Vladimir Mylnikov: indeed,
why philosophise: death is death - it's a syllogism, and if we want or would
like to have hopes how to escape death then we need to say "death is maybe a
death."
JM: Indeed. But I must ask now,
why read? After all we shall be merely sustaining an author's afterlife? (The
same humorist Millôr once wrote:"Death is hereditary" and, like literature, it
is transmissible).
Fran Assa inquired about John
Francis Shade and Robert Frost...Shade knew quite well that he was "a
slimy step behind" him.
I suppose that snow in New England,
school-days and puritan childhood must have been quite
different from what Shade experienced in ... New
Wye.