Some thoughts on acting, art, and literature by an aging man. "Happily ever after." "O, the unavailing woe that strides their fate." Is there anything more to tell? Edouard Manet was a better friend to Zola than Zola to him, and a far greater master of his art. Music is not discussed as even the efforts of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach did not produce a mature art form, and no one else has tried. The only defect of this book, its mentioning DIRECTORIAL cinema with the examples of Eisenstein, Hitchcock, and Murnau, but not the two most well DIRECTED films, Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" and "Sanjuro," his "Iliad" to his domestic distressed comedy. This is as far as cinema has progressed to now. The more vigorous a land's entertainment industries the more boring its citizens' lives, who need must have them to pass time.