Frontispiece

On the simple matter of who did what to whom, and for how long, and with what implements—more germane to the matter, what principles were contravened, which maxims intentionally flouted, in what manner and how frequently natural laws were violated—well, begun this way, it already suborns boredom. There is no fitting introduction save for that constructed in the very mind of a reader attempting to make sense out of a jumbled mass of letters. The introduction is written by the writing itself—it is the output of a mechanical, though stochastic, procedure, and even now it is obtaining form, coalescing, and spalling off bits that will henceforth lie on the floor for you to trip on, maybe occasionally attempt to glue back on. And in this, the Author, as with everything else, will be a titanic and evanescent—failure.