Amis, Porter, Valles, Ouellette, Cazotte

Today was a day of much reading, like my heyday earlier this year. I read Kingsley Amis's memoirs and a biography by Eric Jacobs of him. He impressed me little as a human being. The same, mind you, was true of his son Martin Amis. I also read Fernand Ouellette's Journal denoue. I found that he had listened to and read much of what I have listened to or read. He's a poet from Quebec, about 30 years older than myself. Maybe this means I'm a throwback. I also read Zimmerman's biography of Jules Valles, a French 19th century writer of whom I had never heard. His life was not that interesting -- the usual poverty and early death of a writer.In contrast,t he aristocratic Cazotte wrote one of the jewels of ancien regime France, and being an aristocrat, died on the scaffold. He had a Champagne vineyard, and his biography was written by, wait for it, Claude Taittinger.