Article of Interest

"The human mind has been unintentionally designed to respond in perverse ways to large-scale suffering."

The Well Written One Sentence Paragraph

One of my favourite authors for the art of writing the overlong sentence and making it sing is John Le Carre. The late John Leonard was another writer who could write a wonderful streak.

For your reading pleasure here is an excerpt from Le Carre's recent novel, A Most Wanted Man:

And that taken all in all, Barlach's message to the world was one of deeply perplexed pity for its suffering, which was why, ever since that day, Brue had come here maybe a dozen times, either when he was in temporary despair -- the black dog as Edward Amadeus used to call it -- or when things were going seriously awry at the bank, or for instance when Mitzi told him, practically in as many words, that he didn't match up to her exacting standards as a lover, a thing he had more or less assumed, but would have preferred no to hear. (pg. 167)

OR

Not rubber-stamped by Frau Elli, at that time you young, devoted and very private secretary, but hand-inscribed by you in fine blue strokes of your ubiquitous fountain pen, ending with your signature in full, lest the casual reader -- not, God knows, that there ever was one -- happened to be unaware the EAB stood for Edward Amadeus Brue OBE, the banker who throughout his life never bent the rules, until the end of it when he broke them all (pg. 40)

John Updike

Ian McEwan, one of my favourite authors, who has written, among other acclaimed novels -- Black Dogs (1992), has now written a wonderful article on the occasion of the recent passing of another one of my literary favourites -- John Updike.

Updike died on January 27, 2009 at the age of 76. The Guardian's obituary headline read: "John Updike, chronicler of American loves and losses, dies at 76." One of my favourite novels by Updike was a novel published in 1978 entitled, The Coup; and one of the best collection of essays I've ever read is, entitled, "Self-Consciousness:Memoirs (1989)."

Lost and Found: Underwater in Zanzibar

Zodiac Killer

A Non Ymous writes that I have some resemblance to the Zodiac. Who the heck is the Zodiac? Glad you asked:

The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. His identity remains unknown. The Zodiac killer coined his name in a series of taunting letters he sent to the press. His letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers), three of which have yet to be solved.

The Zodiac murdered five known victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. Numerous suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators, but no conclusive evidence has surfaced.

In April 2004, the San Francisco Police Department marked the case "inactive" but re-opened it some time before March 2007. The case also remains open in the the city of Vallejo as well as in Napa and Solano Counties. The California Department of Justice also has maintained an open case file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.

In August 2008, a Sacramento man claimed he had discovered evidence that pointed to his stepfather being the Zodiac Killer. A black hood, a knife encrusted with blood, writing samples, and rolls of photographic film were collected by the FBI.^[1][2] The FBI has not said when it will release the results of its tests.^[3] As of January 2009^[update] those tests have neither concluded nor ruled out the suspect as the Zodiac Killer,^[4] and the FBI continues to collect more evidence to build a DNA profile.^[5]

^Source