The Museum of Eterna's Novel

TO THE CRITICS

Suicide has made more than one mediocre author glorious before he’s able to achieve that sobering “second edition:” making his a suicide that waits until it’s justified. But I’ve taken more precautions against true suicide, which is to survive in the face of failure. Success is mostly editing, that’s what makes things nice. To edit is the other great Power; thus, this novel, started at age thirty, continued at fifty and at seventy-three, has finally achieved supremacy: a person of Good Taste as the third author "and as a result the editor of all three. In the end I’ll be the author of a letter to the critics, a sort of “open letter” but for the living: suicide is not something you can edit out.