Count the present days until today arrives ( NOW I DO HAVE A NAME)
(Antonina, cigarette in mouth and left eye furrowed, succumbing to the abuse of anxiolytics and antidepressants in the light of that pleasant, faint sunset at the table in the street bar; some Lilliputian landscape effect of the tourist tropics and their special poetic fluids --- while I, Bernarda (now I do have a NAME) tried to imitate Ferraz's mannerisms from earlier, on the beach, to make her laugh --- she laughed. In fact, she started laughing so hard that I felt embarrassed by the attention we attracted around our table --- a Machiavellian glint shone in Antonina's drugged eyes, as she laughed a Prozac laugh, with a Rivotril-like way of looking at me, mocking Ferraz: "If someone intends to stand out writing short stories, they should stick to the continuous rereading of Flaubert, Merimée, Maupassant, before risking the mirage of 'style' own'', so rare these days. Mastering the technique of the greats provides an exalted sense of strength and responsibility, even when we are aware that what we write is shit, Ha ha ha!'' --- how evil Antonina's laughter was --- I imagined Antonina (who had not published anything in the last nine years) producing a gigantic and brilliant book little by little, in absolute secrecy, which she guaranteed was not happening at all: ''Just a routine of light exercises prescribed by doctors from various fields, fruit salad and anxiolytics; every now and then, a roast of veal with carrots'' --- Antonina seemed to derive a dark and insane pleasure from posing as an invalid, when we all knew that she combined her routine of weak nerves with sudden periods of effervescence in other countries, like Italy and Greece --- honestly, reflecting on what I would say later at the presentation table for my book, I vaguely concluded that perhaps my generation lacked a certain perseverance in the search for its own style (since Hemingway prescribed as a formula for literary success writing novels on the back of matchboxes, striving for maximum objectivity and eliminating all superfluity, a difficult mission), perhaps too much effort entangled in the competitive struggle of the market to produce something capable of sounding like NEW in an already exhausted medium, or capable of yielding gadgets and advertising (in circumstances of sterility and complete saturation) --- a quixotic journey through the disdain and emptied strength of malandanças, with all the historical harshness of Spain in the rearview mirror --- here, in Bahia, certainly another style of silence to reflect on: Resting, swimming on the beach, reading at the hotel, sipping colorful drinks on the street where tourists slowly paraded --- within reach, there or here, always the same themes: man, the dead world, the emptiness of postmodern souls measured in a space that could be anywhere, it no longer makes any difference --- in the "TOTAL BOOK" that I imagined Antonina writing, I saw her triumphing in managing to convey to millions of readers slapped in the face her exaggerated enthusiasm for humanity's apocalyptic spiritual catastrophes, the unmistakable mark of an earthly experience capable of reinscribing in people's vagabond hearts the solitude of the absolute air of Castile, where Cervejantes had once forced man, created defective by God, to know himself always circumscribed, imprisoned, mutilated by angles and edges that always lead him to megalomaniacal madness and death ---
ResponderExcluir--- I don't know, perhaps a true literary masterpiece is conditioned today by the existence, in the author, of an enormous capacity to contain hopes for the future, and I judged Antonina capable of this --- she was my most influential friend, within my circle --- her image always drugged, floating sleepwalking among the dry and empty men of the world, all sufficiently nourished and deluded to be kept tied to the falsifying and indiscreet machine of volatile and stateless capital; tied to windmills with radars and electrodes that force them to dream of crystal Dulcineas while they rave about the atomic armor of their people --- Antonina's mockery, however, had the power to transmit to me a dead and happy serenity, since it justified a little the "pathos" of my own poetic work --- my dry, brick-like language falsely inspired by the chastity of the Virgin, extracted from the mineral substance of Spain, where Spanish poets (mostly passionate, tragic and temperamental; not hypertensive and gluttonous, like the Italians) sharpen with their verses that "forever postponed explosion" (as a Brazilian poet says), a "heart attack" that (willingly) they relegate to Italian poetry, starting with the Divine Comedy ---
ResponderExcluir--- At that moment, while I was daydreaming, Antonina reached out her arms to me --- I thought it was another one of her drugged jokes, but suddenly I felt her pulling me violently against her body --- an epileptic tremor ran through my entire body, coming from Antonina's body, and soon she lost consciousness and fell at my feet, under the table --- People came running, noticing my terror, and soon an ambulance arrived to take their friend to the emergency room --- With two hours to go before the event began, I was still at the hospital, when a nurse came to inform us that Antonina was already conscious and her condition was stable, after the heart attack:
ResponderExcluir"HEART ATTACK?!" I asked, astonished. "And they took me to see her." As soon as she saw me, Antonina hurried to say: "You can go to the event at ease, Bernarda. I'll be fine. They were so sweet to me, and since my favorite thing in life is being alone," and saying all this clearly, let me eliminate any objections from your mind. Go to the event and then come back to distract me by telling me how it went. If Lygia is in the audience, try to hurt her a little on my behalf; look for that unnatural curl of her lips on her face as she defends the "peñascosa nightmare of Goyesca linguistic austerity" against the shower of colorful confetti of contemporary poetry, in its eternal search for rebirth. Don't allow that little room of alienated people to desire your body perfumed with verses of love and passion, your red and burning mouth'' --- When I left the hospital, the sudden feeling of abandonment of the street hit me like ice, despite the tropical heat of the party night!
Post script
ResponderExcluirIn Spain, now, as a reaction against a formless, monstrous poetry, which generally employed an expression lost in a base sensualism (the joy of rising underground waters with all their drag), we have returned to the sonnet. I have never refused the subconscious, the invasion of sexual larvae; but the subconscious expressed in a simple enumeration of sensitive moments, in an agglomeration of images that do not attempt to define their place in space, but rather to combine perspectives, a momentary, slippery parade, and without human or aesthetic ascending virtue, seems to me a vulgar parade. I ask for the preference, the commitment, the success that eternalizes lyrical elements. And it seems wrong to me that poets return to neoclassical forms if they do not possess the virtue of altering their formal surfaces, renewing them, reviving them to their most primitive proximity. They are falling, again, into the exercise, into the old manias that use the poem as a factory of delight, a paradisiacal fragment of the other philosopher's stone
ExcluirJuan Ramón Jiménez
We are, then, between two dangers: formless, more or less poetic writing, lacking the conscience to avoid the abundant and the facile, and which attempts to connect itself with the primitive, and neoclassicism, revived once again by professors who cultivate poetry outside of their rhetoric lessons, and whom I have called "voluntary poets" to differentiate them from fatal poets, who are those who equally escape false primitivism and the most false neoclassicism. Both falsehoods live on "the image" and "the concept," mixed more or less ingeniously; an image thrown like a lump in front of open eyes, to blind them, and a concept that conceals true lyrical, non-philosophical thought. In both cases, writing is enumerative or cumulative, as was the past surrealist painting that dominates both literary trends.
ExcluirJ R JIMÉNEZ
And by LEZAMA LIMA
ResponderExcluirIt is necessary to return, or rather intensify, to the mysterious light, the clarity that despairs. Many different things converge there, homogeneous, abrupt, silent. As in the horizontal of water, different animals converge, of different weight, but united, intensified in an impulse to break with their immobility, the crystal, the net as well. Is not thirst the birth of crystal, the first necessary impulse, which then freezes, becomes the crystal's limiting ring? Thus, thirst remains as the invisible crystal, the crystal as unchanging water. There is a moment in criticism and poetry, originating from Poe, propagated by Baudelaire, exploited by Valéry, in which everything wants to remain -------------------
------------------------------------as a method within a night in which the natural stars have been erased from their accompanying light. Poe, in his stories, in his studies of light, in his critiques, spoke of "a method of suggestive reasoning." That phrase is as true as this other one I would propose, to declare the criticism that befits a poet: a power of reminiscent reasoning. I say power because it presupposes a hostile material, a resistance. A resistance that can describe an arc of infinite variations.
ResponderExcluir-----------------
ExcluirI say reminiscent reasoning, rather than suggestive reasoning like Poe's, because of the powerful and profound appeal this word held for the Greeks. Both the Greeks of myth and Socrates maintained an identical attitude toward memory. Prometheus, on his unquestionably uncomfortable bed, turns to tell us: "I found for them, for mortals, number, the most ingenious thing that exists, and the arrangement of letters, and the memory, mother of the Muses." In Aeschylus, memory is even more mysterious, a more nourishing breath, like dew or mist. Ultimately, mythology accepts this, but Jupiter enters to diminish the creative force of memory. The nine Muses are daughters of Nemosine and Jupiter, accepts the Greek of the 4th century BC, already very attached to Socrates, within an official mythology. In this way, memory participates and acts in the knowledge of the subject. Remembering for a Greek was an exercise, as healthy as biblical knowledge, something carnal, copulative. That------------------------
ResponderExcluir-------------------------------------reminiscent reasoning favors mutual acquisition, attaches the causal to the original, turns the glove to reveal not only the artificial seams and the dew of perspiration. This reminiscent reasoning drives away the reminiscence of whim or the cloud, communicating to reason a revolving projection from which it emerges mirrored and victorious. I believe that this criticism, whose instrument is reminiscent reasoning, would be fruitless in approaching great systems of expression; if we were to apply this procedure to Dante or Goethe, we would write Alexandrian dictionaries and encyclopedias arranged by a Chinese alphabet. In works of vast proportions, situating the substantial being and the proportions of the work in the circumstances can be entertaining, prudent, and recommendable. But we will have to be content, ultimately, with the grace that resides in that substantial being, a grace that was embodied without appeal or apology. Of course, this grace takes its best form in fullness, or in revealing to us in time, making it a little more audible, the vast murmur nestled in the origins, or the tragic rebound against the wailing wall of those who did not want the spirit to take refuge in the written word, but rather for the murmur to remain unreachable...
ResponderExcluirPost script
ResponderExcluirhttps://teoriadelentusiasmo.blogspot.com/2010/08/casuistica-2-la-piedra-lunar.html
ExcluirCase Studies (2): The Moonstone
Excluir·
The Moonstone
(Wilkie Collins, 1868)
Translated by José C. Vales
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Let's restate the starting point: Cortázar confesses to writing Hopscotch under a particular state of consciousness, which he calls swing. Now, 47 years after its publication, I discover a reading of that book that differs radically from the common reading (see the Yellow File), and I wonder if this swing might not have something to do with the perception of this new reading. This is my hypothesis: there are two different books in Hopscotch, one common, the other extraordinary, and to read the latter we must swing, sway, Cortazar. In my own words: we must be enthusiastic.
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Is this so strange? Since I conceived this hypothesis, I have been collecting illustrative case studies on the matter. I already discussed the first case in the previous article on this blog, entitled The Two Consciences in Castaneda. The second case was, coincidentally, provided to me by Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone.
Before entering into the analysis of this second case, I would like to note, out of curiosity, how I came across that novel. Cortázar refers to it in a letter he wrote to his friend Jean Barnabé in 1960; it is the letter I have christened "the tell-tale letter," because in it Cortázar alludes openly and directly, for the first and only time, to that other reading of Hopscotch that I propose, and according to which this book, like The Moonstone, says Cortázar himself, repeats and modifies the same episode. Thus, I began reading Collins's novel with the aim of comparing it with Cortázar's book and better understanding the meaning of those statements; and there I found, in addition to what I was already looking for (the repetition of an episode), an unexpected gift, in the form of new elements to contribute to my incipient theory of enthusiasm. And the key plot of Collins's book, establishing what would become a cliché in detective novels, is like a paraphrase of my own hypothesis: to uncover the criminal, the investigator, in turn, must rise to his level; he must criminalize. This discovery of the text of The Moonstone was a happy coincidence for me;
ExcluirFor Cortázar, it must have had a greater impact, probably, in relation to the composition of Hopscotch. But we will discuss this other impact in another article later; for the moment, we will limit ourselves to detailing the value of Collins's book as an illustrative case of the theory of enthusiasm.
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(Last warning: The Moonstone is a detective novel, and what I will explain in Casuistry (2) about that book reveals important aspects of its plot. Therefore, if you haven't already, I recommend that you read this excellent novel before continuing with me. This parenthesis will serve as a reference point for my article when you return.)
Let's get to it: The question of altered consciousness is precisely the key to the plot of The Moonstone; in particular, the alterations derived from the ingestion of chemical substances. Collins knew the subject firsthand; due to his rheumatic problems, with severe pain that confined him to bed for days, he consumed opium for analgesic purposes. It is likely that his experience with this drug inspired the plot of his novel; in any case, the key to the events investigated in his book—namely, the theft and disappearance of a diamond—lies precisely in opium, since the actual perpetrator of the robbery—the central character of the book, the young Franklin Blake—acted during the night in question under the influence of laudanum, which he took unknowingly, in a completely fortuitous manner. Once these effects have worn off, Blake is absolutely incapable of remembering his actions; his own surprise at the theft is completely honest, and to such an extent that he becomes the most diligent investigator of the crime.
ResponderExcluirThus, the thief is a thief without even being aware of it. And now comes what interests us most: a year later, in order to elucidate what happened the night of the robbery, Blake agrees to undergo an experiment. This experiment consists of repeating the ingestion of laudanum, under circumstances as similar as possible to those of the night in question: the same dose, the same time, the same place, the same previous actions, and the same previous mental conditions. Once this context is reproduced, and once again under the effects of laudanum, Blake repeats almost exactly the same gestures and behaviors he had used to steal the diamond, and which, as we have already said, remained completely unknown to him in his normal state of consciousness.
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In other words: the altered state of consciousness created by opium in Blake's psyche acted as an independent cognitive record, inaccessible to his ordinary state of consciousness. To access that record again, Blake had to submit to the same conditions that allowed it to be generated in the first place: only then could he recover the memory stored there. In short, to remember his opiate act, Blake must take opiates again.
As we have already said, Wilkie Collins was undoubtedly aware of the alterations in consciousness brought about by opium ingestion. Furthermore, given the plot of his book, it is plausible that he had reflected on the fact that opium leads to the same psychic landscapes each time, the actualization of which is, however, practically impossible from an ordinary state of consciousness. It is also plausible, therefore, that he anticipated certain critical reservations about this understanding, which he had reached through his own experience, from readers who had never consumed opium or who had not delved deeply into its effects.
ExcluirThe latter, that Collins anticipated certain reservations, is deduced from the fact that in the novel itself he attempts to adduce some medical evidence to support the unusual turn of his plot. In turn, these testimonies that the English writer adduces serve to support our hypothesis; Collins's zeal has a positive impact on me, unfolding the "Collins case" into three separate instances.
Let's analyze some fragments of the novel that reveal everything we want to present here. Collins divides his novel into two parts: the First Period, which contains the long and detailed account by Gabriel Betteredge, the house's butler; and the Second Period, which compiles eight different accounts of the events according to various witnesses. Our fragments belong to the Third Narrative of this second part, "by Franklin Blake," and transcribe the dialogue this young man has with the character who discovered the strange psychophysical circumstances under which the robbery took place, Dr. Ezra Jennings.
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Jennings asks Blake the following:
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"Do you believe, as I do, that you were under the influence of laudanum on the night of Lady Verinder's birthday?"
"I have absolutely no idea what the effects of laudanum are, and I wouldn't dare offer an opinion on the matter," I replied. I can only accept what you tell me and assume you're right.
"Very well. The next question is this: you're convinced, and so am I. How can we convince others?"
This is precisely the question, for me too: How can I convince the readers of Hopscotch that this book is two books, depending on the mental state in which they read it? It seems that Collins, anticipating this difficulty, decided to save me the effort:
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"Don't think I'm going to bore you with a lesson in psychology," he said. "But to be fair to you and to myself, I think I must show you that I'm not asking you to try this experiment because it's a theory of my own invention. There are recognized authorities on the subject and proven theories that support my position. Give me five minutes of your attention, and I promise to show you that science accepts what I'm proposing, no matter how fantastic my proposition may seem to you."
·
It should be noted that Collins is going to use his writing skills here to support his argument. To begin with, there is a slight manipulation in the assessment of the sources and the conclusions drawn from them: for example, the statement that "science accepts it," in light of the testimonies to be presented, seems too strong.
Excluir"In this book, first of all, the philosophical principle on which I base my work is set forth, described by none other than Dr. Carpenter. Read it for yourself."
And he handed me the piece of paper that served as a bookmark in the book. On it were written the following words: "There seems to be reason to believe that every sensory impression that has ever been collected by consciousness is registered, so to speak, in the brain and is capable of being reproduced at some later time, even though the mind is not conscious of it."
"Do you understand?"
"Perfectly."
Jennings's direct question ('Have you understood?') is actually a disguised apostrophe to the reader, with the dual purpose of involving them in the answer ('Perfectly') and leading them to an implicit acceptance of the thesis suggested by the former. This same device, both through questions and imperative forms of verbs, is repeated throughout the dialogue between Blake and Jennings: where Jennings says 'you', and where Blake says 'I', we can perfectly well read 'Mr. Reader,' that is, 'we.' (It should be noted that Cortázar uses an equivalent device in many dialogues in Hopscotch, implicitly addressing the reader with the direct style with which characters address others: perhaps he borrowed it from Collins.) Collins's persuasive purpose continues, therefore, astride the words and gestures of Ezra Jennings:
ExcluirHe then pushed the open book across the table toward me and pointed to a passage underlined in pencil.
Excluir"Now," he said, "read the account of a case that bears, in my opinion, a close relationship to yours and to the experiment I am proposing. Bear in mind, Mr. Blake, before we begin, that we are now speaking of one of the most important English physiologists. The book you are holding is Dr. Elliotson's Human Physiology, and the case the doctor cites is supported by the authority of the famous Mr. Combe.
·
The vaunted authorities cited by Jennings (Drs. Carpenter and Elliotson, Mr. Combe) are not fictitious; the translator's pertinent notes help us to situate them:
William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885) was one of the founders of comparative neurology and modern psychology. His main work is Principles of General and Comparative Physiology (1839).
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The English physician John Elliotson (1791-1868) studied hypnosis, mesmerism, and phrenology.
·
The physiologist and phrenologist Andrew Combe (1797-1847) gained notoriety with his Observations in Mental Derangement (1831) (...) Phrenology was a very popular doctrine in the late 18th century and during the first half of the 19th century: it explained human psychology and behavior based on the protrusions and shapes of the skull.
If the previous passage from Carpenter read by Blake contained the theoretical foundations of the matter, the new passage from Elliotson's book that Jennings points out to the protagonist now constitutes a particular case, a concrete example, with purported probative value:
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“Dr. Abel told me the case of a certain Irish warehouse boy who was unable to remember, when sober, what he had done when drunk; however, when he became drunk again, he perfectly remembered what he had done during his previous period of intoxication. On one occasion, while drunk, he lost a package of some value, and in the subsequent period of sobriety, he was unable to account for it. When he got drunk again, he remembered that he had left the package at a certain house; as the package had no address, it had remained safe, and he was able to retrieve it when he went to look for it.”
And here the novelist repeats the device we've already analyzed:
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"Do you understand?" Ezra Jennings asked me.
"It's very clear."
·
However, despite it being "very clear," Jennings makes a show of substantiating his hypothesis with more evidence:
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"As you can see, I haven't spoken without solid scientific support," he warned. "But if you're still not convinced, I just have to go to that bookshelf and you can read all the passages on the subject..."
"I'm completely convinced," I told him, "without needing to read another word."
"In that case, we can now return to the question of your personal interest in this matter."
Continue in one minute
ExcluirFor a cup of coffe
ExcluirIt is true that the authorities cited by Jennings are real, and that the passages provided constitute arguments in favor of the proposed theses: but it is clearly exaggerated to speak of 'solvent scientific support'. On the one hand, Dr. Carpenter begins his passage by saying, “There seems to be reason to believe…” which isn’t a very scientific fact, let’s say. On the other hand, the passage about the anonymous drunken Irishman is mediated by three different narrators: Elliotson says that Combe says that Dr. Abel knew about the case of… Finally: if there really are other “solvent” testimonies deposited on Ezra Jennings’s shelf, Franklin Blake’s swift conviction denies us access to them; here, the author is definitely playing a trick on us. He has shown us real but rather weak and debatable testimonies, and he doesn’t have any others, although he wants to give the impression otherwise: those he shows are the strongest, if not the only ones, that he has. In short: no, there is no scientific certainty, only a few speculations, and a few testimonies, even if they come from renowned researchers. Franklin Blake is immediately convinced; however, only the experiment to which he is about to be exposed will provide definitive firmness. to that conviction.
ExcluirYou might say I'm throwing stones at my own roof; both questioning the scientific solidity of the testimonies provided by Collins—which, moreover, are nineteenth-century—and exposing his rhetorical manipulations are detrimental to my own hypothesis about the double reading of Hopscotch. Indeed, so far, judging by what has been said, we could simply conclude that there is no scientific certainty in The Moonstone, but rather a persuasive purpose linked to the novel's narrative economy. But that, in my opinion, is not all there is to it, and it is not the main point; there is also, at its core, Wilkie Collins's personal experience with opium, and his willingness to translate it into the novel's plot, supporting it with the few scientific commentaries available and disguising their scarcity with his literary expertise.
ExcluirIndeed, Ezra Jennings isn't going to give any "psychological lessons," but not to spare his interlocutor the trouble, as he claims, but because he simply can't; there are only a few weak branches to cling to, the trunk of the tree nowhere to be seen. Collins knows this, and that's why he persists with his tricks to persuade a reader who probably "has absolutely no knowledge of the effects of laudanum," who therefore shouldn't "dare to give an opinion on the matter," and who, in short, would have no choice but to "accept what Collins tells you and assume he's right," no matter how "fantastic" it may seem. With his tricks, Collins isn't trying to make us swallow a millstone: rather, he's trying to overcome what he foresees as difficulties arising from a complicated matter. In reality, no matter how much he tries to rationalize, argue, and exemplify, the only way to fully grasp this matter is to go through the experience itself.
ExcluirIn support of this idea, we can cite the following fragment from the author's own 1868 Preface to the work:
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With regard to the psychological experiment that occupies a prominent place in the closing scenes of The Moonstone, I have once again been guided by the principles cited above [previously: to point out the influence that the character of individuals exerts on circumstances]. In accordance with prior documentation—drawn not only from books, but also from the lips of living persons who can be considered true authorities on the subject—and with regard to the probable outcome that said experiment would have had in reality, I have preferred to decline the privilege of every novelist to imagine what might have happened and have structured my story so that the actions flow as a consequence of what would actually have occurred... which, I allow myself to declare to the reader, is what actually occurs in these pages.
Thus, Collins confesses that the main source of the experiment is the testimony of living people; although, in my opinion, he is concealing something here that might cause him problems, namely, that this testimony comes largely from himself (how else can he be so certain of what really "would have happened"?).
Excluir·
And what does Collins ultimately say based on his experience? The dialogue between Dr. Ezra Jennings and the young Franklin Blake reveals the key points. First, after all the persuasive display aimed at convincing Blake, Jennings succinctly states the point:
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In that state of mental intoxication due to opium, you could have done all that. (...) When morning came, when the effects of the opium had worn off with sleep, you would wake up as conscious of what you had done during the night as if you had been on the opposite side of the planet.
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And now we come to the crux of the matter, both for the plot of The Moonstone and for the case at hand:
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If we could exactly reproduce the circumstances that occurred a year ago, it would be physiologically certain that we would arrive at a result exactly the same as then
That is precisely the thesis: the psychic state brought about by an alteration of consciousness constitutes, for normal consciousness, a practically sealed, inaccessible cognitive compartment. Paraphrasing Collins' words, applied to the case of Hopscotch, we would say: if we could reproduce within ourselves the psychic state in which Cortázar wrote his book, it would be palpably true that we would come to read it as the repetition of an episode. As long as we do not enter that state (swing), or some approximate one (enthusiasm, I say), Hopscotch presents itself to us in the form familiar to us until now: that is, as a continuous narrative. I am interested in highlighting two important differences between Cortázar's book and what is described in The Moonstone: on the one hand, what for Collins's book concerns a single individual—Franklin Blake—in the case of Hopscotch involves two distinct individuals—the author and his reader; thus, the same phenomenon is situated at different structural levels, with different scopes. On the other hand, unlike Collins' character, who is unable to remember for himself, Cortázar handles the issue with full awareness and incorporates it with complete intention and calculation into the composition of his book.
ExcluirBut both works agree on something very important: ultimately, to fully grasp the issue, one must go through the same experience. Collins's rhetorical tricks are justified: in reality, it's about assuming that we are facing a dark mystery of consciousness that science has not yet illuminated, but to which certain people throughout history have had direct access. That is the question for Collins, and for me as well. The double apprenticeship of Carlos Castaneda; the argument conceived by Wilkie Collins; the reflection elaborated by Dr. Carpenter; the testimony adduced by Mr. Combe; the double book conceived by Julio Cortázar: we are not talking about scientific arguments, but about testimonies. And the only way to personally endorse these testimonies, it seems, is through experience.
ExcluirThese, those listed, are the cases we have so far: an unrecognized pseudo-anthropologist; a fanciful novel; outdated scientists; a drunken Irishman; and finally, yours truly, a crazed unknown who reads Hopscotch in an enigmatic and exclusive way. It's nothing to write home about, so to speak. But don't go away just yet: I do have a new testimony on my shelf that may, perhaps, convince you. Next day on this blog, we'll be looking at this new case, now indisputably historic: one of the fourteen "Stephen Zweig's Moments of Humanity" in what some consider his best book. I won't tell you which of these "Stephen Zweigs" it is, specifically, until the time comes to present it (next September 11th); let's see if you discover it for yourself. Until then!
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