The Museum of Eterna's Novel

FOR THE READER WHO SKIPS AROUND

I'm confident that I won’t have a single orderly reader. An orderly reader could bring about my downfall and strip me of any celebrity I've more or less honestly managed to swipe for my characters. And failure is a dubious distinction at my age.

To the reader who skips around, however, I accommodate myself. You read my entire novel without knowing it, because I scattered the telling of the whole novel before I started, and so you turned into an unknowing orderly reader. With me, the reader who skips around is most likely to read in an orderly fashion.

I wanted to distract you, not correct you, because contrary to appearances you are a wise reader, since you practice inter-reading, which makes the most forceful impression, in keeping with my theory that characters and events that are only insinuated or skillfully truncated are the most memorable.

I dedicate my novel to you, Skip-Around Reader; you, in turn, should be grateful to me for a new sensation: reading in order. On the other hand, the orderly reader will experience a new way of skipping: the orderly reading of a skipping-around author.