Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. There is, of course no urgency to my reply,
except that when a response is on my mind, mental efficiency dictates
that the thought be reduced to writing when it first appears, because
especially at our age, a thought won't stay around, and once it's gone,
it never returns.

Although I'm too cheap to send the Times 99 cents for the privilege
of reading Krugman and Collins, the $15000 price of a perfect smile
is not what deterred me from accepting Dr. Millstein's modest proposal.
Rather it was the prospect of days spent in the dentist's chair for
the extraction of eight roots, four irreparably carious teeth and four
relatively healthy ones, where many of the extractions unavoidably
entailed rupture of existing quiescent abscesses with high probability
of transient dissemination of pus into the blood stream. Does it make
sense to take a significant risk in order to obviate one that is trivial?
Abscess reactivation might never occur, and if it did,  would be far
less dangerous than each extraction.  Crazy!! Even though I don't have
access to the tally, I know for certain that my days are numbered, and
I have no intention of tossing any of them away to the dental surgeons.

I'm pleased that your right eye is doing well. I'll restrain my
propensity to meddle, except to say that Victoria is the better
ophthalmologist. Take her advice.  

When I fetch Margaret from the library in just about an hour, I'll
look for the Jan 16 issue of the New Yorker with the article about
the inquisition. I read a summary on the Internet, but they wanted
money for access to the whole thing, and I said, Skip it. I can't
complain that I feel betrayed by Obama for not closing Guantanamo,
because I never believed his promise that he would. My ethics and
politics have become pure natural science. We are, all of us, without
exception, animals as virtuous as foxes, wolves or skunks, as vicious
as hamsters, mice or rabbits.  What's comical is that we can't survive
without constructing an intellectual nest of virtue and honesty,
analogous to the conical paperlike contraptions built by the wasps as
homesteads, where they lay their eggs and sit out the rainstorms and
from which they swarm out to sting you if you come too close and they
feel threatened. Like wasps, we have no choice but to cement our social
nests with false virtue and false honesty.  They are the glue that
binds our society.  Specifically, the successful lawyer is not the one
who is most truthful or just, but is he who is best able to take
advantage of the adversary's need for appearing to be honest. For
example, Judge Macdonald who will preside over the April 5th hearing,
has amply documented his desire to rule in favor of Nantucket regardless
of the merits; my case before him would be hopeless, if he did not feel
the need to APPEAR fair and unbiased. The task therefore is to create a
logical, legal framework where, in order to conceal his bias, he has no
alternative but to rule in my favor. Whether or not I will succeed is
another matter.  We'll see.  Long live Macchiavelli!

(Just back from the library, which had already lent out the Jan 16 issue
of the New Yorker. I'll try again another day.)

Chapter 50, about which you asked has grown to a mere 7 1/2 pages,
only two of which I've rewritten in English. You can follow my progress
or lack thereof at http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e050
The German version http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/f050
What is there at present, you're likely to find unsatisfactory. The
abscess, the consultation with Dr. Millstein and very mild melancholy
have made for slow going. It's perhaps worth emphasizing that not only
am I not writing for publication, I'm not even writing for in-house
approval. I am experimenting, deliberately and in various dimensions.
Admittedly, I'm woefully ignorant of modern American and English
literature, but what little I have read, strikes me as describing an
impoverished human existence largely devoid of intellect and of art.
for example, Eugene O'Neill's Hairy Ape, A Long Day's Journey into
the Night, - the short stories of Raymond Carver which I have recently
read because my friend Helmut translated them into German. In protest,
I deliberately invent characters who are intelligent, sensitive and
sophisticated, who presume that meaning is to be found in music, art,
and literature. I want to explore how "culture" and especially how
ideas become realities that affect our lives and serve as bridges that
bind, or barriers that separate us.  Rather than fictive chronology or
even history,  I want sentences, paragraphs and chapters which serve
as mirrors that reflect the thoughts, feelings, memories, hopes and
regrets of the various characters. The title "Die Freunde" indicates
that their relationships are of interest. Much as ones present thoughts
are recapitulations of what one had on ones mind days, weeks, or months
ago, so ideas and images, scenes and events are recoverable from memory
on multiple successive occasions, analogous to the repetition of a theme
or a melody in a musical composition. Scenes and events are invoked as
"subjective" memories rather than "objective" descriptions.... That's
enough advertising, maybe I should now get to work.  Good night.
Jochen