Author Archives: robinandrew0804

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About robinandrew0804

Robin Andrew is my pen name; I’m a runner, a writer, and a parent, from a small town in central Colorado. As a youngster, my biggest athletic aspiration was to not be the last person picked when teams were chosen for games. Since taking up running for stress relief (right about the time our kids entered their teen years - go figure) and fun, I’ve run fifteen marathons and dozens of other events, on both pavement and trails. This site is my way of sharing the joy and sense of accomplishment I’ve found in simply putting feet into motion, plus a few other bits and pieces of what I find interesting and worth caring about.

Paris Undercover

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Paris Undercover – A Wartime Story of courage, Friendship and Betrayal, Matthew Goodman (2025)

At times inspiring, at others horrific, this is an impressive example of historical scholarship and its value in setting the record straight – as opposed to its all too prevalent effect of skewing history to the writer’s preferences.

In the midst of WWII the Etta Shiber’s purported memoir Paris-Underground is published in New York describing the exploits of herself and Kitty Bonnefous, two female resistance workers in Nazi-occupied France.  How that book came about, how much it was fact and how much fiction, and what were the effects its publication, are this current book’s subjects.

Part One of this volume gives us a factual record of the women’s actual lives and actions, up through Etta’s capture trial and imprisonment by the Nazis, thru her eventual release and arrival in New York. (At least I believe this is the factual version.  Given what follows, I do wish Goodman gave us a more explicit assurance to that effect.  In particular, his choice to open with the moment of Etta’s arrival in New York and then backtrack to their exploits confused me when, in Part Two, he informed us that is the way in which Etta’s book was structured.)

Readers looking for a pleasant and inspiring book could perhaps stop right here, and be somewhat satisfied.

Part Two is Goodman’s account of how Etta’s book came to be, how it was or was not written and by whom (there are differing accounts), and the impacts it had on her life..(This is where Goodman details that book’s departures from fact, and where I became a bit confused as to whether what I’d previously read was the true facts, or a replaying of the wartime book’s fabrications.  Perhaps a more diligent reader would not experience any confusion, but I did). What does seem clear though, is that Paul Winkler, himself a Jewish refugee from France, had the leading role as publisher and assembler and probably came out farther ahead financially than anyone else did.  Certainly the book sold well, and Etta Shriber did not get much for it.  What is also clear is that the book’s publication would certainly cause the Nazis to revisit Kitty’s case with even more sadistic vigor than before, likely with deadly consequences for her and others.

By the end of this section, one is angry with Winkler and others, but mostly on the edge of one’s seat, impatient to learn where Kitty has been imprisoned how she has fared while this profit-oriented sideshow was taking place in the safety of North America.  An excellent demonstration of how even a nonfiction book can be structured to maximize its suspense.

Part Three: Into the Night and Fog is the crux of Goodman’s work, a detailed account of Kitty’s imprisonment and mistreatment, the effect of Etta’s book on her such, the terrible  privations she and other prisoners of the Nazis had to endure to survive and even after being ‘freed’ by Soviet troops and, at long last, Kitty’s eventual return to the land of the living, where she lived to very nearly 80 years of age, at last enjoying some comforts and peaceful pleasures despite the debilitating effects of her ordeal.

(Given the chaos and destruction endemic to wartime, especially the end of a World War, it is amazing that Goodman is able to reconstruct this period in such detail and anecdote.  Since the overall purpose of the current volume is to expose the fabrications of Etta’s earlier book, it would have been worthwhile for him to address head on how he is able to be so comprehensive and how he avoided inserting his own imaginings in it, though the extensive Acknowledgements, Notes and Bibliography do help in this regard.)

As with other accounts of wars and particularly the Nazi Reich, one comes away from Paris Underground near despair at the eagerness of some men (and a few women, too) to inflict unnecessary pain and agony on other humans.  And, at the same time, amazed at the ability of many humans to survive mistreatment and hardships that would seem, if described in the abstract, unendurable.

A compelling and thoroughly worthwhile read, but not pleasant, and not for the faint of heart.

 The Netanyahus: An account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family, Joshua Cohen

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Started reading this in the mistaken belief that it was non-fiction and was immediately put off by the narrator’s (and, I assumed, author’s) arrogant attitudes and artificial style of speech. Once I realized it was fiction, those became crucial elements of the narrator’s character and the entire story, rather than obstacles.  A chastising lesson in the difference between forms and the expectations they set up in a reader – and the responsibility of the reader to know what sort of a book e is opening up!

That said, this impressive novel is not without its challenges.  Cohen is knowledgeable and compelling on Jewish culture and Zionist history and politics. His “Credits” make clear this is based on a real incident involving real individuals; the literary critic and educator Harold Bloom, whom Cohen knew well in his last years and on whom he loosely bases his narrator, Ruben Blum; Benzion Netanyahu, a Polish born scholar of medieval Judaism and activist for the creation of the State of Israel – and the father of Israel’s current strongman, Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu (who appears briefly, as a child); and, to a lesser but critical degree, Benzion’s father/Bibi’s grandfather, Nathan Mileikowsky, a Russian born activist, Rabbi and author.  The incident – Benjamin showing up at Blum’s university for an interview with his wife and children unexpectedly and chaotically in tow – is also real, though to what degree is up for debate.

The first half of the novel is serious to the verge of textbook, if a bit satirical, showing us the attitudes of Blum and the surrounding culture (nineteen fifties/sixties backwaters US academia) toward Jews.   One note that struck this reader was how closely the described intentions of Zionist theorists appear to confirm the contentions of Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, which I had begun prior to reading Cohen’s book and am still working my way through (it’s dense).  In this view, it has always been the intent of core Zionists to possess not just what the UN mandated, but all of what have been called, at one time or another, Palestinian territories (reduced today, through a rolling mix of annexations, wartime seizures and occupations, to Gaza and The West Bank – minus the many Israeli settlements already inserted within those boundaries).  The Balfour Declaration and subsequent legalistic measures to enact some sharing of those lands between Israel and the ‘non-Jewish residents’ (to avoid taking a side by describing them as ‘Palestinians’), which I naively believed bestowed a solid legality to the nation, have never been fully accepted by the more ardent Zionists.  Rather, they acceded to these grudgingly and only as temporary accommodations for short term benefits, with always the hope and/or intention that eventually the nation would take by force what it could not win politically.  That even the Balfour Declaration came about only because Zionists and settlers (who were mostly recent arrivals, rather than having been resident prior to the early 20th Century and Zionist movement) backed the British and other nations into conceding it through raids, sabotage and what some have called terrorism, foreshadowed this long-term belligerence.

The novel’s tone changes dramatically in its second portion, as the Netanyahus (or Yahus, as Blum comes to call them, in one of the author’s most amusing bits) arrive and what had been an academic exercise turns into a slapstick comedy of poor manners, poorer parenting, arrogant presumptiveness, cliché infighting between spouses and barbed daggers at academics in general.  For this reader, who finds nearly all ‘comic’ writing an oxymoron, that sectionis less successful and somewhat overextended.

The Netanuyahus is saved in part by the aforementioned orientation on Zionist history and in another part by the insight it provides into the making of one future Prime Minister.

To wit: if the actual Bibi Netanyahu comes from such stock as these fictional father and grandfather, then there seems no way in hell or heaven that he will ever honestly support the idea of a Palestinian state.  Coupled with his actions so far since the tragedy of October 7, 2023, this leads one to conclude there will be no other outcome of the present Israeli/Palestinian conflict than Israel’s elimination of the Palestinians as a people or political entity and the integration of all previously Palestinian-controlled lands into an increasingly theocratic, increasingly Orthodox and bindingly-Jewish state of Isreal. 

Benzion’s scholarly opinion that this tragedy is a result of Medieval Iberia’s choice to maximize economic advantage by portraying Judaism as a race rather than a religion makes it more tragic, not less.  History and religion are not so far apart as some of Cohen’s characters would like them to be.

An impressively erudite novel, depressingly timely.

P. S. – As Cohen tells us, the literal meaning in Hebrew of ‘Netanyahu,’ the surname which Benzion chose to replace his father’s (‘Mileikowsky’) is “gift of God.”  This suggests that the attitude of supreme arrogance and entitlement which Cohen portrays in the character modeled upon Benzion is likely very true to its original.

P. P. S. – Early on, Cohen depicts the anti-progressive bent of conservative strains in Jewish and early Zionist thought.  This reader was struck hard by the similarity of that reactionary and absolutist world view with that of America’s present-day nuovo-populists and MAGA fundamentalists.  One more reason for our Mr. Trump and his fundamentalist Christian supporters to side so strongly with Mr. Netanyahu’s Israeli policies, if their shared paternalism, avarice, brutality and need to perform Alpha Male masculinity were not sufficient.

Doublespeak Becomes our National Language

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The events of January 6, 2021, wherein thousands overran security at the U. S. Capitol Building, directly and violently assaulted security forces then broke into and vandalized that pre-eminent Federal facility, all while threatening bodily harm and even death to the elected representatives doing the nation’s business there, did not require the then-President to take any action and were actually “a day of love,” in Mr. Trump’s words or “a normal tourist visit,” in those of Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde.

But:

The events of the last few days in Los Angeles, wherein crowds gathered in predominantly peaceful demonstrations, are “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the U. S. government”– the standard set by 10 U. S. C. 12406 of the Code on Armed Services which the administration has abused to justify creating a national crisis by deploying Federalized National Guard and active duty Marine troops – despite urgent assurances by both local and state authorities that there was no need to do so.

Doublespeak, George Orwell’s prescient creation, is alive and active in the words of those who now govern our nation.

(There’s no excuse for throwing rocks or anything else at police forces. No excuse for looting or vandalism either, but such criminal offenses are properly and regularly addressed by civil law enforcement forces. Assembling in public to voice and demonstrate common feelings about events in one’s community is neither rebellion nor incursion but a right guaranteed to all in the U. S. by our Constitution, our laws and abundant examples in our nation’s glorious history.

Mr. Trump, who famously declared “I love wars,” who tried to declare himself, “a wartime president” back in 2020, and is eagerly anticipating his opportunity to preside over a grand military pageant, made a tactical mistake by predicating his current reign on avoiding foreign wars. To escape this bind, it seems, he has decided it is in his political and economic interest to find himself a domestic war. Stones thrown in LA are merely the pretext for this latest escalation of his own aggrandizement.)

“Good night and good luck,” indeed.

Autocracy Now!? – a personal opinion

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Following Mr. Trump’s second ascension to the Oval Office, Op Ed pages were flush with pundit pieces pondering whether our nation might be slipping toward autocracy.

Now, less than 10% thru the man’s political resurrection, the verdict seems clear. Since January 20th, 2025, we’ve:

Watched Mr. Trump invite elected leaders of sovereign nations to the White House on pretense of official business only to then enact staged humiliations (complete with laughably inaccurate accusations despite his having the entire resources of the Federal Government at his disposal to provide accurate information), all to generate “…great television…” in his perpetual self-promotion campaign.

Cringed at his lazy and feckless use of social media (“Vladimir, STOP!”), to ‘negotiate’ international disputes on which turn the lives and fates of millions, no doubt provoking scathing contempt among the hardened dictators who simply ignore his maunderings as they go about their bloody business.

Witnessed him elevate minor entertainment personalities to positions of real power despite their lack of relevant experience, and begun to see the damage their recklessness is inflicting both at home and abroad.

Cringed as his craven ‘spokespersons’ dodge, divert and dissemble to suggest his public pronouncements do not mean what their words plainly say and that reality is whatever their Don says it is, rather than what we perceive with our own eyes, ears and reason.

Seen him predicate foreign policy not on the basis of any lasting principle, nor of the Nation’s interests, but of his own need to appear ‘strong’ and to ingratiate himself with the most brutal and paternalistic figures on the world stage, currying their favor and reveling in the pomp and praise and gilded royal treatment they gladly dispense as a cheap price for neutering our nation’s hard-won soft power.

Observed him repurposing the Justice Department into a tool for personal vendetta, while neutering the rule of law wherever else it suits him through pardons, elimination of oversight and simply ignoring any statute, decision, precedent or custom he does not choose to follow.

In short, the question those Op Eds asked has already been answered: As of this writing and for all practical purposes, governance of the United States is no longer enacted by Congress, nor administered by the various Federal agencies and offices, nor constrained by the rule of law.

Those functions have, instead, been subverted to the whims of a single person whose overriding goal is to elevate his self-image above even the office of the Presidency while simultaneously feeding his obsessive greed and coagulating power in his name alone.

The autocracy is here, and it is U.S.

(The current questions are: how long will it last, and how badly will it end?)

Gabriel’s Moon – William Boyd ventures into George Smiley territory

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Boyd’s eighteenth novel expands his collection of espionage stores – along with Restless, Waiting for Sunrise and Solo (his Bond installment).  This time out, we are very much in Le Carre territory; 1960’s Britain and Europe, Soviet machinations, MI6 blundering its upper-class way through a maze of deceptions and counter-deceptions.  Boyd makes excellent work of this all, with vivid settings and interesting personalities.  His conclusion is fittingly tragic and portentous, while leaving plenty of room for possible sequel(s).

Small quibble in that the prose her is sometimes overabundant and studiously colorful.  May well be a gesture toward that of the main character, travel writer Gabriel Dax, who is teased by his controller  (and one time lover) Faith Green for purpling to excess. A bit distracting but tolerable, as there is real wonder and appreciation of the world’s many pleasures.  Dax’s alcohol consumption is another striking aspect, we seem to proceed directly from one cocktail to then next bottle of wine to brandy to the next morning’s pick me up.  How the man remains vertical is a mystery.  Possibly intended as period correctness, (along with the relentless smoking and cover art which recalls title sequences of the early Bond films) but again, a bit distracting.

There’s also a large gap in the story’s wrap-up – Gabriel has learned some facts about the fire which killed his mother (facts we already knew as that event was the novel’s opening scene) and while the explanation has helped his insomnia and angst, for the reader it feels incomplete.  Nor is the fact that his father died in a plane crash in Persia while working for BP.  Given that Gabriel’s older brother Sefton is a bent diplomat and the secrets lurking elsewhere, one must wonder if that death was a cover for more espionage, but Gabriel never seems to imagine that, much less pursue it. Perhaps that too is being saved for future installments?

All in all, a very creditable and enjoyable addition to the genre and to the author’s estimable collection.   

(Oh – sure enough, while fact checking for this summary I happened upon a Wikipedia note characterizing this as the first volume of a planned trilogy, with the second due for publication in 2025.  Definitely something to look forward to.)

Karla’s Choice, Nick Harkaway

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Picked this up less than fully convinced that a John Le Carre novel sans Le Carre was really needed.  Fact it was penned by the master’s son, Nick Harkaway, made it somewhat more promising than the various Ian Fleming-less Bond retreads by unrelated followers (of whom Harkaway is one, the admirable William Boyd another).  Was encouraged before the start by a statement in the Author’s Note that “There were always supposed to be more Smiley books.”  LeCarre’s having graciously left ten years of blank foolscap between The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy also suggested room for this insertion.

From the start, what I found was encouraging, gliding along quite happily to the familiar rhythms and contexts of LeCarre’s world as scored and conducted by Harkaway (who has the benefit of having actually been present and somewhat privy to his father’s creative processes).   A pleasant enough experience, but not eye-opening – until somewhere around 80% of the way through – stop reading here if you don’t want to spoil the experience for yourself…

Just as I’d begun to worry this might be all retread, Susannah, the naive civilian whose cry for help initially set the entire story into motion, despairs at Smiley’s apparent lack of principle and crosses the Iron Curtain into Hungary (at the time a Communist autocracy tightly leashed to the Soviet Union) to commandeer his mission for herself.  Though believable based upon her earlier actions and personal history, this impulsive act nonetheless flips us into another plot entirely, as Smiley and his professionals must improvise in hopes of catching up with her.  Then, just as I’d accepted that and begun to anticipate the excitement it must generate, Harkaway switched form entirely – stopping the clock to preview various character’s future reminiscences on whether Smiley’d had no idea this was coming and was now in totally reactive mode, or had anticipated and accepted Susannah’s action as inevitable and gone with the flow or had, in fact, callously conceived, arranged and ensured such a dangerous act in order to achieve his own ends at the probabl cost of her innocent life.  By dancing a follow-spot rapidly over Smiley’s talent, skill and commitment even as it highlights several canonic characters’ own abilities and relationship to the master, Harkaway makes clear that moral principle, guilt and regret are the true subjects of the novel, assuming LeCarre’s mantle very nicely, thank you. 

Minutes later (in reading time, that is) we’re back into thriller form, watching as George discovers he has been made and is being tailed, and then as this unassuming ‘little man’ deals brilliantly with the challenges (including a car chase with Smiley at the wheel – never thought we’d see that!).  These scenes are virtuosic for both character and author, and from there it is a race to a signature LeCarre finish: bloodshed held off-screen, morality front and center and more than a hint of anticlimax, until Harkaway surgically exposes just what values and choices lay behind the various participants’ actions. Despite the infamous Karla (through-line villain of the entire Smiley oeuvre) having appeared very sparingly and with minimal back story, it turns out that his ‘choice’ is indeed the true point of this novel.  Not to mention a worthy gift to the fans in how it adds color and insight to Le Carre’s own chronologically-later volumes. Very nicely done!

Credit where credit is due:  I read this in e-book form – one of the more benevolent byproducts of our evolving digital hegemony.  An e-book I had borrowed online from a public, i.e. ‘government funded’ (cue the sinister theme music) library – one of those many liberal-culture institutions from which our marginally-elected leaders are currently scrambling to rescue us.  Had downloaded it in moments and for free – another benefit of the ‘mommy state’ imposed upon us by the ‘deep state’ which is now being shredded in favor of absolute free-market fundamentalism. Who knew we had so much to lose?  Anyone with eyes…

Having thus tested the waters and found them delicious, I’ll now be purchasing a hard-copy of Karla’s Choice so as to compensate author and industry for conspiring to make such an entertaining and worthwhile title available.

Kköszönöm mindenkinek – ’Thank you everyone.’

The Crisis is Upon Us!

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To all those pundits still talking of the courts reigning in Mr. Trump, or of a ‘possible’ constitutional crisis ‘ahead’:

Fugeddabout it!

An administration led by the ‘world’s greatest negotiator,’ who claimed he could end two overseas wars easily, cannot get a single unjustly imprisoned man released from the country with which they previously negotiated an agreement to remit him?

This is an obvious refusal to comply with the courts, shrouded in the weak and passive-aggressive excuses of snickering adolescence.

The constitutional crisis is here, folks, right before our eyes!

(First posted as a Substack Note, 2025-04-13)

We’re Moving to Substack!

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It’s a new year and a new world, which means it’s time to try something new!

Starting a few days ago, I’ve begun posting thoughts, opinions and appreciations on Substack under the title “Nobody Says.” There will be running posts soon as well, plus whatever else suits my fancy or sticks in my craw.

Hope to see you there,

Robin Andrew

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

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Kudos to the 2023 Pulitzer Prize Board for a totally worthy selection.  Kingsolver ticks a literary box by channeling Dickens and his David Copperfield without crass imitation, a societal significance box by addressing child poverty, abuse and the epidemic of rural drug use (especially opioid addiction, calling out some of the companies and their owners by name) and the readership box by creating a captivating and moving tale featuring flawed but valuable characters of realistic human color and complexity in an interesting land- and culture-scape.

The opening chapter or two induced a little hissy fit in this reader – knee-jerk objection to spending time with a self-destructive junky single mother and a narrator who seemed, at first, kind of stereotypically hillbilly.  The prize award was helpful then, inducing me to power through to where it began to dawn on my urban elitist New York-raised mind that the mother was not going to be our companion all the way through, the child/narrator quite a bit more self-aware than my prejudices first supposed, and the hillbilly voice (along with my dismissive reaction to it) was central to the moral view of the novel. Just as it is best not to judge political speech on the speaker’s accent, neither should the reader allow Demon’s voice, which cements him into his milieu, to obscure his story.

Kingsolver’s craft extends also to the novel’s plotting, following Demon’s trials and tribulations for long enough to make the reader feel his despair and self-doubt while every now and then throwing us the lifeline of a gentle soul or a positive experience before descending again into the long, slow slide.  By the time his fate takes its most significant downward turn (page 333 of 546) we are fully invested and watch the slow-motion pileup with horror until around 508 when a ray of sunshine begins to probe the rotted-out shutters of doom.  Even then, we’re on pins and needles till very nearly the end, hoping against hope that he will find it in himself to succeed and when he does, in the final twenty pages, the payoff brought tears to these eyes. 

I gather some readers have said that happy ending (one should say tentatively happy, having been reminded in the preceding pages of the regression statistics on addiction treatment) feels false and not credible, after all that came before, and it would certainly be possible for an author to have ended this story on the downbeat of despair.  Possible, but not as rewarding and not as true to the model’s modus operandi. Dickens too was writing to entertain a wide public and so needed to grant them the satisfaction of a good story with a rewarding culmination even as he fed them the unvarnished truths he believed they needed to hear.  His legacy over the intervening 175 years is sufficient to suggest that he, and now Kingsolver, made the correct choice in that.

As a writer one can well imagine the fun Kingsolver must have had transcribing character names into the nicknaming vernacular of mountain folk: David Copperfield to Demon Copperhead, James Steerforth to Fast Forward, Uriah Heap to U-Haul, etc.  While Mr. Micawber made a modest move to Mr. McCobb, the author seems to have hewn closer to model the more admirable the cast member:  Aunt Betsey gets the slimmest change of spelling as Aunt Betsy, the Peggety family becomes the Peggot clan and Dora morphs into Dori, still trying her young husband’s patience and love just as much despite the different vowel and dying an early tragic death as well.  Demon’s other romantic interest retains her original name, Agnes, despite being referred to throughout as Angus (for reasons the novel explains).  A further twist is necessary for her father, who in Dickens is Dr. Strong.  Since the physician in that part of the story will turn out to be a villain whose neglectful care and wrong-headed prescriptions start Demon on his steepest and deepest slide, Kingsolver names him Dr. Ward (as in ‘ward of,’ perhaps?) while Agnes’ father and Demon’s putative rescuer becomes the high school football team’s Coach Winfield – as in ‘win on the field,’ perpetuating Dickens’ own custom of punacious character names.  

Another interesting bit of craft regards how reticent the cover quotes and inside flap summary are (at least in the hardcover edition I read).  A potential reader would never know from them what a harrowing story they are in for.  One suspects that was a calculated choice, aiming for potential readers to be drawn in by Kingsolver’s previous commercial successes and the Pulitzer award so they would read far enough to become emotionally invested before seriously questioning whether or not to continue.

One could say a lot more, but I’ll just leave it that Demon Copperhead has already taken a prominent spot on the shelf so I’ll frequently glimpse its spine and be reminded that highly satisfying and truly worthwhile fiction is still possible – even in this age of internet, AI and attention spans measured in microseconds.

Another Side of Bob Dylan, Victor Maymudes (Co-written and Edited by Jacob Maymudes)

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Subtitled ‘A Personal History on the Road and off the Tracks,’ and found by happenstance in a used-book store, this is a bit of marketing, in that it’s real subject is not Dylan at all, but Victor Maymudes, a longtime roadie and tour manager for Dylan, who spoke much of the text into a tape recorder in anticipation of a memoir he did not live to write.  Son Jacob (intriguing note: Dylan also has a son by that name) found the tapes after nearly every other possession or memento of his father had been destroyed in a fire, and put together this volume out of loyalty, respect and love.  Intertwining his own recollections, he added also quite a bit of explanation regarding the drifting apart that separated Maymudes from Dylan for years, how they came back together and how they fell-out again, more deeply and permanently, superficially due to business issues touching upon Jacob and his sister, but really thanks to Dylan’s own mercurial and dictatorial personality.  End result, the title is a deliberate misdirection but – as no doubt intended – induced me to pick up and read a book I’d likely not have been interested in if it had been titled more accurately.

Part rock/pop music hagiography, part social history of the sixties, part family paean, what resulted is an oddity but worth the reading.  Maymudes is interesting and unique, his journey intermittently exciting and at other times reflective.  The glimpses of Dylan depict savantic brilliance within the realm of music and songwriting coupled with a chilling inability to understand, consider or forgive those close to him.    As if, being so successful on his own terms at the one or two things he believes matter, he can barely spare a moment or a thought for anyone who is not equally blessed.  This seems confirmed by scenes of his collaboration with other musicians whom Dylan found satisfactory to his craft’s needs and so deigned to treat in a more-humane manner.

A dual portrait then, of two very different characters, their colorful journey and the tragic end of their always-unequal friendship over misunderstandings and slights that by rights should have been, given Dylan’s extraordinary wealth and independence, inconsequential.  Obscure and oddball, but definitely worth holding onto once you’ve come across it.

(Another note: Treehorn Books, Santa Rosa CA, is all a paper-hound could ask for.  Narrow aisles, shelves piled high, well-categorized and welcoming.  Stopped in for the first time to see if they had any G. B. Shaw for a birthday gift and found the perfect Collected Prose; inches thick, hard cover, great condition including library-style plastic over the dust-cover.   I will be back…)