from RoC

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

 Yo, friends!

 First of all, a great many thanks (and then some) to Fabio:
your package finally reached me, and it was sure worth the wait!
 "The check is in the mail!" No, actually I've forgot exactly
how much... no, *little* I owe you, so please re-calculate my IOU.
You deserve "beak" money :)

 DANISH.INDEX is still expanding, currently at about .6 Kbytes,
and is primarily waiting for me to convert it into Harry's lay-out
standards. I haven't heard anything from Jacob though; I did mail
you my data a while ago, or was that just Fredrik, from whom I've
heard just as little? I'm spending $$$ galore on 2nd hand pocket
books, just to index them. No time to read much of them yet.

 Back to Italy: Do we have a Toplino index online (the one I just
got from Fabio)? If not, can we put it there? Or will we have to
do with data on foreign reprints in pockets?

 Just to prove that I'm still reading all the digests, a shortish
comment on a not too recent or relevant topic:

 David:
>> Eli Squinch is the name of the man in {Stephen King's}
>> Shawshank Redemption who {...}
>      I can imagine Stephen King being inspired to his (sometimes
> rather potboilerish, IMHO) tales of horror by "The Phantom Blot".

 (I couldn't find the {square} brackets today, sorry.)

 It's funny this should come up; in my Latest Lost Letter, I asked
if anyone knew of stories borrowing from King's stories.
I was particularily thinking of the Italian tradition of staging
the ducks'n'mice in remakes of classics by Tolstoy, Kafka, Verne, a.o.

 In spite of King's compulsive references to pop culture of the 50es and
60es, his interest in comics appears neglible, and I doubt that he
knew where the name originated. BTW, what does 'potboilerish' mean?
Something like he's writing the same story over and over, or just that
he can't seem to cut a long story short?

 I just finished "Insomnia", which appears to be a reworking of the
script for "Golden Years" and plotwise too much like Dean Koontz'
romance pulp. I read that story *three* times in his books, just like
comic writer/artist Frank Miller also only seems to know one story.

 For a *scary* horror story though I'd recommend Danish prodigy director
Lars von Trier's ghost story "Riget" ("The Realm"?) It's kinda like
"Twin Peeks", only... different.

 Anyone read "Twin Goofs" BTW??

 Ole 'RoC' Nielsen  c/o  lrn at daimi.aau.dk