Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. I'm pleased that you share my
enthusiasm for the Lappe poem and perhaps also for the music
that Schubert wrote to accompany it. In the context of Grille
I neglected to mention that the species names of crickets is
Gryllidae. I haven't investigated whether Grille is the
transposition into German of the scientific name, or as seems
more likely, Gryllidae is a latinization of Grillen. In any
event: ich werde mir darueber keine Grillen machen.

Day before yesterday I spent improvising the second half of
chapter 43. As I most likely mentioned more than once,
chapter 43 describes a dream of Jonathan Mengs which locates
him in the room of a basement filled with storage cartons of
legal cases labeled as "decisive". However, when Mengs starts
to open the boxes he finds most of them completely empty, those
not empty are filled with meaningless trash. Deeply offended,
Mengs moves into an adjoining room which turns out to be a
dungeon littered with garbage and perhaps even skeletal remains
of prisoners who have perished there, - all this symbolic of
the consequences of "adjudication". Mengs is lost; he sees
no exit, no escape. He espies at the distant periphery a rope
ladder, which as he approaches, turns out to have been a mirage.
Instead he finds a cubicle with a chair and a desk, a sheaf of
papers, a collection of pencils, and an LSAT with but a single
question: "Beschreiben Sie die Grundlage des Rechts in der
Beschaffenheit des menschlichen Wesens, und leiten Sie die
Unzulaenglichkeit und das Versagen der Rechtsprechung aus dieser
Beschaffenheit ab."  Obviously a challenge not only for Mengs but
also for me, a challenge to which I haven't done justice and
which I must revisit at some later date. What I've put together
so far is, of course, accessible to you, but what I've written
is abstract, dense, and protracted to a degree that I can't expect
you - or anyone else - to read it. I believe this text to be at
the threshold of a tailoring establishment whose specialty is
emperor's new clothes.  When Mengs has finished his examination
composition, and starts to correct it, he finds his writing
illegible, he gives up and awakens, only to fall asleep again and
to discover himself, in another dream, at the foot of the rope
ladder on which he then ascends into chapter 44.

Yesterday I started to work on chapter 45, an account of the dream
of Maximilian Katenus giving his acceptance speech for the Nobel
Prize in literature. Initially conceived as satire on Katenus'
delusions of grandeur, as I think about it, the speech seems to be
metamorphosing into a description and analysis of ceremony as
self-conscious history, a naive effort at creating an historical
reality by a society which is oblivious of the circumstance that
history is fiction. I began with the premise that since Katenus
had never been to Stockholm, it wouldn't be necessary for me to go
there either. Then I became curious and decided a virtual Internet
excursion was worth the effort. I found out that the Stockholm-Arlanda
airport is esthetically indistinguishable from other modern airports, -
when you've seen one, you've seen them all.  From Arlanda a high-speed
train takes one into the center of Stockholm, which to my ignorant
surprise I found to be built on an archipelago in an inlet some
kilometers from the open sea. The literature prize is awarded every
10th of December by the Svenska Akademien, the Swedish Academy
which is housed on the first floor of the Stock Exchange on a small
medieval square, Stortorget - large place - on a small island,
Gamle Stan, - Oldtown - where medieval Stockholm began. Wenn ich
ihm einen Besuch erstattete, wuerde Stortoget mich an den Hagenmarkt
in Braunschweig, oder and den Altstadtmarkt oder and den Burgplatz
erinnern, und deshalb ist's ueberfluessig, mir die Muehe zu machen. 

I've also been giving thought to the next hearing in the Nantucket case,
scheduled for March 3. I've had no further word from Mr. Gordon the plumber
or from Mr. Pucci the lawyer. If challeged by the Court for my failure
to pursue Mr. Gordon more aggressively, I'll take the opportunity to
expound on the precariousness of Mr. Gordon's position and on my belief
that decisions of potentially great import, rather than being preempted
by the litigants, should be made by the Court.

Outside, the wood chipper of a Belmont Landscaping company is noisily
grinding branches that were impinging on the roof, branches that have
been sawed from the trees overshadowing the house, a maintenance project
I had delayed for too many years. Nonetheless, the trimming, cutting
or felling of any tree makes me uncomfortable, and I'll be pleased
when darkness comes and the lumberjacks are gone. Then, tomorrow, my
mind can begin assimilating itself to the changed appearances.

Jochen