Cry Wolfe

Yesterday, I was on the 33 Stanyan, perhaps MUNI's most baroque line, starting at Potrero, traversing 18th, crossing Market, ascending Haight, left on Stanyan, down Arguello, into Pacific Heights. A woman sat down in front of me and pulled out The Web and The Rock, which was published posthumously in 1939, having been edited by Edward Aswell, later to father a daughter who was one of my fourth-grade classmates.

I have been thinking about Wolfe lately, in terms of how could Max Perkins have been a great editor if 1) he didn't make Fitzgerald rewrite the "drama" into which the last part of This Side of Paradise degenerates and if 2) no matter how much he cut, Wolfe goes on and on, and is now, as far as I can tell, unreadable.

I asked the woman what had prompted her. (I was a bit high, having just fortified myself, during a meeting with a new board member, with a cup of hot cocoa, a slice of walnut pie, and a slice of sweet potato pie, at Mission Pie, Mission & 25th.)

She had been in Dog Eared Books (not an advertiser) and she'd flipped through it and liked what she read. She said she planned to read even more Wolfe after The Web. It looked to me like she still had a good 650 pages to test her mettle.

Later, on the 1 California, a woman sat down in front of me and continued her romp through Middlemarch.

Meanwhile, Aneesa continues to make professional progress.