The Museum of Eterna's Novel

A CURSE ON THE ORDERLY READER

I never believed in the existence of the Orderly Reader. And, for that matter, I am most often right when I don’t believe in something than when I do. Yet I have stumbled in my novel across the only existing orderly reader. He’s the one who will ruin and betray all my weak efforts as an author, getting them on the credit of his accumulated imcompletenesses and lack of attention. If he’s anywhere around this novel, I already know that all hope is lost.

What would it cost you to just shut up, sir! Doesn’t thwarting Eterna’s serene and sorrowful talent bother you? Were you not conquered by tender Sweetheart’s meekness and cruel destiny? Doesn’t the Lover’s inextricable entanglement, in what you cannot deny is the mysteriousness of having one’s soul in one place and one’s body in a novel where he waits his beloved’s return from death — doesn’t this mystery fill your artistic practice with rage and sorrow, as you string together a solid life, day after day, placidly dining each night with thoughts of the next day’s lunch? Will your betrayer be Maybegenius, who has taught you previously unknown skills for the conquest of ladies? Perhaps, in the execution of these newly acquired skills, you will know success for the first time in touching a woman’s soul! May you then throw away all your breakfasts and lunches, thus correcting your bile for this publisher of defects!

No, it’s hopeless. A book could never make you so happy.¹

1 Indicates a 68 reader drop.