Further West

Cinematic tropes continue as I dashed through Cities on the Plain last week, finding much grist in the encounter of the protagonists of the Trilogy's first two elements. Such a flourish bled into a descent into Warlock by Oakley Hall. I first became aware of the author a year ago, viewing a documentary about his son Tad' a wunderkind who battled mental illness and after a staggering early career in theatre attempted to kill himself and left himself but a husk afterwards. I was browsing the NYRB Classics site and found the reviews quite promising, the idea that while at Cornell, Pynchon found it his favorite book only sealed such for me, whore that I remain.

I have also discovered the English historian VC Wedgwood, as I read her study on Gibbon today and am thinking of making her tome on the Thirty Year War a samizdat selection after Beograd.