Louis Auchincloss died at 92. He led the life every social climber from Oklahoma or Iowa wanted to live as well as every gay man in the universe -- a delusion, a fairy tale. There were never any good old days for 99% of souls. There is only inherited wealth and unconscionable advantages for the 1%.

Symposia's old muse Bertrand Russell wrote a wonderful essay on the subject more taboo than death, i.e. boredom. This is omnipresent in advanced industrial society and explains aberrant behavior such as obesity.

He also wrote a resonant article called The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed. Dinesen's kikuyu became the Mau Mau though this was the logical result of tribal culture and colonialism.

Today we learn Paxil, Prozac and all those other drugs are pretty much worthless for non-psychotic people who suffer from normal vagaries of life. If the drug companies were culturally literate one would think they were deliberately trying to manufacture soma (Brave New World).

Speaking of words I tried again to read Cyril Connolly's Unquiet Grave and was defeated by the affected blowhard. Of course Hemingway pretended to like and understand that piece of utter madness.