The Museum of Eterna's Novel

PROLOGUE FOR A BORROWED CHARACTER

Novelists have long and lucidly understood that it does not discredit them to adopt the literary practice here proposed, which is to use borrowed characters. In this way they escape the ridiculous self-infatuation that happens when they try to develop brilliant, fully-formed character-geniuses. I have proved that this effort implies declaring the author a genius, and so they limit themselves modestly to taking a character from me. Maybegenius? Poor Maybegenius, the novels that await you!

The Maybegeniuses have procured for me some authorial respite during the nights of my grand initial program — a dubious distinction, the best kind. In this way I pruned myself down to a smaller project, when I couldn’t further reduce the maybegenius of my character to my initial character genius’s novelistic audacity.