Just before he headed over to The Half King for a reading from his new memoir, Larry’s Kidney, Daniel Asa Rose met us at a Flatiron café to talk about the moment when, in the midst of traveling to China to help his brother find a suitable kidney for a life-saving transplant, he realized that what he was experiencing was perfect material for a book…
“My natural inclination is to milk a situation for its humor,” Rose continued after we turned the video camera off, “but this was so outrageous—on the face of it, the facts were so outlandish [I knew] I had to be very accurate and just report what was happening. I was very careful not to exaggerate [and] just let Larry speak for himself.” The story flowed quickly: After two months of standing by his cousin and taking notes, Rose was able to whip a narrative into shape in just six months; “I didn’t let the words get in the way,” as he puts it.
There were, however, consequences. Somebody warned me, ‘Don’t expect a ticker tape parade when you get home,'” Rose recalled, “and I’m glad they did.” Larry had approached Rose for help finding a kidney because he was one of the few members of the family likely to even consider acknowledging Larry’s request; now, Rose says, all those other relatives are ticked off at Rose not only because he made the journey but because the two of them succeeded despite everybody’s warnings they’d fail. Once they did succeed, too, Larry stopped speaking to Rose for several months.
“Larry’s a very self-destructive guy,” Rose reflected philosophically. “He has a talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory… I knew that he would resent me for [helping], but I wanted to do it anyway.” It was, he explained, the first time he’d been called upon to help a family member from his generation, and it never occurred to him not to agree, no matter how ill-timed or inconvenient. And now that it’s over? He’s actually about to return to a book idea he was working on when Larry called—all he’ll say about that for now, though, is that he’s renting a double-wide and heading out to New Mexico for six weeks.
BONUS VIDEO: We also asked Daniel Asa Rose about how his adventure reflects on the American health care system.