Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. It's with some embarrassment that
I realize my discussion of estate tax law to have been another
occasion when I was carried away by what was on my mind and wrote
at greater length and in greater detail than was of interest to
you; although with legal as with medical matters, it's sometimes
difficult for me to know prospectively how much you want to
read.  As you know, I tend to err on the side of writing too
much rather than too little. The estate tax disquisition was
of particular value to me since it went far toward clarifying
my own thinking. The more I immerse myself in studies of
governmental regulations, whether they concern medicine, taxation
or legal procedure, the more I'm persuaded that we have long since
passed the point where such regulations are too complex to be
intelligible, - even to the officials who drafted them and who
are entrusted with their enforcement. It's a Tower of Babel
situation where the thesis engenders its own antithesis, and,
as it were dissolves itself because it is no longer intelligible,
a circumstance which by no means precludes arbitrary and
capricious enforcement. One necessarily evolves techniques 
for coping with ambiguous or contradictory requirements, skills
in which so far as the practice of medicine is concerned, I have
become somewhat proficient over the years.

Yesterday was a bright warm, sunny day, and I made use of it by
cleaning my 1997 Dodge Minivan. This car, which had been sitting
in the driveway all summer, exposed alternatively to the hot sun
and to drenching rain, had developed a leak which caused water
accumulations on and under the carpets at the right front seat,
producing throughout the van a luxuriant growth of a brown mold
which covered everything, the seats, the door panels, the floors,
the dashboard, the steering wheel. On all this I went to work with
the shop vacuum cleaner and a pail of sudsy water. After about two
hours the car was again somewhat presentable, although a musty odor
remained. I made space for it in the garage, where it is now protected
from rain. Both yesterday and today I started the engine and ran the
heater blower for about thirty minutes to hasten the drying. On Monday
I will take it to a low-powered mechanic at a nearby Texaco station,
who has promised to look at it and give me an estimate. Klemens thinks
its time to junk the car with 160,000 miles on the odometer and a 
capriciously unreliable electrical system. He's probably right. We
shall see.

It's not quite accurate of you to write that I "hate" the books
you recommend to me. I don't hate any book, or for that matter
any person. The truth, however, is perhaps even more dismal. I
have for some years now contented myself with a strict reading
diet, which shame upon shame consists primarily of my own writing.
I've done so to compensate for the weakness of my memory. If 
there's any chance of my writing anything coherent, I must take
every opportunity to review, and to review again the context
in which I write. If I permit myself to be distracted, I'm lost.

Today was a good day, so far as composition is concerned. I finished
the initial draft of Chapter 42, which turned out to be quite long,
almost 30 pages, but seems to me worth considerably more effort in
editing and revising, tasks much easier than the first draft, because
they tend to become mechanical and require less invention and less
inspiration. What happens in Chapter 42 I outlined for you in my
letter of October 10. However, my characters (and their author) got
so carried away with theories of epistemology and ethics, that they
didn't get to sleep until very late, and consequently their dreams
which I outlined to you, will not become a matter of record until
Chapter 43, and are therefore subject to change. There was, however,
an unexpected discovery in an unlocked records cabinet, where Joachim
found the court record of a civil action against the Island
authorities, a record which was appalling not only for the criminal
improprieties on the part of the local officials, - forgery of records,
fabrication of evidence, - but even more so for the refusal of the
court to to vindidate justice, simply by failing to adjudicate the
issues. The action seemed to be relegated to perpetual limbo, five years
having now passed since the hearing, all the while the case remaining
"under advisement". Initially Joachim starts to regale his fellow
prisoners with this account as an hilarious farce, but in the course
of his telling, the humor fades and the history that he recounts turns
into a tragedy before his eyes, not on account of the clown who insists
on doing his own plumbing, but in consequence of Joachim's recognition
that the courts cannot be trusted, that law and legality are fictions,
and that his own fortunes are at the whim of the police and other petty
officials.  Katenus becomes distraught because he deems the predicament
of his friends to be entirely his own fault. Mengs declares that since
the law has been discovered to be fiction, one must search for new
survival strategies. It's late at night, and Mengs turns out the light.
At this point the chapter ends. The night is filled with dreams and with
ghosts, and is followed by a foggy and sunless dawn. Stay tuned.

My best to you and Ned.

Jochen