Spectacles 2

They have never turned up - I expected them to appear as soon as I ordered a new pair, which have also not arrived yet. I remain in limbo, able to read, minus all glasses, but unable to write at the screen for more than a few minutes - hence this post.

I finished Graham Greene's 'The Human Factor' though. One of my favourite writers, his protagonists display a kind of defeated tragic heroism better than anyone else that I have read. To me, the prose itself is invisible and yet beautiful, and something to which one should aspire.

One of the forums has debated the merits of advertising and marketing one's books. As a reader, I pay absolutely no attention to advertisements; in fact, if I took any notice at all, they might actually deter me from buying. But, as we always say, it must work or people would not spend good money on it. Goodreads itself carries some ads, and it also has advice pages about how to promote what one has written. But there is something rather un-English about self-promotion, isn't there? I'm quite English, so that's just one more reason for not doing it.

First frost this morning (reminding me of a fine poem of the same name by Andrei Voznesensky that I used to teach) telling us that winter is on its way even though it is still officially autumn. It's curious how as a species we have named and mentally categorised all natural phenomena. DNA studies are now de-stabilising the concept of species itself but the fact is that all of these ideas are simply temporary constructs that we have imposed upon the natural world. When we are gone, they will cease to exist.