A period of silence ensues but he does not appear uncomfortable or impatient in the least. I realize it doesn’t matter what we talk about, or if we talk at all. “The only thing one can do is really look at the damn things. It’s just not making much sense to talk about them,” he says.

He politely answers every one of my questions, sometimes prefaced with a weary, “I’ve been asked that before.” I have the feeling I could ask him what his credit card number is and he would tell me if he knew it. It’s not that he’s easygoing but rather somehow abstract, as if he exists on a plane elsewhere and visits occasionally when pressed. When I show him Kim Kardashian West’s Instagram, he says, “I don’t know who that is. I’ve never even heard that name. I mean, she’s famous like me?” He has an otherworldly quality which explains, completely, the answer he gave me when I posed the question, if he had to relive his life and couldn’t be a photographer what might he have done? He replied at once, “Quantum physics.”

This makes sense. While I may not be able to imagine Eggleston navigating through the mundanities of life, such as shopping for groceries or filling out a form of any kind, I can imagine a sober, sharpened, parallel-universe version of him scribbling out a Unified Theory of Everything on a paper napkin and then tucking it as a kind favor into Albert Einstein’s astonished hand. The flow of endless cigarettes, bottomless drinks, continuous images, the “why try to explain it?”-ness of the man himself: These qualities testify to something indefinable and Schrödinger’s-cat-like woven into his very nature. The Eggleston of this universe is a self-taught photographer who has succeeded in proving all his savage, elitist and uncomprehending original critics — including The New York Times — utterly, deliciously wrong. In his pressed suit he stands vindicated, fire bursting from his fingertips as he lights another American Spirit, a flesh-and-blood world changer. Everywhere he looks he notices things others miss. “I see great pictures all the time,” he says, and that is unequivocally dazzling.

WE LEAVE THE OFFICES of the Eggleston Trust and go to his apartment. The first thing one sees upon entering is a bright red plastic sign with a yellow border, printed with capitalized white sans-serif text. It warns, “THE OCCUPANT OF THIS APARTMENT WAS RECENTLY HOSPITALIZED FOR COMPLICATIONS DUE TO ALCOHOL. HE IS ON A MEDICALLY PRESCRIBED DAILY PORTION OF ALCOHOL. IF YOU BRING ADDITIONAL ALCOHOL INTO THIS APARTMENT YOU ARE PLACING HIM IN MORTAL DANGER. YOUR ENTRY AND EXIT INTO THIS APARTMENT IS BEING RECORDED. WE WILL PROSECUTE SHOULD THIS NOTICE BE IGNORED. THE EGGLESTON FAMILY.” It is a devastating thing to see. Heartbreaking. I was also an alcoholic for decades, the kind who had shakes and saw spiders. I’m not even through the hallway and my mind is racing from “I want that sign” to “What kind of doctor prescribes alcohol for an alcoholic? Where was he when I was drinking?”