Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann is on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, but perhaps more importantly, you find it on the 911th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, which uses an algorithm that has taken in more than sixty compilations with the best works – many of these are reviewed on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/maybe-you-have-some-ideas-click-on-link.html - 7 out of 10

 

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann is on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, but perhaps more importantly, you find it on the 911^th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, which uses an algorithm that has taken in more than sixty compilations with the best works – many of these are reviewed on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/maybe-you-have-some-ideas-click-on-link.html

 

7 out of 10

 

The omens were good: there is an appealing introduction, only somehow, within it, there is the sense that this is the key to all of this Valley of The Dolls, just like it tells you about Everest, and how you have some sort of disappointment, once you reach that top, explained very well by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert…

 

In his classic of psychology Stumbling on Happiness https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html he looks at situations where we say I would be so happy, if only, and this applies to climbing Mount Everest, and reading this book

Surely, if you have the patience, which I lack, to follow Anne Welles all the way, through nearly four hundred and fifty pages, you may be rewarded, this work has had an immense success, and indeed, we can see that there is something in here, if enough for Flow, Being in The Zone attaining a higher state of consciousness, it is another matter

 

About Flow https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi.html you can read in this other classic of psychology, called…Flow, and I feared that this Valley of the Dolls would not provide it: ‘You've got to climb to the top of Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls. It's a brutal climb to reach that peak, which so few have seen. The last thing you expected to find was the Valley of the Dolls. Waiting for exhilaration, but it doesn't come. Feeling of Loneliness is overpowering’ this is from the novel

Thus, it was anticipating that the encounters with Anne Welles, Henry Bellamy, Neely, Lyon Burke, Allen Cooper would not be so exciting – Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/lucky-jim-by-kingsley-amis-author-of.html says ‘I want to keep saying 'No, he didn't', No it didn't happen as you describe it', No, that isn't what he thought,  No, that's just what she didn't say’

 

And that is how I feel about Anne Welles and her connections – she comes from near Boston to New York, in her home town, she has kissed all the boys and did not like it, in fact, she felt somewhat or completely disgusted, now is this an indication of another sex orientation or what, in fact, she did not find her knight in armor…yet

In the big city, she finds a place to rent, a job with this agency, where Henry Bellamy is the boss, and then Lyon burke will make a sensational appearance, back from World War II, very soon, Anne encounters this Allen Cooper – I know, there are so many and so fast to drop in – who looks like an unsuccessful salesman

 

This is what we think he is, they go out, she is not infatuated, in fact, Anne Feels sorry for the guy, you see, she is not only gorgeous – as in the most spectacular and all – she is so cool, munificent, self-controlled, dedicated, hardworking, oh, and not interested in money, so we follow this around, and then have a surprise

Allen Cooper is so rich, they do not know how much he has, a sort of Elon Musk of that age, and I just do not buy it, he was dressed so modestly they mean, his manner did not have that arrogance we see in the filthy rich, and by the way, that was there, in the beginning, because once he puts the cards on the table, we can see the character

 

In According to Mark https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/according-to-mark-by-penelope-lively.html the outstanding author, Penelope Lively, says ‘the novelist has an infinity of choices, He chooses what is to happen, to happens, and in what way he will relate what happens, the picture he constructs is complete on its own terms…when he says this is the story and the whole story we must accept it…perhaps novelists are the only people telling the truth’ concluding hence that the writer is god, but I am the king here

That is, I do not find this Anne credible, the notion that this billionaire could sneak one and pretend for weeks that he is such a pauper, it is possible, as it is stated above, Jacqueline Susann is the Creator and whatever she says is the rule, but I have to accept these ‘immigrants’, or else say that I do not find their proposition enticing

 

The way the cards are set, it looks to me as if Anne Welles will choose Lyon Burke, and it will take a few hundred pages to just move around in circles – I am being facetious and stupid here – just because he may be more difficult to get, due to his reputation, the warnings from Herny Bellamy and the past experiences…

Marcel Proust https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/le-temps-retrouve-by-marcel-proust.html is my favorite writer, and he said that ‘we want what we do not have’ or else "Love is not vain because it is frustrated, but because it is fulfilled. The people we love turn to ashes when we possess them." ~ Marcel Proust

 

So, Anne more or less rejects Allen Cooper, who reveals he is extremely rich, wants to marry her, and indeed, he has this pushy, rather obnoxious father, and they show that trait ‘power corrupts’, but still, her attitude is not one I accept as credible, she had gone out with the guy, she could still say we will see, like in the Zen Master story

In fact, I do not know what happens, beyond the first few chapters, when we find about this turn of events, a change which was recommended by Aristotle, something dramatic as in Oedipus Rex, when the king finds he had killed his father and married his mother…here, I just do not care enough about all this crowd

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/maybe-you-have-some-ideas-click-on-link.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’