Musings on the Book, Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Collecting, Media, Life and the Arts, and Audio Interviews from The Biblio File radio program pertaining to same by a writer, broadcaster, bibliophile. "His struggle with words was unusually painful and this for two reasons. One was the common one with writers of his type: the bridging of the abyss lying between expression and thought; the maddening feeling that the right words, the only words are awaiting you on the opposite bank in the misty distance, and shudderings of the still unclothed thought clamouring for them on this side of the abyss. He had no use  for ready-made phrases because the things he wanted  to say were of an exceptional build and he knew moreover that no real idea can be said to exist without the words made to measure.  So that ( to use a closer simile) the thought  which only seemed naked was but pleading for the clothes it wore to become visible, while the words lurking afar were not empty shells as they seemed, but only waiting for the thought they already concealed  to set them aflame and in motion.  At times he felt like a child given a farrago of wires and ordered to produce the wonder of light." We should instead remember the great pessimistic voices of history... One is Seneca: "What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears." The other is the French moralist Chamfort: "A man