bookend

Dearest reader.

Yes, yes, now you feel anger. A book purchased spoiled, tainted by the scrawlings of another, the filth of an unpublished mind… but please: I beg your pardon. Let me explain… True, you did not choose to purchase these words that I write: at least this is what you think. The truth is less obvious, more difficult to come by. In purchasing this book, you see, you did purchase me: that is, a part of my soul.

The typeset words in these pages resonated deep within me; how unfortunate, I thought, that I had not arrived on the stage earlier. Then I could have been the first. To write this, or, rather, something quite like it. But like so many things, the dark passions have been caramelized into words; it is pointless to sugarize them again… Besides, this fellow that we both admire, branded on the binding, completed the task so well: such a tasty serving.

So I am left on the fringes; the vacuum of my thoughts. I leave it to the others to write (it is, after all, much less tedious for me to spend time reading, leaving the inkwell in my drawer). But when I find a… truth? such as this I must make it my own, because it is my own, perhaps more than the author's himself… I have rewritten this so perfectly as I hatched my own deeper, superior meaning to chance words, words our friend the writer threw onto the page like spare change. For half of the book's composition the guy was probably piss drunk – I am sure of it. Yet I have managed to elevate it beyond its original mediocrity. I have, indeed, made it pure.

So why, you wonder, am I telling you this? Because I am vain, I am human, and I crave immortality. My own book is unwritten (unpublished? unread?): it needn't, however, be written at all. The bit of pulp you hold in your hand is a chapter, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others hold a chapter as well. You will, of course, never see the grand pattern, the underlying labyrinth of my fiction.

But humanity will. Like so many books, the multiplying, pollinating minds of this great cityscape digest "my" books, my thoughts, my dreams. And the great fiction, day upon day, is built. You needn't even purchase this copy of this book. But please, please read it sometime in your life. In doing so, you will add water to my dusty soul, mudden the cloud, perhaps forge form from the chaos. You will help me to gain my place as the… invisible yet sentient subtext of our time.

I thank you.

Vodyanov