Balzac

Hello Peter!  I hope Alex wasn't too disappointed when the Yankees lost the series to the Tigers.  Was Alex Rodriguez, the fellow who struck out twice, one of his heroes?  I've started a Pilates program in the hope of holding myself up more straight -- I do feel "aligned" a little more upright than before.  I've finally gotten a hold from my parents of Francis Fukuyama's book on the Origins of Political Order, which I'm just starting.  Otherwise it's been a long biography of Honore de Balzac -- his family was just as difficult as the characters he protrays in his novels, and accounts for some of his cynicism about society.  He tried writing high-flown plays in Alexandrine couplets, which no one liked, until he got a job producing trashy romances under pseudonyms.  These taught him the rudiments of novel-writing, and then he became a success.  Take care, Sidney

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