November 12, 2007 - Monday evening

Reading The Face of Battle, by John Keegan.

His favorite book--Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, for the way it defines American experiences. It comes close to defining the psyche of the nation. He also likes Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy as well as Latin American literature. Most of the great literature of our century, he said, is from Latin America.

His book? It'd be about his life. He's a writer and has worked as a shrimper in Florida and fishing for salmon on the Olympic Peninsula. In another twenty years, he said, only the rich will eat salmon.

He grew up in New York and says one day the president of the United States will speak with a Brooklyn accent. Brooklyn English will be what's taught in academies. After all, he said, we don't speak in Elizabethan English now days. Things change.