Notes to The story, the forest, the chain of transmission

* How pleasing that the man who--though in this paragraph simply credited with naming the wildwood--was one of the scientists who placed the forest's clearance much earlier than generally thought shares a name with Arthur Rackham, one of the greatest illustrators of the creatures of forest, fairie, and fantasy!

Notes to Chess

*Despite the fact that Dunnett lets the move-by-move narration go after four or five moves--which, as I had been sketching out the moves as they happened, super-nerd-style, disappointed me immensely--I have not a whit of doubt that she had, in her files somewhere, the log of the entire game. Meticulous doesn't even begin to describe Dunnett's approach to detail. God, I wish there were any other writer quite like her.

Notes to I know where to hide those ludes!, or, Place-based boredom

*The outer limits of conceivable eternity at that point being, say, the sixteen years (and scraggly mustache) to which your REO Speedwagon–t-shirted neighbor had attained.

Notes to The English Ghost

* I can use these words that way without mixing metaphors, right? "Magpie" plays the role of an adjective, modifying "archive mouse"? Work with me here, people.

Notes to Through gates of horn and ivory, or, Entering the realm of the Oneiroi

*

Notes to Fitzgerald's beautiful and damned. In both senses of that apostrophe.

8 And that's only the first of a dismayingly large number of playlets, a mistake forgivable in a first novelist who feels omnipotent, far less so in a novelist submitting himself to the public a second time. I know This Side of Paradise was a success, but wasn't there any carping? Any criticism that might have buffeted Fitzgerald just enough to make him draw in his wings a tad?

Notes to Harry Mathews and the productive pleasure of constraints

* When I was six, I wrote two songs: "Horses are Fun" and "Horseshoes on the Sidewalk." The latter was a sad song, in a minor key.