peter rietbergen

Interpreting the two men as they are sketches in this story, I yet wonder if Nate will continue the relationship - not because he cannot allow Diane to have her time with her son but because, to me, the son does not seem weaned from the mother...

Luckily, we know where this is heading... So no worries. Meanwhile, I do enjoy the leisurely road thither...

If Nate is only Cal's chosen instrument to liberate him from/revenge himself on his mother, one might think that there is no real future, here.

Poot Neil, being taken to a Wagners opera - however festive the Demper building is. At least I for one doubt if a real music lover can stand the endless wailing of Wagners heroines and heroes, with or without translation. His instrumental music often is magical, his vocal rambling, especially in The Ring, exhausting. And Gif forbid having to envisage Walhalla set in a lunatic asylum or some such 'modern' director.😓 Let me take Neil to Strauss's Vier letzte Lieder instead. 🙂

Sometimes a perceptive and sympathetic teacher can make all the difference. But they are not a common breed, alas

A cosy tale comfortably concluded. Thanks.

Of course, a story like this needs a release. We, its readers, must shield ourselves against too pessimistic a view of - against, perhaps, our knowledge of the terrible certainty of? - human nature. For deep down we know that the manifold dark moments of human history almost never are blessed with a happy end...

And even now... In my country it only recently transpired that "young people with problems" for who no housing could be found after they had left the care, or non-care of their parents and the regular authorities were, and still are, by those dame authorities, "outplaced" in establishments often run for private profit....one hates to think what happens to them, there.

A chapter both dreadful, gruesome and, though I hate to admit it, exciting. One remark: fascism does not, I think, equal nazism and extermination camps and genocide. Italy, or rather Mussolini c.a., the original fascists, had no genocidal program and only decided to follow the worst excesses of Germany's leaders rather late in their day.

It is both predictable and deeply moving. In short: one of your (shortest) bests. Thank you.

If Ph. was aware of his lab partner's beyond-academic interest, the author should give us an inkling....

From Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" to Auschwitz. But this tale only works if we believe Elias survived the shocks...

In a light way this exposes a lot of problematic spots ..

Cruelty, alas, has no end till a rebellion, a revolution ends it. But, also alas, few revolutions succeed without the shedding of blood of more people than the perpetrators of the original cruelty....

Well, we'll miss the two men and their various siblings, in-laws and other such. Getting to know them was great fun.