[Yoda]

Hi Yoda

I have recently been given a 3rd edition TGM book and I am finding it facinating the changes from the 3rd to the 6th and 7th editions. I might be wrong but the in the 3rd Homer seems to give more guidance to helping the pupil find their stroke pattern. Also in the 3rd there are 5 imperatives (lag pressure, flat left wrist, balance, rhythm and steady head). Can you throw any of your insight into the changes in the editions and your feeling for why Homer did them.

I have written extensively in these pages about the various editions, including the Five Imperatives you referenced. Actually, considering the three Hand Imperatives of 6-H-0, there were eight!

Also, I have referenced priceless text that later hit the cutting room floor, the result of Homer's relentless sacrifice at the altar of brevity.

Finally, I have discussed several important changes in the posthumous seventh edition that do not square with the six prior editions produced by Homer himself. Nor do they square with other sections in the same edition. Pity.

The answer to your question above is that Homer came to feel that the first edition -- and no doubt the subsequent editions as well -- were "incomplete". Some of that self-criticism was deserved. But much of the subsequent information was published because he realized, after his Master Classes with a handful of seekers around the country, that we mortals just didn't understand where he was coming from. In his genius, he had assumed too much.

It was that gap that editions four, five and six attempted to bridge.