Friday, 19 July 2013

interesting...

INTERESTING BLOG
(upon receiving an unexpected encouraging letter)
By Izzy Ess of Moodiness

[a letter to a very smart friend, an English major and athletic champion, who apparently has been a secretive reader of my stuff and recently wrote me a very encouraging letter with a single word feedback, INTERESTING…]:

you may be interested in my audience, which surprises the hell out of me...  it's mainly RUSSIAN!    of about 200 readers a day, i have over 150 russians, about 50 canadians and 40 americans, plus a smattering from Italy, brazil, holland and germany.  I have no idea what interests the Russians, unless it's the traditional spying by all countries.  i did several pieces on George Orwell and Big Brothrenism.  I can't imagine that they've not read 1984 and animal farm and keep the aspidistra flying...  the greatest response i've had from any one article was from Poles with a lively discussion following and a full revision about a misconception i had about nazi death camps, in poland.  One women sent me a very sympathetic letter about how polish jews had fared during wwII and how the poles had been overlooked in it's heroic efforts getting pooped on by both sides.  this lady supplied a reference which i have ordered, when alligators eat the sun.

it reminds me of what henry miller and others went through when they couldn't publish in the USA and canada and then published in Europe and the rest of the world as famous authors.  erica jongg had the same experience.  the original writings of marquis de sade were banned in the USA and Canada and then went undergrouund.  In Europe, his books can still be seen and bought in all the book stores where he is thought to have been the clinical genius of all time, supplying Freud and others with tremendous observation about the human psyche.  as you recall, he was imprisoned at the Bastille in 1780 for masturbating, released by the revolutionary's as a possible leader in 1789. july 14, and then institutionalized at clarendon, for the rest of his life.  his scraps of paper were collected and published clandestinely, very censored at first, in a strongly catholic country, and then in original detail thereafter.  he was thought to have an iq of over 200, speaking 17 languages, fluently, and having read his own library of all the books of his and former times, including the bible.  his family was royal and very wealthy and said they actually institutionalized him for his own protection.  the play, MARAT/SADE, was highly successful and produced on CBC at one time by one of my classmates, who gave up medicine to write and produce stuff for the CBC.  With Sandor Stern, Abelman also quit medicine to write, both were my friends and their stuff was very good, i thought.  Aldous Huxley, my teenage literary hero, and a contemporary of orwell and wells, whom i also read, cover to cover as a teenager, were all geniuses and probably manic-depressive, as i am.

i hope this is of interest to you, a genius english major, with mood problems, under control, for the most part.  I was lucky enough to meet and talk to Andrew Huxley, whose research i tried in switzerland.  the huxley family had many geniuses, including Julius, another brother who started UNICEF to earn the third nobel prize in three siblings.  I'm pretty sure they were all moody.  the grandfather, thomas huxley was britain's famous philosopher of the 19th century.

happy landings, my dear FRIEND and thank you for encouraging me in your own way, reluctant but very knowledgeable...

love,


the end

© izzy sommers, md
Welland, Canada

July 19, 2013

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