Thirteen Paperback - 1996

IT WAS A DINNER PARTY like any other, where one of the persons seated next to you inevitably asks, as William Wordsworth once inquired of the leech gatherer, "How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"

In Thirteen, acclaimed journalist and author Jonathan Cott digs deep into the seemingly bottomless enigma of a number that for millennia has signified danger, mystery, and transcendence. Framed by two personal essays dated Friday, January 13, 1995, and Friday, October 13, 1995, are profiles of thirteen extraordinary and varied human beings to whose life, work, or vision the number has more than usual importance. They include a tattoo artist who notes the rise in customers' requests for inscriptions of the number; a noted composer whose name means thirteen in Italian and whose compositions are often based on the number; a Native American medicine teacher who discusses the Thirteen Original Clan Mothers; a professor who expounds on the number's meaning in Jewish mysticism; a cosmic harmonist who discusses thirteen's significance in the sacred calendar of the Maya; a female writer's reminiscence of her thirteenth year; a poet who glorifies the number in meter and rhyme; a numerologist; an astrologer; experts on the Tarot and the I Ching; and others. Cott also gives a delightful account of a visit to Philadelphia's outrageous Friday the 13th Club, whose members meet without fail on that date to flout superstition - breaking mirrors, walking under ladders, and recklessly seating thirteen at a table for lunch.