Status Updates From Somebody with a Little Hamm...

Outside the window, another old lady stood and shouted in at us [in Russian]. “What is she saying?” I asked Mischa. He listened for a moment and then said, “I think she’s asking how we [writers] make our money. She’s asking, do we even work.”

Dickens is excessive by modern standards. But modern standards have become denatured, &Dickens is excessive like Nature; like living things, his creatures must twist &turn, expand out or tunnel in until they have utterly fulfilled what they are. It’s very entertaining, but it’s also faithful to human experience, which indiscriminately mixes trivia with genius, artificiality with raw power, sentimentality &seriousness