Akin Gump Surveillance: Message for Elaine Wranik

During the period 1988-1991 I was employed as a paralegal at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.  I believed that I was under surveillance by the firm.  The surveillance included the manager of my apartment building entering my apartment surreptitiously every morning, inspecting my apartment, and reporting back to the firm's managers what she saw.  I used to leave messages for the manager (Elaine Wranik).  The following is a message I left on a table in my apartment during the summer of 1991.  The message attempts to show parallels in the material I quote or reference in my autobiographical study, The Caliban Complex: An Attempt at Self-Analysis.  It is handwritten on a sheet of white tablet paper and, as usual, contains some witticisms:

Common Structural Thread:

--Shakespeare*
--Goethe
--Nietzsche
--Wagner**
--Hesse***
--Hugo

In addition to their other literary activities, each of the above were poets.

* One commentator (NOT Alan Simpson, by the way) has, somewhat dubiously, claimed that The Tempest is an allegory with Ariel symbolizing the spirit of poetry and Caliban symbolizing the spirit of prose (Introduction, Folger Shakespeare Library Edition)

** A central theme of Die Meistersinger is the poetry/song contest.  Act III, Scene 2 is devoted exclusively to the writing of a poem.

*** Included a collection of poems in the novel Magister Ludi.  (Like Pasternak in Dr. Zhivago)

Another Structural Issue:

Dr. Zhivago has been called a "poet's novel" because it lacks the cohesive narrative that characterizes most novels.  The structure is more like a series of vignettes that have been string together.

All White, South African Rock Group:

Dr. Christian Barnard and the Arrhythmics
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Old quote with a new meaning:

Quoth the Raben nevermore.
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Advisors urging Garfield to appoint James Blaine Secretary of State:

"Mr. President, with the thoughts you'd be thinkin' you could be another Lincoln if you only had a Blaine."