Oddly, later that day he was due to drive to Essex on the trail of JA Baker, "a private and pained man, in flight himself", who converted his sorrow and solitude into a masterpiece of enraptured ornithology, The Peregrine.
But I do know that my father, a gentle, warm but occasionally pained man, felt a mixture of guilt and loss in adulthood, almost a sense that a piece of him was missing, a piece that belonged to the brother who never made it.
It's an astonishing story – the roots of which Erdrich found in the Ojibwe culture she herself hails from – told by a storyteller both formidable and tender, her talent for description second to none: pained men "stacking heartache" as they chop wood; or poor LaRose, attempting to fit in to his new family, "It was like his mouth had a little strainer that only let through pleasant words".
All of these pained men are haunted by the past, drowning in the present, and drifting toward death.
For a moment, the rampant, scathing merriment of Bowling for Columbine abated and another truth peeped through: that even our political enemies may be decent, pained men; that something debilitating may wait for all of us.
That the autobiography remains unpublished would have pained the man who composed the following line, which appears at the end of "The Class" and may well be considered a tag line for both the book and Segal's life: "Fear of death is universal.
But, a few years ago, when Grodin was in his mid-seventies, he began to act again: demand for his representations of pained, wincing men somehow overpowered his wish never to leave Wilton.
Woman "Risky innit?" Man (pained to have to share his Special Forces fantasies with an unbeliever) "Well, you hide in plain sight".
As a child, I once heard that slavery was worse for black men than black women, because black men were pained by their inability to protect the women they loved.
Sam Crane takes the speaking part, suggesting a modest man still pained to be reminded of his enforced castration at the age of 10.
The blow of the crane kick stunted Johnny's emotional growth; his casual racism, reflexive sexism, and chronic old-fogeyism reflect the mental habits of a man too pained by contemporary life to adjust to it.
