Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter, and thank you especially
for your attention to Chapter 11. I myself hadn't looked at it
for many years, and was embarrassed when I reread it yesterday
in how fragmentary and dissheveled a state I had left it.
So I spent several hours last evening and this morning, so to
speak combing its hair and cleaning its fingernails, making its
new appearance much less embarrassing. However, so far as
the substance of the chapter is concerned, I find it, narcissistic
pretender that I am, deeply moving and true to (my) life. I could
well imagine your fascination, assuming as I do that the world in
which you grew up was very different.

Remarkable to me, how much of the contents of my novels I have
forgotten. Deeply immersed at present in chapter 48, I remember
only few details of prior episodes. The realism which I espouse is
not the realism of the table of contents, of the index, or of the
catalogue, but the realism of memory - and oblivion - the realism
of the spirit. It was Novalis, I believe, who wrote: Nach Innen
geht der geheimnisvolle Weg. You're of course under no obligation
to continue to read, but if you do, please feel free to be
unreservedly critical. And please keep me informed of what the
doctors tell you.

Jochen