San Francisco, California
October 3, 2000

Dear Readers,

Our complicated week has grown more complicated, and it’s only Tuesday. It turns out that Ian Brown’s in Montreal, covering Pierre Trudeau’s funeral, and the CBC fax machine ran out of paper, and then there’s the time difference. I blame Castro. Still, only twenty-three hours late, here’s today’s letter.

Or at least today’s semi-letter. Ian Brown’s missive on John Milton, “Ripple,” and moral certainty is a thousand words longer than our letters usually are. So we’ve decided to offer it up to you in two installments. The second will appear at around noon on Wednesday, California time. Or, if you like, you can read the whole thing now. Plus, it will appear in full, more readable than ever, in this weekend’s print-it-yourself version of Open Letters; this might be a good time to subscribe.

Ian’s Milton letter originally appeared a few weeks ago, in a considerably different form, as an essay in the Globe and Mail, where Ian writes fairly regularly, on a wide variety of topics. I would direct you to the essay, as it was quite something, too, but that link is no more.

At the end of Ian’s last open letter, about quitting writing, he asked rhetorically, referring to his quit, “How long do you think it will last?” The answer, fortunately for us, was: Not so long.

Please come back tomorrow, for part two.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough