Don’t let the turkeys get you down, as the saying goes. For even the best regulated lives have to deal with difficult people and petty tyrants. Pablo Neruda himself asks, Por qué me pican las pulgas y los sargentos literarios? Why do the fleas and literary sergeants bite me? [XII] His though is a world more extensive of view than a publisher’s desk or editor’s redraft. Aquel solemne Senador que me atribuía un Castillo devoró ya con su sobrino la torta del asesinato? Has that solemn senator who dedicated a castle to me already devoured, with his nephew, the assassin’s cake? [XXVI] For this is a world on the edge, a society in 1973 where no one knows who to trust, where what you say today could be your death warrant tomorrow. Qué significa persistir en el callejón de la muerte? What does it mean to persist on the alley of death? [LXII] Adolf Hitler is not the most interesting figure in Second World War hist