This piece of news regarding Primo Levi's memoir "The Perodic Table" (which was gifted to me by my "bookie" friend C a year ago - thank you C if you are reading this!) makes me very happy. Levi is one of the writers whose prose can shift the gears of one's mind, and makes one want to be able to write with "humanity" - this ignoring the death camp terror that one perhaps has to endure first to arrive to the state from which such writing can begin.

is a place one can find oneself stuck at as one is foced to watch "Bachelor, The Rome Edition" on the boob-tube, as one runs hamster like on a treadmill in a hotel gym at 9.00 pm*, and partakes in a twadry spectacle, a simulacrum of "romantic" love.

*A necessary operation to speed up the few breathing moments between work and sleep for this is when "the essential loneliness of man" can carry out a flanking raid - usually poetry did this job but who has time for that! And yes, Mr. Dana Gioia, poetry doesn't matter much, if not at all in corporate America.