deja vu

In 2008, I published "Not My City, Not My People," about a peripatetic chair that becomes enmeshed in the Israeli-Arab conflict.   Segue, out of Miami University in Ohio published it, under the guidance of Eric Melbye, an English Professor.  The story can be found here:

http://www.mid.muohio.edu/segue/8/8maroney.pdf

This morning I read the theme of Nichole Krauss' new book, and get little chills of remembrance, a certain  deja vu on the outer edge of my perceptions:



Erin Patrice O'Brien for The Wall Street Journal

Nicole Krauss will try to follow up 'The History of Love' with 'Great House.'

Nicole Krauss's last novel, "The History of Love," was an international best seller and won several literary prizes; her new book, "Great House," also promises to be a popular and critical success. In it, four narrators describe how their lives intersected with the same piece of furniture, an enormous desk with 19 drawers, stolen from its Jewish owners in Budapest by the Nazis in World War II. The peripatetic desk inspires and intimidates its successive owners, who understand that they no more own this object than they could own another person. Ms. Krauss, 36 years old, was a poet before she began writing fiction, and in "Great House," her satin prose turns a piece of furniture into a symbol of the freight given and taken from those we love.

I'm not saying Ms. Krauss read my story and then usurped the general theme.  What I am saying is that there are only a few ideas floating out there in the spheres.  So be warned, children, don't sit on your hands.  Get to work.