The Wheel Spins

I reread Graham Greene's Loser Takes All yesterday. It was the very first Greene book I ever read; I remember finding a copy in a sale bin in a Makati NBS and taking a chance. The gamble paid off; reading it was sheer pleasure. It might still be the Greene book that I love the most (though of course Brighton Rock is brilliant). Of course that is probably more nostalgia for the grade-school boy that I was at the time I first read it than anything else.

But it doesn't matter. I am grateful for this little book's existence. Dismissed as a frivolity by its own author (it took me a while to understand how a writer could divide his output into "entertainments" and -- one presumes -- "real" books), it is nevertheless wonderfully written and engaging and even gives one some sort of hope -- for benevolence, for luck, for love -- false though that hope might be, ultimately. It is lightweight, no doubt, both literally and figuratively, but I will reread it again someday just for the pleasure of rereading it, which is more than I can say for The End of the Affair.

Later today I will see my doctor again. To extend the gambling metaphor, I have lost a lot, I feel, by seeing the wrong doctors. They have lasered my eyes and injected me with drugs and made me worse and worse in the process. It has taken me a long time to hit on a "system" that might work. It remains to be seen whether it actually will work, however. There are wins and losses. Everyone has to walk away from the table at some point.