyone of my generation did: The Texas Book Depository; the Grassy Knoll; the pergola; the gently sloping street that led, and leads, to Parkland Memorial Hospital....
        Bizarrely, C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died that day, their deaths washed away in the tsunami of Kennedy stories. Talk about bad timing.