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Some good lines, many of them gruesome war images. Intriguing novelty: a downed angel (vs. plane) in wartime. But it's not exactly a joyful read for the season.

I put together some random Christmas-themed observations, for better or for worse, here: https://updatesonafreeverselife.subst...

Feel free to comment because all I want for Christmas are my two first comments.

For those who followed my blog "Updates on a Free-Verse Life," some news! I've migrated to Substack, where I can post for free vs. for an annual fee. Substacks are a little different. They're newsletters readers subscribe to and receive in their inboxes. Anyway, if you're interested, head over to updatesonafreeverselife.substack.com. It's the same new, same new: riffs on reading, writing, publishing, and teaching.

I've run across this before, maybe not with as much success. Sci-fi meets who-dunnit mystery like chocolate meets peanut butter. And dead people who talk, Marley-like, but about as far from Marley as you can get.

Dying can be difficult stuff but being dead is easy. Philip K. Dick introduces a nifty compromise, being half-dead, which leans more toward the dying than the deading.

As for the title product, it is

Surprisingly fun.

It amounts to an insider's look at the financial, economic, social, and cultural decline in America over the past 50 years. Mostly it's about the rise in power of the few -- the monied interests now ruling Washington from the White House to the Congress to the Supreme Court.

If tracing the roots of corruption is your thing, you won't come up short reading this.

Reich is speaking my language. Eloquently.

60-foot waves? No way I'd be an 18th-century sailor.

Beautiful women in Polynesia? OK. This is how 18th-century sailors forget the waves. And the horrible food. And the horrid smell. And the disease. And the constant dangers.

At least Ellmann doesn't pull punches with his subject like many biographers, who fall in love with theirs. Joyce can be a hot mess.

Life is good when anonymous rich people have checks sent to you regularly while you're trying to raise a family and your Dubliners manuscript has been rejected 40 times (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Exiles not far behind).

It's also good with Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats doing due diligence in the PR game for you.

(He says, waiting for an anonymous check to arrive...)

It's who you know: in Joyce's case, Yeats and Ezra Pound. Thus do the seeds of fame sprout.

Settling in to the launch of Jim's career. I most pity his less talented but more steadfastly loyal younger brother, Stanislaus. (And why does an Irish lad get such a Polish-sounding name?)

Joyce, small in stature, seems petty and small in character, too, at least in the early going. Lots of immature jealousies, rudeness, and boastfulness because, after all, he's a genius.

Also amazed at how much he mined his own life for ALL his stories and books. If you were family, friend, or enemy, look out! Ellmann's forever drawing the parallels.

Entertaining, for a biography.

Brought to the beach and, it turns out, the perfect beach read (you never know till you get there).

Amusing and light reading in its way, but all the allusions to British TV shows, magazines, toys of his childhood are lost on American readers, at least this one.

Here's an idea, Thomas. Your mountain would be that much more magical without the characters Settembrini and Naphta.

Oh. A little late for revision...

Alcoholism is a terrible thing (in writers, particularly).

Mein Gott, the philosophizing in this thin air! Or is it pontificating?

About halfway through my stay on the Mountain.