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Sunday night and a hell of a way to start 1960.

Idon't know, Frankie,

I'm with his mother. I mean, the back of the Lord God or the face of the Virgin Mary, all right-but why the hell would anybody want to see the prophet Ezekiel?

Somebody gave me this book for Christmas. It's a Giant Modern Library book. Did you ever see one of those? It's less attractively bound than the Proceedings of the New York State Assembly and it weighs more. It was given to me by a gent who knows I'm fond of John Donne. The title of this book is:

The Complete Poetry Selected Prose of JOHN DONNE & The Complete Poetry of WILLIAM BLAKE?

The question mark is mine. Will you please tell me what those two boys have in common? Except they were both English and they both Wrote? I tried reading the Introduction figuring that might explain it. The Introduction is in four parts. Parts I and II include a Professor's life of Donne mit-illustrations-from-thea uthor's-works-also-criticism. Part III begins -- and God knows I quote- :

'When, as a little boy, William Blake saw the prophet Ezekiel under a tree amid a summer field, he was soundly trounced by his mother.'

I don't like Blake anyway, he swoons too much, it's Donne I'm writing about, I am being driven clear up the wall, Frankie, you have GOT to help me.

You start with the Giant Modern Library version, you locate Sermon XV and there they are: Excerpts I, II and III, only when you get to the end of Excerpt I you discover they have deleted Jezebel off it. So you get down Donne's Sermons, Selected Passages (Logan Pearsall Smith) where you spend twenty minutes locating Sermon XV, Excerpt I, because by Logan Pearsall Smith it isn't Sermon XV, Excerpt I, it's Passage 126. All Must Die. Now that you've found it, you find he also deleted Jezebel so you get down the Complete Poetry & Selected Prose (Nonesuch Press) but they didn't happen to Select Jezebel either, so you get down the Oxford Book of English Prose where you spend another twenty minutes locating it because in the Oxford English Prose it isn't Sermon XV, Excerpt I nor yet 126. All Must Die, it's Passage 113. Death the Leveller. Jezebel is there, and you read it aloud but when you get to the end you find it doesn't have either Excerpt II or III so you have to switch to one of the other three books provided you had the wit to leave all three open at the right pages which I didn't.

Here I was, curled up in my armchair so at peace with the world, with something old and serene on the radio-Corelli or somebody-and this thing on the table. This Giant Modern Library thing. So I thought: "I will read the three standard passages from Sermon XV aloud," you have to read Donne aloud, it's like a Bach fugue.

Would you like to know what I went through in an innocent attempt to read three contiguous uncut passages from Sermon XV aloud?

So break it to me gently: how hard is it going to be to find me John Donne's Complete Sermons and how much is it going to cost?

I am going to bed. I will have hideous nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labeIled Excerpt, Selection, Passage and Abridged…

h. h.

yrs,