Tale of Two Cities. I memorized and used to declaim when I was alone and nobody could hear me the “It is a far, far better thing and place,” etcetera, speech, from the ending. But as an adult, I didn’t much care for Dickens. All those masterpieces I thought weren’t. A good storyteller, if you like stories. Today I’d say MFM: made for movies. In those days, for reading tours. Written too quickly, with little re-examining and revising, and some of the most contrived situations and resolutions and initial encounters and final partings imaginable. Or that’s my take on his work, but I could be wrong and he did write meticulously and go through multiple revisions, but to me it didn’t come out that way. Two carriages going in opposite directions, each containing a member or members of the main cast, passing each other without recognizing the other at dawn, usually while crossing a moat. Maybe I’m exaggerating. Also, I don’t know what funny names do to you, but they don’t make me laugh. I once said some of this to Eleanor, and did she blow up. “You should be a quarter as good as Dickens,” she said, “an eighth as good, even a sixteenth, in any page from all of his books, but with the literary conventions of your own century. Even if you adored his work you’d probably say otherwise, simply to rankle me. Anything I’m good at and devoted to, you put down.” That true? No, I admired a lot of what she did, particularly how fast she read and got her ideas down, and went out of my way to praise her. Just when it comes to literature and what I like, I don’t fool around. I break off a twig, chew one of its ends to a sharp point, dip it in ink and draw the line. What that means and where it came from, beats me. “Blood” for “ink” wouldn’t make any more sense, or not to me at this moment, but it does sound more serious and dramatic. But I’m not much for the unconscious or accidental supplying some of my original ideas and thoughts, creative and otherwise. I think I meant something there that’s connected to what came before it. What’s the word for a mind that’s going? It shouldn’t be for a guy my age but sometimes it seems like it. Anyway, he never got along for very long with academic women — women who teach literature in college and have one or two advanced literature degrees — and he probably won’t with this Gwendolyn or Gwen. Why? He’s already spoken about some of her more positive qualities: pleasant demeanor, good looks and speech, soft voice and quiet smile, and she seems to have similar interests as he and an even disposition and a terrific mind. So, what’s not to like? as his father used to say, though he was talking about other things: money and schemes to make it and getting things for free. She seemed a lot different than Eleanor and Diana, his other Dickens scholar. They were okay, he’s not really complaining about them, and they certainly had a lot to put up with in him — he doesn’t want to go into it but there were many things he did to them that were wrong — though they could be a bit stagy and stiff and too often cold and hard. It didn’t seem she could be any of those, especially cold and hard, or if she could it’d be rare, short-lived and justified. How can he tell? He can’t, little time he was with her. Then why’s he saying it? Probably to give him more reason to call her or ward off reasons not to. Did he make any sense there? he thought. Does anything he say make any sense? He used to, almost all the time, but maybe he was mistaken. Maybe meeting her and wanting to call her so much and see her again has made him more unsure of himself than he typically is. What else? What else what? Her, about her. He liked the way she was dressed. Simply, good taste, muted colors. Small matter, but it does say something about why he was attracted to her. He likes his women — now that’s funny;