Ralph Silverman was my best friend in high school. He’s the smartest person I’ve ever known. Incredibly Ralph lost everything: family, friends, career, home—and for decades he survived as a penniless nomad sleeping on sidewalks in the rain or in alleys or abandoned lots in Miami Beach. His story inspired this novel.
By FRED WAITZKIN
Anything is Good
Novel
From the celebrated author of Searching for Bobby Fischer, Anything Is Good is a hypnotically compelling tale of a man haunted by the fate of his childhood buddy Ralph, and of that friend’s pleasures and misfortunes as he navigates an unhoused life—a life more complex and dramatic than a bypasser might ever imagine.
Ralph Silverman was a victim of bullies, and a boy genius. He held long conversations with his pet parakeet and spent countless hours on a computer, creating mesmerizing music and solving problems in philosophy. He was the son of a wealthy outer-borough businessman with shady associates and a secret second family and a friend of great scholars in philosophy. And, as he begins to take over the story from the narrator, Ralph finds himself in South Florida, physically abused and expelled into a frightening world of the unhoused—with a broken pair of glasses, no money, and no shoes.
Picture by non.sleeper
“Anything Is Good . . . offers a deeply affecting dive into the lives of the unhoused. Its shifting perspective and changing narrative voice builds to a clarion call for greater empathy and understanding.”—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning author of March
“Anything Is Good . . . offers a deeply affecting dive into the lives of the unhoused. Its shifting perspective and changing narrative voice builds to a clarion call for greater empathy and understanding.”—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning author of March