Florence is hot. Michelangelo's David is as stupendous as you've been told. The Botticellis in the Uffizi dazzle the inner and outer eyes. It's impossible for me to get away from mere tourism with all this--just being whirled and dashed from one astounding piece of art or architecture to another. We're both exhausted and amazed all of the time. Wishing now for a hammock somewhere cool and grassy (green space seems remarkably hard to find in Italian cities). May have to settle for a hotel room nap.

Reading Cortazar's Hopscotch in fits and starts--it's a romantic Joycean ride, a modernist corker, the kind of thing they don't write any more, or do they? More on this and other subjects later.

What's happening in the world?