terrible, distressing news. tom and i have exchanged e-mail for a long time now, some of it quite personal. only yesterday i got a long and remarkable message from him about his life -- a message (and a life) full of incident, extravagant emotion, great unhappiness, transcendence, violence, and the discovery of a peaceful center.
"read let the dog drive", he'd said, and i did, and found its violence disturbing, and then he detailed some of the parallels between the book and his history, in blunt (but short of brutal) prose.
i wish we'd met face to face.
arnold, weeping again
