Sorry, all fans of placing persons under a rubric (X,Y,Z, Greatest, whatever), but when I hear of these "Generation Wars" or whatever one calls them and the "authors" that ensnare the gullible reader into enlarging their bank accounts buy purchasing such pablum, alarm bells start ringing in my head. Why? I read Tolstoy's War and Peace for the first time when I was about 20.- I'll leave you to guess how old I am now-And one of the most striking passages was when Vera Berg talks about "our days", according to Tolstoy, "as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of 'our days' and that human characteristics change with the times."

Look, whether you're fighting Napoleon, Hitler, or making war with the Vietnam War, human genetics have scarce had time to evolve. You'll find the same players, passions, heroes, scoundrels etc. in all of these generations.

The only generation that may be called special is the one that still reads Tolstoy....And I'm not telling!

-Daniel Myers

I'm a 30-something male with the type of job that just barely alllows me to scrape by - while living with my parents. I have a Phil.D. from Oxford in English Lit.-Yes, the Oxford in England-I've become rather depressed here in a Southern State and also quite lonely, without anyone with whom to carry on a scintillating (or non-scintillating) conversation.---But, lately. I've discovered a new nexus for the intelligentsia: The Medicaid office. Recently, while there to confirm to the authorities that I was poor enough to contemplate Proust and get (nearly) free health care at the same time (trust me, not a problem), I ran into a Ph.D in Musicology, with whom I discussed Shostakovich and his (antecedent Shostokovich) appearance as a character in Vollman's Europe Central for half an hour while waiting for blood work.

Later, I ran across a girl with a degree in Comp. Lit.-I'm not sure how long we talked (quite a while); but, as we were disagreeing over the Pathetic Fallacy and my name was called - I had a fleeting thought that I'd just been cured, of, nearly, everything.

-Daniel

The LW is "Conflicted" in more ways than one. I can only hope that the position in question is NOT in the English department.

All this supernaturalist twaddle reminds me of Thomas Carlyle's remark in Sartor Resartus, commenting on Dr. Johnson's lifelong desire to see a ghost, that all the great lexicographer had to do was look in the mirror! - If we were truly aware of the numinous and bizarre nature of this world and our transitory existence in it, there would be no need for societies like the SPR or books like this one.

Of course she can, Cary! Doesn't anybody read Rimbaud anymore? So what if it ends in a shipwreck? Shipwrecks are beautiful too. "The day stretched out before him like an unlimitable, rolling desert, in which he was inevitably going to be lost - always in a delightful way, of course."-Malcolm Lowry, Under The Volcano--Just substitute "This relationship" for "The day" and "her" for "him" and "she" for "he".-----Of course, this all assumes that any of the histrionics described in the letter are for real.

I was startled, not to say aghast, nonplussed, taken way aback, that Ms. Emma Pearse completely neglected Australia's only Nobel Prize winner in Literature (1973), Patrick White, from her account of Australia's literary heritage. Could it be that Ms. Pearse has never heard of White?!?----Or, more like as not, simply doesn't fancy him.

White's Riders in the Chariot is one of the greatest works of the Twentieth Century, combining identification with the outcast with detailed and vividly accurate descriptions of Australian Society.

And whether or no Ms. Pearse or Salon's editors have some hangup with White-I can't imagine what it could be-It simply won't do to leave out a Nobel Winner from an account of a country's literary legacy.

Cary, I know this is how you make your living - But, please, keep your bleeding nose out of this one. Life is fatal. If someone wants to drink her/himself to death, so be it. And PLEASE don't bring in the AA party line about this issue. All studies have found that AA does no better than no treatment at all, and a barrage of court cases have unambiguously come down against mandated AA attendance, citing that AA is clearly religious in its orientation. Let the fellow drift away in his alcoholic haze. I can think, and have witnessed, worse ways to die.