How many hotels still hang up the old-fashioned keys behind the desk?

I've stayed in one, but it's a late 19th century resort restoration. They had clawfoot tubs, and carpeting that's older than I am.

Some, but mostly older hotels, non-chains.

Emmett assures me the guy dies of orgasm

You could tell him there are worse ways to go. Many. Varied. Like most other.

We did a lot of Shakespeare in high school, which I did enjoy, but my favorite was the existentialism section we did in AP senior "English", in quotes because it included Camus and Kafka.

The stuff I hated was Hardy, Dickens and the ex-hippie teacher who tried to stuff Walden and Annie Dillard down my throat. Absolutely loathed the stuff at the time (and as far as I know still do - have had no desire to revisit).

Which is funny because I LOVED my blatantly hippie American history teacher. But, then again, he was telling us all about the various president's failings along with their successes.

The Missing (Heir/ess). A simple paternity test takes care of it!

Frank, based on the incredibly numerous past occasions on which your tastes have intersected with both Hec's and mine, I think you might cautiously attempt to revisit Annie Dillard, as we both love the hell out of her (though I never attempted her in high school and have no idea what I'd have made of her if I had).

I want to like her. And if I read a little in a magazine, I do. But all that nature kind of makes me impatient.

I loved Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and it has lines that still come to me, such as when she finds herself sniffling and thinks, "I had forgotten the law of the Wild, which is 'Carry Kleenex.'"

She's also the author of my favorite quote:

I don’t do housework. Life’s too short and I’m too much of a Puritan. If you want to take a year to write a book, you have to take that year, or the year will take you by the hair and pull you toward the grave. Let the grass die. I let almost all my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls.

I once babysat for Annie Dillard's daughter (when I was about 16 and the daughter (Rosie) was 5, and she was married to someone at Wesleyan, I think), and I can attest that she lived that housekeeping philosophy. Also, her daughter would not to go bed and tried to escape out the window.