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Encyclopedia Brown: A Story for My Brother, Philip Seymour Hoffman

"When I watch Phil playing these parts in films that now capture a distant past, in roles that have become familiar to us, I can see so much of who he was."

Our small public library is relatively new, sparsely filled with only the most popular items: a smattering of pregnancy and parenting books, mostly on sleep training; the latest mystery novels; DVDs on how to build your own she-shed; and a few shelves of history and religion to round it out. The library, which opened in 1936, was massive, dark, and quiet, but inside that small room, there were tall windows where the sun splashed from the Genesee River onto the colorfully illustrated book covers. This was true both of Phil’s comedic scenes and more dramatic ones: Sandy Lyle sharting at the party in Along Came Polly, Scotty J. trying to kiss Mark Wahlberg’s character in Boogie Nights, and the CIA agent Gust Avrakotos smashing the window in Charlie Wilson’s War.

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