| from The Complete Peter Leroy (so far)
Something Like Clam Chowder: An Introduction
By Mark Dorset
Preface
 n
this space, reader,
I had intended to provide a thoroughgoing discussion of the origin and
development of the work that has become The Complete Peter Leroy (so
far), a brief explanation of the work, a short chronicle of its history,
an outline or map of its parts, and some suggested sequences in which to
read it, but the conspiracy of work
and time, which has so
often robbed me of the opportunity to do what I wish to do by filling
my life with things that
I must do, or am obliged to do, or have been made to believe that I ought
to do, did it to me again, and so here I am, using this space not to say
a few prefatory words of thanks to those who made it possible for me to
present you, reader, with a work of my own, but to introduce to you the
work of someone else, in this case Eric Kraft, who wrote the first version
of the material that follows, "What I'm Up To," many years ago, when he
first found it necessary to explain what he was up to. This
is, by my estimate, the
twenty-second revision. I will rejoin you on the other side of "What
I'm Up To," in an afterword.
| [In the Voyager version, "What I'm Up To," by Eric Kraft, follows here.
You will find my version of it in these pages, as "What
the Author Is Up To." It has been through many more revisions since
I wrote the preceding passage. -- M. D.] |
Afterword: On HyperFiction
 uring
the first ten years or so of Eric
Kraft's work on what eventually became The Complete Peter Leroy
(so far), years when he was struggling to find a form for the work,
it never occurred to him that perhaps he was asking the medium he was using
to do something more than it could comfortably do. He accommodated his
material -- and his thinking -- to the medium available to him: the printed
book. However, it is probably obvious to anyone who reads The
Personal History, Adventures, Eperiences & Observations of Peter Leroy
that the story stretches across all the books, that the mind of Peter Leroy
contains all of his story, and that the work keeps trying to -- or threatening
to -- burst through the boundaries.
 The
heart of the electronic version is the books that already exist. They are
a given, and their form as narratives is a given, which means that reading
them is a page-turning, linear experience, but experiencing the total work,
the whole universe of Peter Leroy, has its nonlinear aspects. There are
hypertextual elements built into the books, links that take the reader
from one book to another at various points, implanted allusions that link
the books in many ways and at many points. In the electronic version of
the work, the allusions that connect the books are highlighted, at the
reader's option, with "click-me" markers, but the electronic version goes
beyond simply "activating" what is already there. It supplements but does
not supplant the books, adding a new layer to the work, with a new "front
door" and "back door."
The
front door leads into the expanding universe of Peter Leroy, and the back
door leads back in. The front door ought to have been, and would
have been, if I had had time to develop it properly, a kind of hyperpreface.
It would have been a short essay by me, in which I offered a brief explanation
of the work and a chronicle of its history. The back door, which I have
provided,
though it is not as fully developed and exhaustive as I wished it to be,
is "A Topical Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy," a topical hyperguide
or annotated hyperindex, intended primarily for the re-reader, but
also useful to the kind of reader who likes to do things backwards. Here
a number of topics or themes from Peter's world and work are listed as
entries, with explanations, expansions, and annotations, again written
by me.
Let
me explain that I'm not a newcomer to all of this. I've been around for
a while. I am a character in the work, an interested party. (You can check
the
preface and chapters 18-20 of Herb
'n' Lorna for an introduction, but I also pop up here and there
throughout the work.) For many years, for as long as Peter has been working
on the reconstruction of his life, I've wanted to write something that
I usually refer to as The Topical Autobiography of Mark Dorset.
This would be -- perhaps I should say "would have been" -- an autobiography
organized not chronologically but encyclopedically, with entries for people,
places, experiences, themes, ideas, and emotions that I considered important
in my life. A few years ago, I began to realize that I would never get
around to writing that, in part because Peter had beaten me to the punch,
stolen my thunder. That's when I began thinking about writing "A Topical
Guide to the Complete Peter Leroy" instead.
Perhaps
you're thinking to yourself that I may not be the most reliable guide to
Peter's work, since I have an agenda of my own -- the promotion of an interpretation
of my own that may or may not match yours. (In this respect, I have many
literary antecedents; Charles Kinbote, in Pale Fire, is one.) I
am, I confess -- I declare -- an analytical type. You might find it handy
to think of me as residing in the left side of Eric Kraft's brain, while
Peter resides in the right. However, I bring to this party some special
insights, I think -- an insider's insights -- and I have some stories of
my own to tell that make interesting glosses to Peter's, so you will find
elements of my own life story -- details of my life with the Glynn twins,
and so on -- that creep into my comments here and there.
I
don't want to seem immodest, but the new layer that my material adds to
the work is one that Peter could not have provided himself -- at least
not alone. My layer seems to be the outside layer, although it's written
by a character within Peter's story. I offer you alternative ways to read
the existing work. I will, as you read that work, dismantle it, reconstruct
it, annotate it, "explain" it, and illuminate it through references to
other works. I am Peter's medium (and Kraft's) for saying things about
the work that can't be said in Peter's voice (or Kraft's).
If,
as you read Peter's work, you like to think of yourself as standing beside
him, spending your days with him and Albertine in that old hotel, then
you may choose to think of me as Peter's dummy, but if, instead, you find
as you read that you imagine yourself standing by my side, then you may
think of Peter as I do, as my ventriloquist.
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