Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your two letters. You ask about my novel,
and you ask about a living will. That second question 
about the living will seems to me to be more consequential
by far. I expect to address it in some detail, - perhaps in
greater detail than you bargained for, but first let me give
you a synopsis of the novel to its present point. Such a
recapitulation is of particular value to me because I am much
susceptible to distraction, and I have of late been unable to
summon the concentration required to make progress on the novel.

Its title, as you perhaps know, is Die Freunde, an index to
the central theme of the spectrum of individual human relationships,
the ecstasy and the despair that they on occasion engender.
The cast of characters, thus far, includes Jonathan Mengs, 
a holdover from my earlier novel Die Andere, now promoted
to a professorship of literature and/or philosophy, his student
Joachim Magus, a de facto orphan whose foster parents in the
State of Maryland are a protestant minister and his wife,
whose names I have forgotten. The opening chapter, which I
translated for my grandchildren and which you have perhaps read
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/freunde/appendix.html,
describes Joachim Magus upon his arrival in the City
(resemblances to places or persons living or dead are purely
conincidental) in a stalled subway car, which moves haltingly
from the back depths of a tunnel onto the apex of a bridge,
where it stalls once more, from which is visible the panorama
of a broad river basin fringed with the skyline of a majestic
city. Magus, who is exhausted from a sleepless night on the
train, lapses into a dream that expresses his fervent desires,
his hopes and his ambitions. He is walking uphill on a broad steet
which is bordered on the right by an impressive garden studded
with ponds on which are gliding swans of boat-like dimensions,
and on the left by a row of stately mansions, bordered with
wrought iron fences behind which are enclosed flower plantings
of exquisite beauty. At the summit of the hill stands the cathedral
with the golden dome, under which the dreamer is presently inaugurated
as president of the free world. In celebration of this event, a chorus
and orchestra perform the final movement of the ninth symphony,
in the closing hymn of which the dreaming youth joins with such gusto,
that he is roused from his dream fantasy by the slap of a policeman's
hand on his shoulder, and the admonition that singing in the subway is
prohibited as a disturbance of the peace.....

At this point of my account, I became hungry, went downstairs
and treated myself to a piece of pumpernickel with butter and
herring pickeled in wine sauce, and two glasses of iced tea.
On reflection it was obvious that the detail of the foregoing
paragraph is unsustainable, that many hours, if not days would
be required for the synopsis of this bloated 725 page behemoth,
and to facilitate progress with its composition, I must skip over
many tales and travails to the story's present, which finds
Mengs and Magus on a visit to "the Island" in response to the
urgent summons: "Rescue me, Rescue me!" of one Maximilian
Katenus to whom you may already have been introduced. Katenus,
whom Mengs and Magus encountered on their initially sally to
the Island, was a wealthy landed but very lonely proprietor
who sought to win friends by giving away large stretches of
valuable shorefront property. His largesse, however, earned
him nothing but enmity, because the beneficiaries of his
generosity found themselves targets of insidious accusations,
inasmuch as the distribution of such valuable assets was
comprehensible to the simple minded islanders only as
compensation for favors, sexual favors, and worst of all in
this culturally benighted landscape, of homosexual favors.
To exonerate themselves, Katenus' beneficiaries then concocted
or in any event acquiesced to vicious rumors that Katenus
entertained an illicit liaison with the engaging and endearing
woman who is his housekeeper, whose first name is Elly.
(I've forgotten her last name, if I ever knew it.)
Worse even, the rumor mongers would have it, that Katenus
had forced himself on Elly in a most illicit fashion, an
accusation which Elly adamantly denied, but which nonetheless 
terrified Katenus because of its brutality and mendacity.

There roamed over the Island beaches a gang of irresponsible
girls whose conduct was beyond all legal control because 
they were, no less, the daughters of the trial court and
appellate court judiciary and of the Selectmen and of the
Mayor. What began on the part of these girls as a malicious
joke, mushroomed into an ominous conspiracy. The girls
concocted the details of Katenus' alleged abuse of Elly,
and swore to each other that they would swear in court
that Elly had confided the same incriminating account of
Katenus misconduct to different groups of girls on
different occasions, effectively controverting Elly's
testimony and adding the stigma of perjury to the humiliation
of mistreatment at the hands of Katenus, her employer.

Jonathan Mengs and Joachim Magus had encountered
this gang of girls the previous day while taking a walk
on the beach at Schacksett. (The name Schacksett a 
contraction of Schiasetzingen. cf Sconset and Siasconset,
and be mindful that similarities are purely concidental.)
The girls had formed a circle around the men  with the 
declared purpose of pushing them into the surf, all the
while threatening that if the men defended themselves
by resisting and even so much as touching one of the
girls they would summon the police by cellphone with a
complaint of sexual assault. Meanwhile one of the most
vivacious and aggressive of the women was twirling about
her thumb a pair of outsized orange scissors and singing
in parody of Papageno:

"Ein Netz fuer Maenner flechte ich,
ich fing sie stark und gross fuer mich,
dann sperrte ich sie bei mir ein,
und alle Maenner waeren mein."

"Wenn alle Maenner waeren mein,
so kaufte ich brav Whisky ein
dem welcher mir am liebsten waer,
dem gaeb ich gleich den Whisky her."

Und liebte er mich zaertlich dann
waer ich sein Weib und er mein Mann
Den anderen schnitt ich klip und klapp
Mit dieser Scher' die Haare ab."

Jonathan and Joachim stood their ground, puzzled as to
what they should do, perplexed as to the future
when in the distance there appeared a small motor
vehicle, approaching slowly but steadily. As soon
as it was espied by one of the girls, she shouted to her
companions: The beach patrol, the beach patrols, and
like deer surprised by the hunter, the girls scurried
into the dunes and disappeared. The scissor-twirling
woman had accidentally dropped her weapon. Joachim
retrieved it, wiped away the grains of sand, and waited
until the lone policeman in the diminutive beach buggy
arrived on the scene. The two men related their experience
and Joachim handed the officer the orange weapon. "It's
a small island, he said, you should have no trouble in
identifying the guilty person to whom these scissors
belong." But the policeman rejected the evidence. "You
keep it," he said, "Keep it as a souvenir, take it home
to the mainland and show it to your friends. Otherwise
they won't believe what goes on here.  I don't need it,
we don't need it, we know exactly who these girls are.
It's a gang, just like what you see in the cities. But
we can't do anything about it. The fathers of some are
the judges of the Superior Court, of the Appeals Court,
even of the Supreme Judicial Court. The fathers of others
are billionaires who fly to the Island in their private
jets. It's hopeless. There's nothing that can be done.
My advice to you however is that you take this opportunity
to escape to the parking lot. While I'm here they won't
bother you, after I leave, there's no telling what may
happen. Get in your car, drive back to town, and have
a pleasant vacation on the Island.

Jonathan and Joachim described their experience to Katenus
and Elly. "So you encountered them already," Elly said,
"They're the clan that's concocting the stories about
Katenus and myself, and you were lucky to meet a
police officer more honest, or should I say less corrupt
than the rest. If one of the others had come along, you'd
most likely already be in serious trouble." Katenus refuses
to involve himself in conversation about trash. He loves
to hear himself and (like Albert of Das siebte Kapitel)
is enthralled finally after years of intellectual isolation
to have obtained an audience. The conversation continues
far into the night and resumes the following morning.
Katenus' current preoccupation is the dialectic of
idealization and deidealization, which he identifies as
the prototypical ideational processes both of the individual
and of society, in which he believes he has discovered a
virtual philosopher's stone, and with which he purports
to explain contemporary culture from A to Z, from mathematical
statistics and molecular biology to Islamic terrorism. This
discourse is overheard, because Katenus cannot bring himself to
stop talking when the troupe of girls whom Jonathan and Joachim
had encountered on the beach at Schacksett enter the house
demanding the return of the giant orange scissors which they
accuse Joachim of having stolen. Shepherding the girls in their
quasi-legal enterprise is a policeman, the same one who on the
previous day had appeared ex machina - or per machina - to
defend the two men against the women, and who now seemed to
have forgotten the fact, that it was to him that Joachim sought
to return the giant scissors which Joachim had retrieved from
the sandy beach, and that it was he who had advised Joachim to
accept the giant orange scissors as a souvenir and take them
to the mainland to show to his friends. The policeman now
characterizes these scissors as weapons of mass destruction
and the attempt to transport them on a public conveyance across
navigable waters a Federal crime punishable by life imprisonment.
Thereupon he arrests Katenus, Mengs and Magus and takes them to
the Island police station. At this juncture my imagination faded.
I have not yet invented what happens there.

In this context, I recognize an interesting and potentially
important methodological problem. A few weeks ago, Georgette 
Fleischer, one of the children Margrit befriended, now grown up
into a lecturer in English at Columbia, sent to my (and Margrit's)
friend Helmut Frielinghaus, a professional editor, a copy of her
unpublished novel "Anschluss" several chapters of which describe
the life of a protagonist in the concentration camp Auschwitz-
Birkenau. Helmut was very critical; he was incensed that the
author should have insinuated herself into a scene that she had
never experienced - although, of course, Shakespeare's name also
never appears in any guest book of Elsinore. - and since I've 
never managed to get myself arrested and charged with a heinous
crime, - at least not yet, - when I write about the tragicomedy
at the Island police station, I also will become subject to the
charge that I am letting my imagination run away with me, writing
about something I know nothing about.

================================
Now to more important matters. You sent me a draft

Codicil to my Living Will
I wish to die in my own home.
If I have an incurable illness, I do NOT want the following:
-         intubation or mechanical ventilation
-         tube or intravenous feeding
-         antibiotics
-         resuscitation if my heart stops
These are my honest wishes.

I have the following gentle editorial comments. The term incurable
illness is insufficiently precise. A few illnesses are indeed
curable, but most are not. If I understand you correctly your
meaning would be more accurately expressed if you wrote:

I hereby direct that if I am unconscious or demented
or if for any other reason I am unable to express
my wish and my determination,
unless there is a substantial probability
that on recovery I should be able to lead
an intelligent, productive and comfortable existence,
no measure shall be taken to prolong my life, including,
not to the exlusion of others,
no intubation no mechanical ventilation,
no tube or intravenous feeding,
no administration of antibiotics,
no cardiac or pulmonary resuscitation.

But then, pleased with my own rhetoric, I remind myself
that a will becomes effective only through the actions
of an executor. How would this living will be enforced,
would a physician or any hospital employee feel obligated,
legally or otherwise, to respect it?

Because of the relative ineffectiveness of the living will,
this legal instrument has been supplemented by what is called
in Massachusetts a "health care proxy" with which the
patient appoints a trusted individual to make health care
decisions on her behalf when she is unable to do so. In Ohio
such a document is known as a "Durable power of attorney for health care."
See sections 1337.09-1337.17 of the Ohio Revised Codes and
http://my.clevelandclinic.org/healthy_living/healthcare/advance_directives/hic_advance_directives_for_medical_care.aspx
I would, if I were you, complete both documents. Models or templates
can be found on the Internet; please let me know if you need help.

As I understand it, a patient is permitted to give durable powers of
attorney for health care to any number of individuals. I myself would
not be stingy with the delegation of these powers. The question
you must answer is who these individuals should be. They should share
your views and your values and have forceful personalities to assert
in your behalf against physicians and hospitals. Their effectiveness
could be undercut by disagreements with close family members. Such
disagreements should be anticipated, to be avoided at all costs.

If you wish to die at home, it makes a lot of sense to avoid, if at all
possible, entering the hospital in the first place. If you do find
yourself in a hospital, then to make feasible your return from the
hospital to your own home in preparation of death, it is essential that
there should be members of your family, friends or acquaintances who,
if not prepared to do the nursing themselves would be willing and able
to make the necessary arrangements. Ultimately it will be the sagacity
and devotion of these individuals, rather than legal pronouncements,
that will determine the quality of your death.

Please give my best to Ned.

Jochen