Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. I agree: the early date for the plumbing
inspection was a surprise. I had expected the Building Department to
procrastinate as long as possible and not to schedule the inspection
until the last moment. Such delay would indeed have been in Nantucket's
interest. I suspect it was Mr. Pucci, their newly hired lawyer who
prodded them into compliance with the Appeals Court decision. I'm
fascinated by the notion that the lawyer of the opposition should
in effect be promoting my cause.

I anticipate the inspection with equanimity. I plan to take along
a copy of the Winter's Tale to read on the boat. I'm not sure just
which dramatis personae I should expect. Mr. Gordon certainly, but
Mr. Ciarmataro, according to Mr. Gordon's letter has bowed out in
favor of the alternate inspector - Butch Ramos. I didn't know the
office of alternate inspector existed. Maybe an adhoc improvisation.
There was also mention of Mr. Bernie Bartlett's the building inspector's
attendance. The individual who really know what's wrong with the
plumbing is myself: I did it, I put it in, I'm the guilty one; 
but I intend to play the role of ignorant and incompetent amateur
that has been assigned to me and keep my mouth shut. If the plumbing
installion "fails" the inspection, the Inspector will be required to
prepare a written report. That obligation will place him at a disadvantage
since literary composition is not his forte.  After the inspection,
if I'm not too disconcerted, I'll drive the 1995 minivan,
now two months beyond the required inspection date, to Don Allen
Ford on Polpis Road for yet another species of inspection. I
haven't yet decided on which boat I will come home.

The Winter's Tale has long been one of my favorite Shakespeare
dramas. It is of course a tragedy in a comic guise and thereby
the ultimate tragedy. The "redemption" at the end of the play
does not redeem the horror of Leontes destructive paranoia and
implies that worse might have happened, Hermione might not have
been resurrected from the dead, and indeed that resurrection is
the acme of fantasy. The plot which purports to soften the terror
of the story brings to mind the wisdom of Edgar in King Lear:
The worst is not when we can say: this is the worst.

I haven't reread the Winters Tale for years, but Shakespeare's
story came to mind when in my superficial research about Law and
Equity, I was reminded of Ann Boleyn and Catherine Howard, the two
of Henry VIII's six wives who, a mere 63 years before the Winter's
Tale was composed, were beheaded by him, charged like Herminone,
with adultery.  Their fate was no more remote from Shakespeare's
consciousness than events in 1948 are from ours. I interpret the
character of Leontes as a textbook description of paranoia,
exaggerated by the poet's empathy and imagination, but unfortunately
not unusual in the world as I understand it. I'll probably want to
expand my comments after another reading of the play. 

Meanwhile, I won't forgo the opportunity for a bit of self-promotion,
by mentioning that the The Winter's Tale is the fulcrum of my novel 
Die Andere.  In chapter 28
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/K28.TXT
my protagonist Jacob Doehring, who as you may remember is a professor
of literature, has established a liaison with Dorothea - I can't now
even remember her last name - the women's liberation advocate who has
moved into his house. Doehring decides that Dorothea is in need of
deutsche Kultur, or at any rate in need of the education which has
been dispensing to his (other) students. He suggests, and she agrees,
that they read the Winter's Tale together. The project begins
felicitously enough, but then reality overwhelms the actors, and
when Doehring's voice is echoing Leontes' terrifying hate, Dorothea no
longer able to control her fear and her hostility, jumps from her chair
and slaps Doehring in the face: ein Schlag ins Gesicht, a phrase
introduced as leitmotif already in the first chapter. Der Schlag ins
Gesicht is the turning point of the novel. The relationship disintegrates. 
Dorothea takes up with another man, and at the end of the novel she
celebrates her wedding with him in Doehring's house, while Doehring
himself is locked in his study in the library (Widener) and hears the
wailing of fire engines summoned to extinguish the fire that erupted
at the end of the wedding party.  The next morning Doehring returns to
his house to find it in ashes.

Jochen