Edward St. Aubyn

Everybody said, read Edward St. Aubyn, "The Patrick Melrose novels", so he did.

The injunction wasn't quixotic, it couldn't be, it had to be pessimistic, at least a little and to dissolve in water.

The first story started out quickly, the second story was better than the first, the third was a comedy of manners, and the fourth contained this phrase, "in general babies live in a democracy of strangeness."

Privacy may be the greatest gift, not community as previously touted by the Greeks. Privacy is the new luxury. Not being on Facebook or Twitter, as powerful as they are, creates the aura of celebrity appropriate to this new age, also known as the future. (Though it carries the thumbprints of our decay, the social media may ultimately save us with its ability to make evil more graphic, immediate, and unspeakable).

Gradually, it becomes possible to be famous or at least well-known before you're born.

Then the time comes when we'll know everything about ourselves and we'll all be able to be seen and not be seen at the same time.

The writer will communicate thoughts and feelings directly to the reader by means of electrodes rather than words, which the reader will receive the instant after the writer's transmission, making the reader and the writer almost one.

And Words will no longer pass between us.

After a mighty long silence, women poets will begin to save the language.

And someone says, you should read Noelle Kocot, she's almost as impressive as Alice Templeton or Kathy Garlick.