Ersatz TLS discussion

Gpfr wrote: "There's also a French film adaptation of Gemma Bovery which I haven't seen...."

I'm not sure if I've seen that, but have the book - as well as the more recent Cassandra Darke.

BTW - thanks for the link to that amusing interview!

I think that settings in novels are vital, some go for a rich variety of seasons and locations, others are focused on a season and a place

In The Martyred by Richard E Kim, the setting is war devastated Pyongyang, retaken by the Allies and the season is early winter into winter, snow lies everywhere, cold winds and drab light. Kim, a northern born Korean describes the city as "another dreary northern town"

The plot is anything but boring, as army intelligence try to piece together a massacre of Protestant Korean pastors amid the propaganda war of North and South

The novel abounds with questions that make you think, Kim was a naturalised US citizen, leaving Korea in the 1950s after service in the military and studying at Harvard and John Hopkins Uni's. I dont think english was his first language but this mid 1960s novel is well written, concise and intruguing.

i am currently packing and tidying for a 8 day dogsit at my parents place, starting tommorow,as they go to the Maldives and i just flicked through the latest NYRB and found an essay entitled "The Craving for Crime". I havent read it yet but i think with crime writing dominant among the novels discussed here, it will be an interesting article for many on Ersatz TLS

AB76 wrote: "i just flicked through the latest NYRB and found an essay entitled "The Craving for Crime""

I was rather disappointed with the essay; maybe someone more enthusiastic about the genre might find it more rewarding.

It took years to understand that to read them with pleasure required a process of initiation. You had to learn what a clue was and how to distinguish it from any other meaningless detail—a smeared napkin, a burnt match dropped in a phone booth, a typewriter with a broken key. You needed to cultivate a taste for a certain kind of strangely pleasurable tedium, an appreciation of time merely passing, of objects merely existing. You had to find out, much later, by experience, how such reading even at its most flavorless could infiltrate a life: books to be read while waiting, waiting for a war to end or a pandemic to be declared over, read in the intervals, the in-between times. You had to learn how much gratitude someone might feel for the mere existence of such books: books for the bus, for the pocket, for the park bench, the night cot, the sickbed.

In an earlier issue NYRB got a convicted murderer to review Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free; I would like to read the perspective of someone with that on his CV on the fictional murder stories O'Brien discusses.

Two of the three books the review nominally addresses have "murder" in the title (Perplexing Plots: Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder and The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir); the essay also mentions two "Golden Age" titles, Murder Can Be Fun and Murder Is Easy, which would probably resonate quite differently with such a reviewer.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i just flicked through the latest NYRB and found an essay entitled "The Craving for Crime""

I was rather disappointed with the essay; maybe someone more enthusiastic about the genre m..."

i hope to read it during the dogsit....

scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "There's also a French film adaptation of Gemma Bovery which I haven't seen...."

I'm not sure if I've seen that..."

I hadn’t realized that Gemma Bovery was derived from Posy Simmonds. A very enjoyable movie, with some comical literary twists, alongside the dark moments.

Une Vie – Guy de Maupassant (1883)

Unusually for Maupassant this full-length novel is set mainly in the 1820s, not his contemporary France. A girl given to romantic dreams leaves her convent school. Within months she is married to a charming young man. They are both from the lower nobility. On honeymoon in Corsica she happily discovers things her mother never told her. But returning to her country house on the Normandy coast the husband quickly reveals his true character. He is un misérable.

We follow her through her beaten-down life. The scene is filled out with sharply drawn pictures of her parents, her maid, two country curés, and the neighbours on whom they call. She suffers every kind of misfortune. Unusually again, Maupassant allows her a final prospect of happiness. The reappearance of the maid is grandly ironic.

A critic has said that Maupassant is one of those writers who make literature look easy, like something qui va de soi. This was indeed a smooth and easy read, with plenty of incident amid the tears and desolation. Even with the upswing at the end, it feels like a fair representation of how life must have been for many women of the time, at least those who start with money and lose it.

Russell wrote: "Une Vie – Guy de Maupassant (1883)

Unusually for Maupassant this full-length novel is set mainly in the 1820s, not his contemporary France. A girl given to romantic dreams leaves her convent schoo..."

this is the one Maupassant i havent read, i started with Bel Ami and then the short stories but havent read anything else of his for over a decade. I wanted to read Afloat but it seems to have drifted into being a rarity

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i just flicked through the latest NYRB and found an essay entitled "The Craving for Crime""

I was rather disappointed with the essay; maybe someone more enthusiastic about the genre m..."

i think you will like the essay on Lenny Bernstein, i remember when i was a kid that my father was a big West Side Story fan but also liked his other music too. I am not tempted to watch the film about him at all

Claire Tomalin, A Life of My Own.
I know Lass is a fan :), both of Tomalin's biographies and of this, her autobiography. I enjoyed it a lot, I found it moving and well-written, not glossing over the hard things but not dwelling on them either.
I've read her biography of Jane Austen and have got that of Thomas Hardy waiting to be read. Recent discussions of Hardy on WWR made me want to re-read some of his books. Ah, so many books, so little time ...

I've just started reading Death's Other Kingdom by Gamel Woolsey, published by the excellent Eland.

I read some time ago her husband, Gerald Brenan's book about life in Spain just before the civil war, South from Granada. Woolsey's book begins with an idyllic hot summer day, a garden full of flowers, delicious food ... but it is to be the last such day, "... the tranquil evening drew into a peaceful tender night" and they were woken by one of their servants telling them, "Malaga is burning down".

"Lorries full of armed workmen began to appear rushing down the road. As they passed they threw up their left arms in the Popular Front salute, the clenched left fist and bent arm. With the pistols in their right hands, loaded and cocked and ready to go off, they waved to us gaily."

AB76 wrote: "I think that settings in novels are vital, some go for a rich variety of seasons and locations, others are focused on a season and a place.."

I could not agree more. I much prefer stories set in realistic locations, and can't abide tales set in never-never lands where no clear setting is specified, or when the setting is very obviously imaginary with no relation to a real place. Recent novels have been set in California, Mexico, India, Russia and Ukraine... in some cases the familiarity with the setting comes from having lived there a long time, and in others from detailed and thorough research.

If the setting is supposed to be real, then anything which cuts across its credibility demonstrates laziness and a lack of background work - IMO. (Of course, many books are set in fantasyland, a place I don't go.)

I recently finished Gringos by Charles Portis; although overall I enjoyed it, I found it less satisfactory than the - for me - two excellent novels he wrote, namely True Grit and The Dog of the South.

The protagonist is Jimmy Burns, an American who has been living in Mexico for some time. Burns is not a bum or a hippie - he works for a living - but is involved in some borderline activities. He at one time dealt illegally in Mayan antiquities (though he rationalises this by saying - perhaps with justification - that it's better for the artefacts to be bought and enjoyed by individuals than buried for decades in the vaults of a museum). He has more or less passed on that business, and now earns his crust by hauling goods here and there in Mexico and the southern states. Despite being by no means well off, Burns seems surprisingly generous with his time and willingness to loan money to people he doesn't know that well. He either has a very trusting nature, or is an excellent judge of character.

Burns lacks formal education, but has learnt a good bit along the way from his friends, acquaintances - and life. In the second part of the story, he looks for a young American academic who has got lost (apparently) in the jungles near the Guatemalan border. The whole book is full of digressions and discussions with friends, acquaintances and other more unfriendly elements. The story builds to a dramatic scene in the jungle, with a coda at the end describing the fates of Burns and the other characters.

What's not to like? Well, I did like it - but, but... it's not as good as the other two books. Why not? These are my reasons:

1. Too much digression. Don't get me wrong... I like a bit of digression, and am pretty tolerant of it... but in the other books mentioned, there is a clear quest. In 'True Grit', a young girl hires a bounty hunter to track down and kill her father's murderer. That provides the story with a clear trajectory; any digressions are incidental. In 'The Dog of the South', the protagonist has had his wife, gun, car and credit cards stolen by a 'friend', so he sets out to track down the runaway couple. More discursive than 'True Grit', but again we have a clear quest. In "Gringos', despite the search for a 'lost American' and also for an apparently kidnapped teenager, the focus isn't there. These searches appear quite a way into the book, and Burns does not seem as focused as the main characters in those other novels.

2. The nature of the digressions: we have a great deal to amuse us in Portis' works, and I find some passages in all the books LOL funny - this is no exception. But too much is written about the weird and wonderful beliefs of the other characters. There is a failed academic who is convinced he'll be recognised as a genius on his demise - we hear a good deal from him about his daft theories about Mayan and other civilisations. There are hippies and UFOlogists - they get their say at length. There are doomsday cultists - again, we are told about their ideas that the world will end on New Year's day (as if the Mayans had the same calendar...) etc. Burns is neither a believer nor a flat-out sceptic, as he lacks the formal education to judge. He sits on the fence, thinking maybe/maybe not. A sceptical protagonist would have dismissed all this guff, and we'd have had a shorter and better novel - IMO, of course.

So, a likable book but not a great one. (I think that there was a third problem for me, but I've forgotten what it was... I'll come back to that if I remember!)

3. Ha! A quick check of Amazon reviews soon reminded me of the third problem - as someone wrote: Frankly, there are so many characters involved that by the last few chapters I no longer knew precisely who was being talked about at any given time. That was also my experience -the other two books have fewer characters and so it's easier to remember who is who. In the coda to this one, Portis seems to feel obliged to tell us what has happened to many people briefly introduced a couple of hundred pages earlier - but WE DON'T CARE! Most of us have no idea who these people are/were and weren't that invested in their fates anyway given their minor involvement in the story. So - an editor needed to say: cut down on the characters and cut down on the details of daft theories.

Recommended, with those reservations.

scarletnoir wrote: "I could not agree more. I much prefer stories set in realistic locations, and can't abide tales set in never-never lands where no clear setting is specified, or when the setting is very obviously imaginary with no relation to a real place."

I've been thinking about an NYRB review by Nathaniel Rich I read earlier this year of Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II.

The book evidently makes the argument for certain works of fiction as an supplement essential for understanding the historical record. Toward the end of the review, Rich states

A novel’s success depends not on its faithfulness to reality but on the author’s ability to beguile the reader into empathizing with its hero and, for a brief time, exchanging the reality of the world for the reality of the novel.

Rich limits his examples to novels which are also discussed in the book, whose settings are Europe during the Spanish Civil War and World War 2, but his formula of "exchanging the reality of the world for the reality of the novel" certainly applies to books that are not set in "the fields we know" (in Lord Dunsany's phrase).

Since reading Tolkien in my youth, I would have to admit that, in my imagination the Mines of Moria are more substantial than Nebraska.

AB76 wrote: "i think you will like the essay on Lenny Bernstein"

Indeed, Philip Clark's essay is undoubtedly the best thing I've read about Bradley Cooper's film.

Since I don't go to the theater and don't subscribe to any streaming service, I've completely stopped seeing recent films, so there was never a question of my actually seeing Maestro, but I'm not sure I would have watched it anyway.

As a person who lives for classical music, I would seem to be the target audience for it or a film like Tar, but somehow they don't exert an appeal. Part of that may be due to reviews that play down the musical aspects of the films to discuss what they perceive to be the film's real subject: Tar is "really" about Power, and Maestro is the Story of a Marriage. Presumably these subjects will appeal to a mass audience indifferent, if not hostile, to symphonic music.

I found Clark's review engaging because he imagined what a Bernstein film would be like if it actually dealt with Lenny's life in music.

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I think that settings in novels are vital, some go for a rich variety of seasons and locations, others are focused on a season and a place.."

I could not agree more. I much prefer sto..."

i also find a well written novel can deliver so many details about a place i have never been to. Reading an australian novel set in newcastle,nsw had me almost living in that city via narrative descriptions, maps of google and photos. Oddly enough my next novel after the Kim one will be set in newcastle,nsw as well, will be interesting to see how the authors depictions differ.

Russell wrote: "Une Vie – Guy de Maupassant (1883)"

Having only read and loved de Maupassant's short stories I tried Fort Comme La Mort a few years ago and thought it was dreadful, so I determined to stay with his short stories, but your review has certainly given me pause for thought.

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I could not agree more. I much prefer stories set in realistic locations, and can't abide tales set in never-never lands where no clear setting is specified, or when the setting..."

that book looks very interesting, i have read quite a few WW2 and spanish civil war novels

AB76 wrote: "Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I could not agree more. I much prefer stories set in realistic locations, and can't abide tales set in never-never lands where no clear setting is specified, or whe..."

I clipped this from Powells website - showing June for PB release. Note that at Powels a new copy is $153.

Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II
by James A. W. Heffernan

ISBN13: 9781350324992
ISBN10: 135032499X



Product Details
ISBN:
9781350324992
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
06/27/2024
Publisher:
Bloomsbury Academic
Language:
English
Pages:
216
Height:
1.00IN
Width:
6.14IN
Author:
James A. W. Heffernan

MK wrote: "Note that at Powells a new copy is $153."

The listing in the NYRB review says "Bloomsbury, 204 pp., $115.00"

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Russell wrote: "Une Vie – Guy de Maupassant (1883)"

Having only read and loved de Maupassant's short stories I tried Fort Comme La Mort a few years ago and thought it was dreadful, so I determined to stay with his short stories, but your review has certainly given me pause for thought."

The writer of the preface to the Folio Classique edition of Une Vie makes some pretty large claims for the book, along the lines of it chronicling the rise and fall of entire social classes, and showing he could have become the French Turgenev or the French Tolstoy – if only he hadn’t gone off and written all those short stories! I think it’s perfectly interesting and enjoyable without having to make an exaggerated case for its importance.

I've read Fort comme la Mort but can't offer a comparison as I don't remember a thing about it and won't unless I go back and check the plot, which is often the way for me with Maupassant - great to read in the moment, and then they all kind of merge. The only ones that stand out distinctly in my memory are Yvette and Boule de Suif, both brilliant and in their way tragic.

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Russell wrote: "Une Vie – Guy de Maupassant (1883)"

Having only read and loved de Maupassant's short stories I tried Fort Comme La Mort a few years ago and thought it was dreadful, so I determined to stay with his short stories, but your review has certainly given me pause for thought."

Of the novels I've read only Bel Ami, but that's a good one. Depressing, though, in some ways, mainly in how the lead character treats women -and gets away with, for the most part.

scarletnoir wrote: "I recently finished Gringos by Charles Portis; although overall I enjoyed it, I found it less satisfactory than the - for me - two excellent novels he wrote, namely [book:True Grit|257..."

You make good points about True Grit and Dog of the South, both of which I've enjoyed. Portis was great at giving his characters individual voices.

scarletnoir wrote: "I recently finished Gringos by Charles Portis; although overall I enjoyed it, I found it less satisfactory than the - for me - two excellent novels he wrote, namely [book:True Grit|257..."

Portis is on my list....though in 2023 i failed to get round to read another classic western novel Shane, so when i have read that, Oakley Hall or Portis will be my next "western"

Lonesome Dove is another classic western. It has the narrative oomph required for a true epic.

scarletnoir wrote: "I recently finished Gringos by Charles Portis; although overall I enjoyed it, I found it less satisfactory than the - for me - two excellent novels he wrote, namely [book:True Grit|257..."

The doctor and Webster Spooner and I were all in the power of women.

Robert wrote: "Lonesome Dove is another classic western. It has the narrative oomph required for a true epic."

good reminder robert, thats also on list

it was the Williams post-western novel Butchers Crossing that re-ignited my interest in the western novel. I have always been interested in the era where the USA moved beyond its early frontiers and the tragedy of the Indians but i hadnt read another western since The Virginian in 2012 when i picked up the Williams novel last year

OK, an article in the NY Times (gift link) attempting a deep reading of the title of Taylor Swift's next album.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/st...

Immediately after the album announcement, a post on Ms. Swift’s Instagram and X accounts revealed what appeared to be the album’s Lord Byron-esque artwork: a gray-scale photo of Ms. Swift, spread across a bed in luxurious anguish.

The title calls to mind the Robin Williams film “Dead Poets Society” — also sans apostrophe — said Adrienne Raphel, a poet and the author of “Our Dark Academia,” who noted that the film was released in 1989, Ms. Swift’s birth year.

“Tay is taking us full dark academia mode,” Ms. Raphel continued, referring to an online subculture that emphasizes reading, writing and a gothic fashion sense. “Let’s not forget the article: ‘the.’ ‘The’ also conjures academic programs: the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Ivy League.”

Can someone tell me in what way the above image is "Lord Byron-esque"?

Just started Shlomo Avineri's biography of Theodor Herzl, Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State as the great visionary only lived till the age of 44, its a life that crammed a lot in, most of it frantic thought.

Reference is made to 1,500 pages of Herzl's diary and it made me lament how rare it is to see diaries like this translated, in full, into english. I have become a fan of literary or intellectual diaries in last 3-4 yrs and its really clear how much is untranslated and or out of print from great thinkers like Dostoyevksy and Herzl.

The book opens with Herzl's one and only trip to the future land of Israel, where he delivers a speech on zionism to Kaiser Wilhem the 2nd, a few weeks after meeting him briefly to discuss the idea of securing land for Jewish settlers. Herzl's diary extracts that Avnieri includes show he was admiring of the natural beauty, though alarmed at the beggars and the inter-ethnic tensions in Jerusalem.

The Kaiser referred to the heat in a chat with Herzl but said the land had a good future but more water needed, Herzl concurred.

Bill wrote: "

OK, an article in the NY Times (gift link) attempting a deep reading of the title of Taylor Swift's next album.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/st......"


Thought I'd strayed into a soft porn site for a moment!

Bill wrote: "..Can someone tell me in what way the above image is "Lord Byron-esque"?"

Beats me.

After the provincial nobility of Maupassant’s Une Vie it’s on to a very different scene, the hard lives of Breton fishermen line-fishing for cod in the icy waters off Iceland, and the women at home fearing for their return - Pierre Loti’s Pêcheur d’Islande. Same smooth narrative style, same adept characterization, almost same year of publication. A few chapters in and enjoying it, though you just know there are going to be drownings.

Bill wrote: "Since reading Tolkien in my youth, I would have to admit that, in my imagination the Mines of Moria are more substantial than Nebraska."

As I have said many times - we're all different, and like different things. I have no time, patience or interest in fantasy writing for adults.

'Game of Thrones'? Forget it. Superhero films? Seriously not interested.

There are rare exceptions: I did like the film 'Blade Runner', and had some fun with the TV series 'Star Trek', but as a genre SF is not something I follow assiduously.

Three Novels of the Early 1960s: The Zebra-Striped Hearse / The Chill / The Far Side of the Dollar by Ross Macdonald

A number of Macdonald's Lew Archer novels are unavailable even second hand, and so on this occasion I'm indebted to the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/about/) for enabling me to borrow and read two titles I hadn't been able to buy - The Zebra-Striped Hearse and The Far Side of the Dollar. (I had already read The Chill).

Well up to the usual standard - if you like Macdonald/Archer, you'll like these. I won't go into the plots, but will mention that this online volume has at the end two interesting, detailed sections. The first is a timeline of Keith Millar's (Macdonald's) life, which provides far more details than his Wikipedia entry. His parents (who became estranged when he was around 8) lived an itinerant life, and later he was passed around various relatives as his mother was too poor to look after him properly, it seems. Despite this, he excelled at school; perhaps because of this, he became involved in some delinquency and minor criminal activity as a teenager (though still doing well at school, amazingly). He must have been exceptionally gifted. Perhaps not surprisingly, given all that and later experiences (for example, war service in the battle of Okinawa) he had mental issues later in life. He would make a good subject for a biography... maybe one exists.

The second section after the novels fills in background information, including on the very many literary and biblical references in the stories - some of which I recognised and some not. These are in no way intrusive and are well integrated into the text. (Such references, when clumsily handled by some authors, drop into the narrative with all the subtlety of a brick.)

I still have a few Macdonalds to track down and read; it makes a nice change from dealing with plumbers, electricians, recalcitrant machines and tech, and awkward dogs!

Some time ago, we were sharing pictures of owls. My daughter sent me this little clip, Owls fly in absolute silence:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C0dFwRRrJg5/

The Martyred by Richard E Kim(1964) was the first of a trilogy of novels concerned with his native Korea, written in English as he studied in the USA and became a US citizen

Relentlessly questioning, unsettling and sparse, with a wintry backdrop of re-occupied Pyongyang in 1950, it concerns an investigation into 12 presbyterian ministers killed by the communists in the city a few months before. The themes of christianity, morals, faith and lies circle about the army intelligence captain who narrates the novel. Both him and his senior officer are baptized christians but have no faith, his superior Colonel Chang drives the novel with his questions and his mature viewpoint of a world at war.

Pyongyang was a centre of christianity in Korea b4 the war, 16% of the city population were Christians but the war ended that. Kim re-creates the last days of the ruined re-captured city before the Chinese interference in the war begins. The South Korean army has already decided not to defend the city. What of the Christians who will be left behind?

Amazingly this novel has lain on my pile for 12 yrs, which considering how good it is, has baffled me!

scarletnoir wrote: "Ross Macdonald

He would make a good subject for a biography... maybe one exists...."

scarletnoir wrote: "As I have said many times - we're all different, and like different things. I have no time, patience or interest in fantasy writing for adults."

My main takeaway after reading Poe was that, in fiction the literary imagination is absolutely sovereign; anything that can be thought and that the author can find the words to express is permissible.

Given that, the concept of “realism” becomes an arbitrary, Oulipo-ian constraint the author voluntarily submits to.

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "As I have said many times - we're all different, and like different things. I have no time, patience or interest in fantasy writing for adults."

My main takeaway after reading ..."

i am a big fan of thevictorian fin de siecle and edwardian horror/ghost tales that i have mentioned before and have no problem with other novels or stories that deal with fantasy, though i wouldnt want to read a load in a row, they are better than crime fiction but need to be well crafted, they happily avoid the formulaic crime trap of course.

Phillip K Dick always asks serious questions related to real life, dressed up in new worlds, as do Le Guin and Heinlein.

Poe remains as the source of a lot of the great fiction that drifts into other worlds, though i would include the German romantics like Hoffmann, Von Kliest,Brentano and others as sources too, for the later series of great Victorian fin de siecle and Edwardian horror-uncanny writers such as Le Fanu, Doyle,Machen, De La Mare,Stoker, Benson etc

Bill wrote: "anything that can be thought and that the author can find the words to express is permissible...."

Oh, I quite agree - but not that "anything that can be thought" (by an author) is necessarily of interest to all readers! There are very many authors I find boring, and not just writers of fantasy.

scarletnoir wrote: "but not that "anything that can be thought" (by an author) is necessarily of interest to all readers!"

Conan Doyle's rules for good writing were: “The first requisite is to be intelligible. The second is to be interesting. The third is to be clever.”

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "but not that "anything that can be thought" (by an author) is necessarily of interest to all readers!"

Conan Doyle's rules for good writing were: “The first requisite is to be ..."

top man, old ACD!

Anyone interested in scrolling through Princeton University Press's sale which run through the 26th of this month?

https://press.princeton.edu/sale/book...

MK wrote: "Anyone interested in scrolling through Princeton University Press's sale which run through the 26th of this month?

At 75% off I will certainly give it a look, thanks, though it will take me a while to work through 1,676 titles.

With my cataracts out and my new lenses in, the brightness and clarity and colour are really amazing. No discomfort either. Still a lot of drops to put in daily.

My eye surgeon here in Vermont told me the story of the invention of the intra-ocular lens. During the War a British ophthalmologist named Harold Ridley was working in London with fighter pilots who suffered horrific eye injuries when their cockpit canopies were damaged and splinters blew in. He already of course knew about the damage that broken glass in the eye can cause. It sets up a a terrible inflammation. Cockpit canopies, however, were made out of a type of plastic we now call Perspex. This material was strangely inert and caused no inflammation. So he would remove the larger pieces and leave in the smaller ones, and not dig around in the eye to get every last bit. This led him to the idea that perhaps a replacement lens could be made out of this plastic. Such a notion was anathema to the opthalmological establishment, who were dead against introducing any foreign body into the eye itself. He did his experimentation on the quiet. Then one day he was discovered. A patient of his went by mistake to another ophthalmologist also named Ridley who asked, who put this thing in your eye? There was a scandal, and Harold Ridley was denounced and professionally ostracized. Eventually, though, his ideas gained ground. It took thirty years. IOLs became accepted practice only in the 1970s. Then an ophthalmologist on Long Island developed a technique for using ultrasound to remove the old lens. And that was what the surgeon used on me. He said he would recommend laser surgery if he thought it produced better results but in his view it doesn’t – this from a chap who is fairly young, around forty, not an oldster set in his ways. Harold Ridley himself lived long enough to receive the recognition that was his due. By the time he died in 2001 at the age of 94 he had received all sorts of awards, and a knighthood.

Russell wrote: "With my cataracts out and my new lenses in, the brightness and clarity and colour are really amazing. No discomfort either. Still a lot of drops to put in daily.

My eye surgeon here in Vermont tol..."

excellent story about the randomness, and questioning scrutiny, that can very often lead to tremendous positive outcomes, for things that had previously been considered as being beyond fixing... Well done Harold!...

Speaking of fantasy, I'm very impressed with the E.R. Eddison book I'm reading now, Mistress of Mistresses. I can't think of many that would match it in terms of the the intricacy of its descriptive passages. Some of the most ornate and carefully fashioned English prose I've come across.

Russell wrote: "With my cataracts out and my new lenses in, the brightness and clarity and colour are really amazing. No discomfort either. Still a lot of drops to put in daily.

My eye surgeon here in Vermont tol..."

I have learned that there can be some cloudiness developr some time after the cataracts are done which may usually be easily rectified by laser treatment, unfortunately not in my case. The one cataract done has made my problems worse.

CCCubbon wrote: "Russell wrote: "With my cataracts out and my new lenses in..."

...The one cataract done has made my problems worse.

Very sorry to hear that, CC.

Berkley wrote: " I'm very impressed with the E.R. Eddison book I'm reading now, Mistress of Mistresses"

When I first read this during my early adolescent Fantasy binge (which slightly preceded and then overlapped with the first publications in Ballantine Books' "Adult Fantasy" series) I remember that, for me, the fact that it portrayed sexual attraction between adults was a significant difference from Tolkien.