Recently my next-door friend got a new computer and consequently bestowed on me her older one--so now I have my own email address. Gary and I immediately began corresponding from room to room, which gives us both much pleasure.
Yesterday, when I looked at my messages, I found this from Gary about his current reading in the works of Emile Zola (specifically, The Masterpiece): " If anyone should ask why I read Zola (and nobody will)," he wrote to me, "I'd point to writing like this: "...Willows, along both river-banks, trailed their pale heads in their own reflections."
Gary tells me that he simply didn't expect such lyricism from so committed a naturalist writer as Zola..
