Word: homers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Solzhenitsyn believes that his mathematics saved him: he was next sent to Mavrino, a prison research institute outside Moscow. Mavrino is the setting of The First Circle. The title comes from Dante's Inferno, where the first circle of hell is peopled by the great men of antiquity?Homer, Socrates, Plato?who, too valuable to be thrown into the pit, were consigned to limbo. Mavrino is an institute carrying out KGB research projects, and as a prison it is bearable. There is meat. There is some comfort. There are even women. Yet this is still slave labor of the mind...
...torrent of analytical advice that pours from Wall Street is hardly noted for its literary style, much less its wit. "We send a great deal of literature to our clients-most of it deadly dull," says Sidney Homer, 65, research partner of Salomon Bros. & Hutzler, one of the Street's largest bond dealers. Last week, however, Salomon Bros, was mailing its clients something different: a privately published book of Homer's needling sallies at the very serious world of bond investment...
...Homer's slim volume, titled The Bond Buyer's Primer, is actually a collection of 21 "lessons" written intermittently since 1961. They cover such topics as "One Hundred Ways to Say 'No' to a Bond Salesman," and "How (Not) to Explain the Bond Market to Your Wife," and Homer starts off by dividing all bond salesmen into twelve species. They include Legatus Caelestis, or Messenger from Mount Olympus, who "brings you eternal verities from on high (his firm's research department) "; Garrulus Defatigare, or Sophisticate, who bears "a bored air of nonchalance and yards...
...Homer finds whimsy everywhere. Wall Street, he notes, is physically only "an inauspicious little alley." He depicts the typical bond buyer as a "friendly, earnest, knowledgeable-looking man who sits at a big desk staring at a small piece of paper with an expression on his face of agonized apprehension. He is worried because he doesn't quite know what he should be worried about...
Aches in the Solar Plexus. Pinpointing a problem that plagues his business, Homer writes: "The president of your bank hates bonds. The mere sound of the word starts up a dull ache in his solar plexus. This makes him fidget. Bonds, he knows, are things the bank has to buy when there is no demand for loans; they are also things the bank has to sell when there is a demand for loans and interest rates are high. Somehow or other this usually involves a loss." As for coexistence with the stock market, writes Homer, "the bond market provides...